YBCA present Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

In collaboration with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, we present a selection of powerful documentaries. Human Rights Watch's International Film Festival has become a leading venue for distinguished fiction and documentary films with distinctive human rights themes. The works help to put a human face on threats to individual freedom and dignity, and celebrate the power of the human spirit and intellect to prevail.

Total Denial
by Milena Kaneva (2006, 65 min, Beta)
Fri, Mar 2, 7:30 pm
This is the inspiring story of villagers from the jungles of Burma whose quest for justice eventually leads them to bring suit in a US court against two oil giants for human rights abuse. For five years producer/director Milena Kaneva collected accounts from Burmese villagers of forced labor, relocation of villages, rape and murder associated with construction of the Yadana pipeline, resulting in a landmark lawsuit.

Camden 28
by Anthony Giacchino (2006, 82 min, Beta)
Thu, Mar 8, 7 pm
How far would you go to stop a war? In 1971, twenty-eight men and women in Camden, New Jersey, carried out a powerful act of civil disobedience against United States involvement in the Vietnam War. One of their most dramatic tactics was breaking into draft board offices to destroy government records that identified young men available for military service. Thirty-five years later, key participants openly discuss the tremendous personal costs of their actions.

KZ
by Rex Bloomstein (2005, 88 min, Beta)
Thu, Mar 8, 8:45 pm
On the banks of the river Danube lies the picturesque town of Mauthausen, which attracts busloads of tourists and schoolchildren every day. But this is also a place where thousands of people from over thirty nations were tortured and murdered. It is the site of the former KZ—in German short for concentration camp.

Switch Off
by Manel Mayol (2005, 87 min, Beta)
Thu, Mar 15, 7 pm
The Pehuenche-Mapuche people live above the Bíobío River, in Ralco valley, Chile. In 2004, Spain's largest hydroelectric company constructed the world’s third largest dam. This dam flooded the valley and forced whole villages to higher ground. Despite protections for indigenous people enshrined in the Chilean constitution, the government has not enforced their rights against the wealthy Spanish multinational. Protestors have found themselves arrested under Pinochet’s anti-terrorist laws, facing anonymous witnesses whose identities are concealed from even the court.

Rain in a Dry Land
by Anne Makepeace (2006, 83 min, Beta)
Thu, Mar 15, 8:45 pm
In 2004, thirteen thousand Somali Bantu refugees realized their dream of coming to America. They are now living in fifty cities across the country, becoming the largest African group from a single community to settle in the United States at one time. The film chronicles two years in the lives of two extended Somali Bantu families as they leave behind a 200-year legacy of oppression in Africa.

Rosita
by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater (2005, 55 min, Beta)
Thu, Mar 22, 7 & 8:45 pm
In 2003, news spreads throughout Central America that a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl has become pregnant as the result of a rape. Rosarita is the only child of illiterate campesinos working in Costa Rica as coffee pickers at the time of the assault. Fearing for their daughter's life and mental health, her parents are determined to obtain an (illegal) abortion for their child. Despite the odds, Rosa's parents move forward only to be forced into battle with two governments, the medical establishment and the Catholic Church.