One World 2005
The 7th One World human rights documentary film festival, organized by People in Need, took place from April 27th to May 5th in Prague and from April 28th to May 14th in 13 cities around the Czech Republic: Brno, České Budějovice, Hradec Králové, Liberec, Mělník, Olomouc, Opava, Ostrava, Pardubice, Plzeň, Rožnov, Tábor, Ústí nad Labem.
As in past years, the festival was being held under the auspices of former president Václav Havel, Czech Minister of Culture Pavel Dostál and Mayor of Prague Pavel Bém. Regional screenings were being held under the auspices of mayors of 13 cities and governors of 11 regions.
One World 2005 presented 120 films and videos from all around the world, chosen from among 850 entries. Screenings were followed by debates with festival guests, representatives of non-governmental organizations, journalists, academics and experts on given themes.
Festival Venues
The festival center was located in the Minor Theatre (Vodičkova 6, Praha 1, Tel.: +420 222 231 702), which will act as a screening venue, host guest and press services, a videoteque, 24-hour Internet access for the festival guests, and offered a café-bar. In addition to Minor, the festival took also place in the Světozor cinema (Vodičkova 41, Praha 1, Tel.: +420 224 947 566), Lucerna (Štěpánská 61, Praha 1, Tel.: +420 224 216 972), the City Library (Mariánské nám. 1, Praha 1, Tel.: +420 257 532 908), cinema Mat (Karlovo náměstí 19, Praha 2, Tel.: +420 224 915 765) and cinema Ponrepo (Bartolomějská 11, Praha 1, Tel.: +420 224 233 281).
Main Competition
The Main Competition included 16 recently made full-length documentaries. As usual, the main competition section offered gripping stories, powerful testimonies, charismatic personalities, outstanding filmmaking and intriguing reflections on the challenges of our time. Films in this category competed for the Minister of Culture Award for the best film and the Best Director Award. Members of the Grand Jury are acclaimed personalities in the world of documentary film. In 2005 they were Don Edkins (Republic of South Africa), Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Austria), Anna Glogowski (France), Alena Műllerová (Czech Republic), and Anand Patwardhan (India).
Short Forms
The Short Forms competition consists of documentaries as well as experimental and animated films. This category included 15 short films (up to 35 minutes) competing for the Mayor of Prague Award for the best short film. Jury members were organizers and programmers of prestigious international documentary festivals: Claas Danielsen (Germany, Leipzig International Documentary Film Festival), Tine Fischer (Denmark, CPH:DOX), Jukka-Pekka Laakso (Finland, Tampere Short Film Festival), Tiina Lokk (Estonia, Black Nights Film Festival) and Ilana Tsur (Israel, Docaviv International Film Festival).
Right-to-Know category
As in previous years, the Right-to-Know category offered 17 investigative reports on current affairs, human rights, global issues, inside stories, and in-depth coverage audiences usually do not find on TV. These films competed for the Rudolf Vrba Award.
One World is unique because it is not only interested in introducing new and inspirational films, but is also a festival dedicated to freedom, justice, and human dignity. In addition to filmmakers and film professionals, One World invites extraordinary personalities, the people that could themselves be the heroes of human rights documentaries.
Members of the Rudolf Vrba Jury are such people - charismatic and brave individuals who dare to be outspoken and active on behalf of freedom, democracy, truth, justice, equal rights and dignity--in most cases at great personal risk. By inviting these inspiring people to Prague, One World gives audiences the opportunity to meet and talk with people who have first-hand experience of some of the greatest challenges facing the world today. To date 2005 jury members included: social field-worker Jarmila Kuchárová (Czech Republic), human rights activist Gheorghe Briceag (Moldova), political activist Mirvari Gahramanova (Azerbaijan), Hanna Khodas (All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH) and chair of human rights center Viasna Ales Bialiatski (Belarus).
The Partner was Lidové noviny.
Homo Homini Award
The People in Need Foundation each year presents the Homo Homini award to an individual who has significantly served in the fight for human rights, democracy, and non-violent resolutions to political conflicts.
The Board of Directors of People in Need has decided to present the Homo Homini Award for 2004 to Gheorghe Briceag from Moldova. The Award to this former prisoner of the Soviet Gulag for many years was presented for his persistent efforts to defend human rights and for his personal efforts in defending the former prisoners of the Gulag in Moldova. People in Need especially recognized his persistent resistance to the re-establishment of the Soviet methods and symbols in the territory of the Former Soviet Republics. People in Need would at the same time like to draw attention to the dismal situation in this European country, whose Transdniestr area is, due to the unlawful presence of the Russian army, still occupied by a totalitarian regime of the self-proclaimed "president" Smirnov.
Non-competition program
The non-competition program presented 73 documentaries that were organized in following thematic sections: In a Woman's Voice; Film and Women (retrospective); About Love (documentaries from new EU member states); Generation Next; Docs for Kids; Right to Tradition; Choice of Les Film d´Ici; HIV/AIDS: Global Challenge; North Korean: Ever Lasting?; Fragments of Bosnia; Made in China; African Shadows; Iraq in the Spotlight; and Jury member films.
