Human Rights Film Festival

Although we have talked about the Human Rights Film Festival before, we have never written a post about it. Of course, we also had only gone to see two movies (Shana only one) in all of the previous years. Often, this is due to the fact that we forget it is coming, and because it generally has subpar marketing. This year, however, we read about it in the newspaper, and were able to review the movies that were offered. There were three that we particularly wanted to see, but one was by invitation only and we were not invited. So, we saw two.

The first was a French movie called Debout Les Femmes, which could really have been produced in any country as it focused on the low pay and precarious lives of in-home carers who take care of the elderly and disabled (almost all of whom are women), among other low paying jobs. The movie did an excellent job of showing how important this work is by going along with a number of carers into their clients' homes. Related interviews talk about how little they are paid, how unprotected they are, and how many of them need to have other jobs to make ends meet.

The driving force behind the movie was an attempt by the director to introduce changes to the French budget to improve the lives of these women. A late scene shows each of these changes being rejected by parliament by huge margins. After watching the intervies of these women for over an hour, it is a devestating scene. The movie is well worth seeing if you have a chance.

The second movie we saw was called Fadia's Tree. Directed by a British visual artist in her first documentary, this movie describes the director's friendship with a Palestinian women who lives in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Over the course of fifteen years, the director does what her friend cannot -- goes to the site of her family's village in Israel to find a mulberry tree that sat accross from her grandfather's house prior to 1948. 

The film moved quite slowly, although I felt that was perhaps intentional to reflect life in a refugee camp where, as Fadia says, everyday is the same unless someone "dies unexpectedly." However, it is very effective in telling what might seem like a simple story using the birds that migrate through the middle east every spring and fall -- the concept of the birds' freedom to cross boundaries is contrasted with the inability of Fadia to do the same. The fairly somber tone of the movie is broken up by scenes of the children in the kindergarten where Fadia works.

Although we did not like this film as much as Debout Les Femmes, it was an interesting take on a contentious subject.

We know that our output of blog posts has been limited recently, but our self-imposed break from traveling is nearing its end, so expect a more normal output of posts coming soon.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana