The University of Hawaii at Hilo will host this year’s Human Rights Watch (HRW) Traveling Film Festival on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 17-18, in the University Classroom Building (UCB) Room 127. Admission is free.
The University of Hawaii at Hilo will host this year’s Human Rights Watch (HRW) Traveling Film Festival on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 17-18, in the University Classroom Building (UCB) Room 127. Admission is free.
The festival features “Camp 14: Total Control Zone” on Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. “Camp 14” is a portrait of a young man who grew up imprisoned by dehumanizing violence yet still found the will to escape. Born inside a North Korean prison camp as the child of political prisoners, Shin Dong-Huyk was raised in a world where all he knew was punishment, torture and abuse.
Two films will be featured on Oct. 18.
“Alias Ruby Blade: A Story of Love and Revolution” will be shown at 3:30 p.m. It is a love story of human rights activist Kirsty Sword and political prisoner Xanana Gusmao from Timor-Leste. Once an aspiring documentary filmmaker, Sword instead became a revolutionary, working in Jakarta for the Timorese resistance.
“Rafea: Solar Mama” begins at 5 p.m. This is a film about women’s empowerment, showing how an illiterate Bedouin woman from a poverty-stricken community in the Jordanian desert learns to be a solar energy engineer at India’s Barefoot College.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. Its film festival bears witness to human rights violations and creates a forum to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference.
In selecting films for the festival, Human Rights Watch concentrates equally on artistic merit and human rights content. The festival encourages filmmakers around the world to address human rights subject matter in their work and presents films from both new and established international filmmakers. The film festival is organized by the UH Hilo International Student Services and Intercultural Education program. For more information, visit http://hilo.hawaii.edu/studentaffairs/international, or call 974-7313.