One World was again focused on major crisis areas and regions where large-scale human rights violations are taking place. Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, North Korea, Belarus and Chechnya came in the spotlight of several documentaries that were included in competition and non-competition program sections.
The Iraq in the Spotlight
The Iraq in the Spotlight program section featured The Liberace of Baghdad that was recently awarded at the Sundance festival and About Baghdad, a captivating documentary of the broad spectrum of Iraqi voices from the streets and teashops of Baghdad. These two films were accompanied by documentaries which were profoundly different in style, the cinema vérité shaped Control Room and the openly polemic and activist Weapons of Mass Deception. Using a critical approach, both films focused on the way the international media, particularly the global satellite news channels, had covered the war in Iraq. Last film from this section was documentary Big Storm: The Lynndie England Story, portrait of army reservist Lynndie England, who had appeared in a photograph beside naked and cowering Iraqi prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib prison.
North Korea: Ever Lasting?
Section on North Korea presented three films: Andrzej Fidyk´s masterpiece from the 1988 The Parade, a recent BBC This World production Access to Evil and Seoul Train, a powerful testimony about the plight of the North Korean defectors. These three documentaries had been selected from a broader collection that was put together and premiered at the Human Rights in Film festival in Warsaw, Poland. Films from Warsaw festival were screened at all seventeen member-festivals of the Human Rights Film Network.
Made in China
Films in the Made in China section were here to inform One World viewers. A Decent Factory, The Concrete Revolution and Mardi Gras: Made in China uncover the hidden underbelly of the Chinese economic 'miracle.' The films show the blatant exploitation of the workers, mainly migrants from the poor countryside areas, by an economy fully controlled by the communist party and fueled by foreign investments.
Right to Tradition
Several films illustrating the struggle of native communities against the modern world included as the Right to Tradition section. These films looked at the struggles of the Sahara's Tuareg (Asshak, Tales from the Sahara), the South Sudanese Nuba tribes (Closed District), the Indians from Argentina (We Are the Indians), the Siberian Evenks (Afonka Does Not Want to Herd Reindeer Anymore) and the Siberian Udeges (Roots of the Sky). Two excellent films from young Spanish and Hungarian filmmakers, New Eldorado and Switch Off, focused on the struggle of local communities in Romania (Transylvania) and Chile (Mapuche) to defend their land against multinational companies and their own governments.
In a Woman's Voice
Gender issues and women directing film were reoccurring themes of this year's One World. As in past years, the In a Woman's Voice program section featured a number of outstanding documentaries and strong testimonies about women as victims of violence, injustice, inequality and patriarchal cultures. Whatever the challenges facing different communities (poverty, war, unemployment, lack of proper education, deep social divisions, AIDS), women are always the double victims of the problem itself, and of the prevailing dominancy of men.
Women and Film
One World 2005 made tributes to women filmmakers. One of the highlights of this year's program was a retrospective of twelve films that had been selected by four prominent female filmmakers: Pirjo Honkasalo from the Finland, Barbara Kopple from USA, Kim Longinotto from the United Kingdom and Lourdes Portillo from Mexico. Each of them had been asked to select three films according to the following criteria: 1) one of the films was made pioneering female director from the '70s or '80s, 2) the second film represented a talented young filmmaker of the next generation, and 3) the third film was one of their own productions.
Seminar: Innovative Approaches in the Promotion of Women's Rights
One World 2005 hosted a seminar called Innovative Approaches in the Promotion of Women's Rights, organized by the Slovak-Czech Women's Fund. This seminar took place from April 28th to May 2nd in Mat. The aim of the seminar was to bring together women activists, representatives of advocacy groups and grass-roots organizations from EU countries and the wider Europe region (East and Southeast Europe) and female filmmakers focusing on women rights.
Generation Next
There are 2.2 billion children in the world today, 618,227 of them under the age of five. According to the recent UNICEF The State of the World's Children 2005 report, more than one billion children worldwide – every second child – lives in poverty, in countries torn apart by armed conflicts or in communities that are ravaged by the AIDS.
With this in mind, One World had selected a collection of emotionally powerful documentaries that brought highly disturbing testimonies about the plight of millions of children worldwide.
Docs for Kids
Last year, One World included a collection of shorter documentaries aimed at the pupils of the primary schools up to 13 for the first time. These pilot screenings in 2004 proved that there is a great potential to include a larger number of primary schools in the project. In 2005, the Docs for Kids program included seven films. These films focused on poverty and child labor with Living Rights – Roy and Arif Hossein - ETV Dhaka; asylum-seekers with Nima; tolerance and accepting otherness with That´s A Family! and Jamila; and dealing with illness or handicap with "If Only I Had Glasses and Unexpected Blow – Jolieke. Films in this section were screened as a part of the festival's educational program.
Choice of Les Films d´Ici
Following twenty years of existence, the French production company Les Films d´Ici now ranks among the most successful players in the field of documentary. Its co-founder Serge Lalou had selected six films from Films d´Ici's rich collection. Among others, the selection included Every Little Thing, a beautifully made documentary by Nicolas Philibert and A House in Prague, directed by Stan Neumann, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker of Czech origin.
One World on-line
How can somebody view any of the documentary films from the One World Festival when they are not from one of the cities where the festival is taking place or are unable to go to the cinema? In cooperation with the web portal live.atlas.cz a part of this year's program of the One World Festival was for the first time offered to those interested on the internet. Over the course of the festival it was possible to view these films on-line: Eshq, God´s Stone Quarry, Love Thy Neighbors..., Mardi Gras: Made in China, and Seoul Train.
The Essential and the Non-essential: a Dialogue between British, Czech and German directors
During this open seminar which took place on April 29th and 30th at the Minor Theatre, six directors from the Czech Republic, Germany and Great Britain will attempt to illustrate general questions of the documentary genre in contemporary Europe through examples from their own productions. The seminar aimed at sparking a debate about ways in which documentary films can communicate messages in foreign countries and how the audience abroad reacts to documentary films. Traditions of documentary making in the respective countries were addressed during the seminar, examining strong and weak points, and asking how documentary productions from these countries can enrich each other. The seminar was moderated by Sirkka Moeller (UK) - the festival programmer of the International Documentary Film Festival in Sheffield, Claas Danielsen (Germany) - director of the Leipzig International Documentary Film Festival, and Marek Hovorka (Czech Republic) – director of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.
The Visegrad Award
In order to raise the visibility of documentaries from the region, One World in cooperation with its partners in Poland (The Cracow Film Festival), Hungary (Hungarian Filmweek) and Slovakia (One World Bratislava) had initiated the establishment of the Visegrad Award. National juries established by each of above mentioned festivals chose one recently released documentary from their country (made since January 2004), and each winner was awarded 1,000 EURO. Filmmakers would be obliged to use money to translate and / or subtitle their films into English. The Visegrad Award was supported by the International Visegrad Fund.
The first Visegrad Award was given at the 44th Cracow Film Festival to the Polish filmmaker Piotr Szczepański for the film Generacja SKOD. At the last edition of the Hungarian Filmweek, that took place from February 2-8, the next Visegrad Award was given to a Hungarian filmmaker Dezső Zsigmond for the film Snail Fortress. Winners of the Czech and Slovak Visegrad Awards were announced at the 7th edition of the One World festival.
In addition to the Visegrad Award, One World has established a database and video library (www.visegrad-doc.cz) of major documentaries produced in Central European countries after 1989.
The Slovak winner was Love Thy Neighbour by Dušan Hudec. The Czech winner was God's Stone Quarry by Břetislav Rychlík.
HIV / AIDS: Global Challenge, Global Responsibility
With an estimated 8,000 people lost each day to the illness, AIDS represents an international crisis of staggering proportions. Today, HIV/AIDS is the fourth largest killer in the world and it is the greatest cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS reaches into every corner of society, affecting parents, children and youth, teachers and health workers, rich and poor. Globally, the number of those infected is now more than 42 million, and by the end of the decade it will have grown by another 45 million. Half of the people living with HIV/AIDS are women, and more than half are under the age of 24. There are 14 million children around the world who have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest hit region in the world, but recent UN reports have shown that HIV is spreading fastest in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, where the number of people infected almost tripled between 1999 and 2002.
Having all this in mind, One World decided to dedicate a special thematic section to the AIDS related issues. Selected films Pandemic: Facing AIDS, Dr. Nagesh and Orphans of Nkandla were aimed at providing a clear understanding of the HIV as a global challenge, which asks for global responsibility. Many more AIDS-related films were available at the festival videoteque.
From May 2nd to May 3rd One World hosted a meeting of HIV / AIDS related campaigners from EU countries, South Africa and Eastern Europe. Participants of the meeting spent two days together to share experiences and to discuss various successful strategies and the best practices they had applied so far.
Exhibition on AIDS
Exhibition on AIDS took place from April 28th to May 8th at Langhans Gallery. The main part of the exhibition, two photo collections, one by acclaimed Czech photographer Jan Šíbik from Reflex magazine, an the other by a prominent Dutch photographer Geert van Kesteren, were shown the devastating effect of the AIDS epidemic on the lives of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine.
Human Rights Film Network
One World was again the meeting place of members of the Human Rights Film Network. HRFN aims to promote human rights films through festivals, broadcasting, educational use and concerted efforts towards communication and more. HRFN seeks to promote human rights film festivals and assist established and emerging festivals in securing a sound and independent basis. HRFN works to influence a conducive international supportive environment for filmmakers focusing on human rights, in particular those whose lives are at risk, or who are repressed by censorship.
People in Need - Czech TV Foundation Sokolska 18, 120 00 Praha 2, Czech Republic Tel. +420 226 200 434, mail@oneworld.cz.