From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
'Human Rights' and Wrongs
Civil War history? Global warming? A film festival lacks focus.
NEW YORK--Thirty years ago, Soviet dissidents imprisoned in the gulag formed the single, unified face of the human-rights movement. Under the Communist regime, these lonely voices of dissent were stifled in work camps, in isolation cells or by the secret police. Their courageous refusal to be silenced, coupled with support from organizations like Human Rights Watch (then called Helsinki Watch), has been largely credited for bringing down communism.
But today, as the rhetoric of human rights has spread across the globe, the face of the movement has morphed dramatically. This week, in its 18th annual film festival, Human Rights Watch, together with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has provided us with intimate portraits of the ever-mushrooming and ever-more-complicated movement.
You couldn't ask for richer characters: a one-eyed former prostitute turned condom vendor in Guatemala, an 18-year-old democratic activist and rap producer in Belarus, a feminist member of Afghanistan's Parliament who travels in a burqa, an Iraqi mother desperately trying to get medicine for her child with AIDS. There's a reason every screening I attended boasted a packed house: The films themselves--there are 21 features and three shorts from 17 countries--are just as compelling as the characters they feature.
From an artistic perspective, the festival has been highly impressive. Riveting archival footage of the searing destruction wrought by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ("White Light/Black Rain") and shocking confessionals from failed Palestinian bombers in Israeli prisons ("Hot House") make it clear why many of these films have won distinctions at prominent festivals like Toronto and Sundance.
But the point of this specific festival is not to satisfy the film buffs who frequent the Walter Reade Theater. It is to highlight "the world's most pressing human rights issues," and it is on this count that the festival falls short.
In choosing the two weeks' worth of films for the festival, director Bruni Burres views between 500 and 600 candidates. When I asked Ms. Burres how she and her committee decide what human-rights issues are most crucial to highlight, she told me, "We never rate any films or any issues as more important than another film or issue." Later in our conversation, she reiterated: "We never declare one human-rights issue more important than another."
Such a theoretical standard is troubling, and helps explain how certain documentaries made it into the festival. Take Marco Williams's film "Banished," for example. Narrated by Mr. Williams, "Banished" tells the story of three American communities--Forsyth County, Ga.; Pierce City, Mo.; and Harrison, Ark.--as they struggle with the knowledge that racial cleansings occurred there in the period right after the Civil War. Several descendants of the blacks who were banished form the moral center of the film, as they articulate their desire for retribution.
Though "Banished" illuminates an important political issue--what is white America's responsibility to African-Americans in terms of reparations?--it's hard to see how its subject matter constitutes an urgent human-rights concern.
The same goes for two features that focus on environmental issues. "Everything's Cool," a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is about global warming, while "The Unforeseen" investigates the impact of real-estate development on the environment in Austin, Texas. While there is no doubt that abuse of the environment is a crucial issue, it's a stretch to claim that it represents a top human-rights priority.
Judging by the audience's reaction to the films, it seemed that many in attendance were also failing to make the sorts of difficult distinctions necessary in human-rights advocacy--namely, which wrongs are more wrong than others. During the Q-and-A period following "Banished," an audience member praised the film as a universal--rather than American--story, arguing that what's going on in Israel and Palestine is exactly the same as African-Americans pushing for the return of their land. The majority of those in the room applauded his analysis.
Following Sunday night's screening of "Cocalero," a sympathetic portrayal of Bolivia's new Socialist president, Evo Morales, the audience broke out into laughter as Mr. Morales and his supporters chanted "death to Yankees," but didn't flinch as Mr. Morales cozied up to Fidel Castro and stood proudly in front of flags emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara.
It's important to note that there have been several films that fulfill the goal of the festival--top-quality documentaries that expose audiences to the most egregious human-rights violations, in spades. "A Lesson of Belarusian" features the successors of Eastern European dissidents like Andrei Sakahrov and Vaclav Havel. We witness these eternally optimistic democratic activists, most in their late teens and early 20s, as they produce protest music (singing about Alexander Lukashenka's government, a boy wails "now darkness means the same as light means") and stage nonviolent protests in the dead of winter. Despite frequent beatings by robotic-looking police in riot gear, the Belarusians press on.
The festival's most insistent rallying cry is also the film most difficult to watch. Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's "The Devil Came on Horseback" gives us retired Marine Capt. Brian Steidle's brutal, unflinching account of the genocide now being perpetrated in Darfur, Sudan. Unable to shoot a gun in his role as an unarmed military observer with the African Union, Mr. Steidle instead shoots photographs documenting the mass rapes and murders being carried out by the Janjaweed militias armed and accompanied by Omar al-Bashir's government. As we watch Mr. Steidle's relentless dedication--he appeals to everyone from senators to construction workers--it's hard not to be moved to implore our government to take action.
As enemies of human rights co-opt the idealistic language of the movement--what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "semantic infiltration"--it is increasingly important that prominent human-rights advocacy organizations define what human rights are. When human rights stand for everything, they begin to mean nothing. Perhaps next year the festival committee can take the lead in clarifying what should go at the top of our lists.
Ms. Weiss is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.
