Below, on this page:
Fall 2009 Film Series or download as a word document
Fall 2009 Speakers' series or download as a word document
For a calendar of human rights events at Columbia, please visit the Institute for the Study of Human Rights' Calendar.
Film series
October 13th: Tarnation, the movie (in the framework of Columbia University’s Queer Awareness Month). Followed by a Q and A session with the movie’s director, Jonathan Caouette.
Part documentary, part narrative fiction, part home movie, and part acid trip. A psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture, and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family travesty. The story begins in 2003 when Jonathan learns that his schizophrenic mother, Renee, has overdosed on her lithium medication. He is catapulted back into his real and horrifying family legacy of rape, abandonment, promiscuity, drug addiction, child abuse, and psychosis. As he grows up on camera, he finds the escapist balm of musical theater and B horror flicks and reconnects to life through a queer chosen family. Then a look into the future shows Jonathan as he confronts the symbiotic and almost unbearable love he shares with his beautiful and tragically damaged mother.
(From: http://www.inbaseline.com/project.aspx?project_id=169027).
October 27th: Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary on Abu Ghraib. Followed by a discussion with either the director of the film or an expert on the torture discussion (to be confirmed).
Master filmmaker Errol Morris turns his keen eye to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in this intense and provocative documentary. Using interviews with the soldiers that appeared in the now infamous torture photos, Morris strings their stories together with vivid reenactments and striking digital technology for a wrenching look at the events at the prison. With his trademark straight-into-the-lens interview style, it is chilling to see the familiar faces of Lynndie England and Sabrina Harmon as they try to articulate their experiences. The lawlessness and confusion in the prison quickly become evident, and as their stories unfold, the film slowly strips away the many puzzling questions that surround the incidents, exposing a much larger truth about corruption within the US military, corruption that appears to reach far beyond the handful of soldiers that took the fall for the scandal. Morris's reenactments are extremely vivid, and often shot in a beautifully cinematic style. While these techniques make for riveting filmmaking, they are sometimes considered controversial by documentary purists, and some might criticize his detailed recreations of such deeply disturbing events. However, others might deem the reenactments necessary to really bringing home the reality of what happened. Regardless of his methods, Morris does a masterly job of untangling such a complex, twisted story. He shines a glaring light on one of America's most shameful moments and, more importantly, exposes how little we truly know about our military's methods.
(From: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/standard_operating_procedure/)
November 17th: La Sierra documentary on paramilitary groups in Medellín, Colombia (in the framework of Columbia University’s Latino/a Heritage Month). Followed by a discussion with either one of the directors of the film or with an expert on Colombian paramilitary groups (to be confirmed).
The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize for best documetnary at the 2005 Miami International Film Festival, also won the Documentary Feature Award at the 2004 IFP Market in New York (fine cut), and received the Honorable Mention in the documentary competition at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. La Sierra is also an official selection at the 2005 South by Southwest Film Festival and the 2005 HOT DOCS International Documentary Festival. LA SIERRA, which in production saw a lead participant murdered and the filmmakers shot at by snipers, is an intimate, meditative exploration of violence, youth, and community. A small neighborhood in Medellin, Colombia, La Sierra is ruled by a group of young men, mostly teenagers, affiliated with Colombia’s illegal paramilitary armies. Over the course of a year, the documentary follows the lives of three young people (two of them paramilitaries themselves) and
their experiences of war, death, and love.
(From: http://www.lasierrafilm.com/presskit/PressKit.pdf)
December 8th: Salvador Allende, the movie. Followed by a discussion with either the director of the film or an expert on the South Cone’s authoritarian regimes (to be confirmed).
“Salvador Allende” is the Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán’s plaintive look back at the rise and violent fall of the world’s first democratically elected Marxist president. Mr. Guzmán, who went into exile after the Sept. 11, 1973, coup that led to Allende’s death, has returned to the country of his birth with a camera in hand and a storehouse of passionate memories. …In the movie’s eloquent opener Mr. Guzmán speaks in voice-over while he rifles through a battered wallet. This, he explains, is almost all that remains of Allende. In the scenes that follow, the documentarian restlessly circles back to Allende, envisioning him as a structuring absence that hovers over the country like a ghost, shaping even its troubling silence about the past. For Mr. Guzmán the present, which he shoots in serviceable color with some nice detail, holds little evident appeal. What gives the movie a pulse, enlivening both it and his actual voice, are the black-and-white archival images of cheering workers and youth on the march, visuals that melt into a blur of placards, fists and smiles, placards, fists and smiles. (The New York Times, September 5, 2007)
Speakers’ series
October 20th: Defending gays’ rights: international advocacy of LGBT rights (in the framework of Columbia University’s Queer Awareness Month). With the participation of Columbia University’s Human Rights advocates (to be confirmed).
For the list of this year’s Human Rights Advocates, see: http://hrcolumbia.org/hrap/participants.htm.
November 10th: “Parapolitics”: the infiltration of right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombian high politics, a talk by Claudia López (confirmed) (in the framework of Columbia University’s Latino/a Heritage Month).
Claudia Lopez is a Political Researcher at the New Rainbow Corporation and the Civil Society Electoral Mission. She is also a Columnist of El Tiempo newspaper. She is currently a Yale University World Fellow.
Lopez is one of the most respected Colombian political analysts for having exposed the infiltration of paramilitary death squads at some of the highest levels of Colombia's political system. Her research on the infiltration of paramilitary groups in the Colombian Congress triggered a national scandal known as "parapolitics" which led to the legal investigation of more than a third of all members of Congress. She subsequently helped found the Electoral Observatory Mission, a coalition of NGOs and journalists that monitors political processes in Colombia, and also currently works for the New Rainbow Foundation as an analyst of illegal groups and armed conflict. Her courageous dedication to strengthening human rights and the rule of law makes her one of the most well-known contributors to democratic development in Colombia today.
December 1st: The role of civil organizations in human rights protection. With the participation of Columbia University’s Human Rights advocates (to be confirmed)
For the list of this year’s Human Rights Advocates, see: http://hrcolumbia.org/hrap/participants.htm.