HRAFF Review

Mohamed Nasheed Q&A at festival finale.

Well that was my first Human Rights Arts and Film Festival and I've learned something. I love documentaries. I know, you're meant to love them the way you're meant to love going out and seeing live music when it can be one of the most humdrum nights out imaginable. But I've just seen four documentaries that have to varying degrees delighted me because they were good at being documentaries, not just films about things that interest me.

What do I mean by that?

Well, here's a contrast to start with. There were two doccos at the 2005 MIFF on the same subject street that left me hot and cold respectively: Punk: Attitude and Kill Yr Idols. The first was a powerhouse of jammed archive footage and great talking heads. The second was a wishy washy germ of an idea that festered rather than grew. I disagreed with a major premise of the first (the annoying crap of punk starting in America and getting exported to the UK: don't care about the timeline, find me the influence of Marquee Moon on Never Mind the Bollocks) but it was made to a perfect fit for its audiences and formed a good welcome to anyone on the outer. Kill Yr Idols, on the other hand, began as a celebration of New York's No wave scene of the late 70s and early 80s and provided a lot of information I only vaguely knew before. Then it went on to ridicule the current crop of New York bands as pale imitations. One the one hand it was very pleasant for me to see these new rockists take a hit: the new breed are happy to accept the mantle of the No Wave tradition but their "new" music sounds like old Top 40. On the other hand I was frustrated that it went from fawning on the old guard to a kind of daddy-pleasing ridicule of the new. I, too, laughed at Karen O. coming across as having approximately 2.5 brain cells but the better angles of my grinder bade me take that with a pinch of the sharp stuff. Kill Yr Idols can't make its case because it's too busy working out how to declare its great fat hammy fist. Punk: Attitude annoys me with its too many stretches and special pleas for me to regard it as a history but as a celebration it's tops. It's also a better documentary, however much I might bicker with its premises.

I only saw four of the eighteen full length documentaries on show at HRAFF but I picked four good 'uns. You can read my reviews below but the upshot is that I got something out of every one and was touched by some expert filmmaking that went from the glassy video-looking low means to the full force of major budgeted beef. The irrelevance of conventional production values stretches, for me, to fiction cinema and there my sole criterion for good vs bad cinema applies as it does with doccos: is there truth in it?

By truth I don't mean things that I hold absolute but moments on screen where all the other stuff, the earnestness, the comedy, the drama and the noise wash away and the central nerves of a film are visible. This happens a lot and most comfortably with fiction as we are happily surprised to find an individual's conviction laid bare. We probably rejoice in it less in a docco because the idea that documentaries should just report is so ingrained in us. But a documentary is just as potentially wonderful when it's an essay, an argument, rather than a slide show of events, people and places.

Planet of Snail delighted with its approach=equals subject poetics. An African Election satisfied with its meaty no nonsense hard journalism. Beer is Cheaper than Therapy and The Island President wore their hearts on their sleeves but didn't forget the facts 'n' figures. I saw all of this in one week and it felt nourishing. Which leads me to my main thought on the festival overall.

Not all the films presented were documentaries but the festival, angenda-ed by nature, has the opportunity to be this city's unofficial festival of the documentary. Unofficially, of course: if they were to try and sell it as a week of doccos they'd have an even tougher fight for attention in this festival-oversupplied city. But as the time of year when the doccos come out, from the beautiful to the challengingly ugly, the politicising and the soberly informative, that's what would drag me back. I don't suggest they lose the title that defines them but maybe just a little push towards donning a curatorial mantle, the convergence of purposes could be clarified to a bright and shining ticket sales chart. I'd bloody go.

HRAFF Review: THE ISLAND PRESIDENT

The Maldives, 2000 islands and 3000 years of human history, are being swallowed by the sea. The language-defyingly beautiful archipeligo is the resort of the elite among the haves, the holiday destination of the .01 %, the choice vacation for the drivers of the forces that push the ocean levels up in the court of King Caractacus and the Islands, like the tourists, are just passing by.


From thirty years of political stability (ie repressive dictatorship) came the bloodless coup of Mohamed Nasheed who reversed the oppression (that victimised him among many others) and began a campaign of climate change awareness, calling for political unity in a land which wasn't going to be a land much longer if political disunity was allowed to run wild. It's not just that the Maldives are more easily seen as the victims of climate change because they are islands, it's that, as low set islands, they are potentially the first country in the world to drown en masse. The Maldives sport the world's lowest highest point at 2.4 metres. You could cartwheel over that. Quite literally, it's sink or swim time. Well, there is another way...

Nasheed has been campaigning for reductions in carbon emissions since before his presidency. The Island President is his story but it is also the story of his drive to Copenhagen 2009 to gatecrash the big backslap with a personal plea to the devastators, or a well aimed ging stone in the eye of Goliath. If he can't get a commitment for the big emitters to calm it down to 350 ppm (parts per million) there might be no reversal of the damage possible (even if there isn't a stabilisation from compliance). In other words, first we take the Maldives and then Manhattan (where a lot of its tourists come from, island to island).

This film that makes a plea for unity is itself made from it; Nasheed's struggle is indistinguishable from The Maldives' and by extension the world's. If the spectrum of what a documentary can be goes from plain reportage to propaganda, it must be said that The Island President is firmly in the latter half. But this, too, presents a document, an argument for itself. As such it becomes something closer to primary historical source where a more even handed approach would weaken the signal. It's only dangerous if you expect your culture to do your thinking for you. If you apply the critical filter to this that you must to your own life events then you should find it invigorating.

Invigorating it is because Nasheed himself compels attention. He's a gift to a documentarian: good looking, driven, unignorably intelligent with an understated cheeky archness to his humour that somehow continually surprises. We have no trouble at all travelling with him from his repression as a political prisoner to tireless underdog to president to the humbler of giants because he gives us so much centre screen. Even his fellow players come in like injections of nutritious information on Nasheed's life and career, political history and climate science. And then there are the Maldives themselves. Phew!

Phew! Aerial shots of these islands set in the stippled jade sea move at a glacial pace but never seem long enough. Closer shots of that gem coloured water slinking up along the porches and roads like the most beautiful seamonster on earth and the great white explosions of the tide against rocks only just behind kids playing cricket bring this home ... home. In the first of his many funny assertions, Nasheed describes the Maldives as a cross between paradise and paradise. That's what's at stake. This beauty that almost makes you feel like a voyeur to gaze at is about to vanish forever. The ache of this, the sheer bloody ache of it is what makes this resolutely old fashioned documentary so strong. When you start to enjoy the manipulation you are experiencing, at least until it's over, you are in the presence of cinema. No, CINEMA.

If you see this film, don't forget your critical faculties (I don't mean the sad bullshit of climate skepticism, I mean the criticism that adds perspective). If you do, you'll be googling and wiki-ing until you know more. Documentary mission accomplished.

HRAFF Review: AN AFRICAN ELECTION

Ghana, 2008. It's election time again? So what? Well, what was an ancient empire subjugated by Europe in the grab for Africa, decolonised late in 1957 and subjugated to political bloodshed and anger for decades until the coup of Jerry Rawlings left it under a dictatorship that suspended the constitution and outlawed political parties. Once party politics were allowed again in the 1990s, Rawlings ruled it for his two permitted terms and then stood back to enjoy the power without responsibility of a political grey eminence. His old party The National Democratic Congress has never left the field and remains one of the two major parties in the country. The other is The National Patriotic Party. Early on in the piece we are told that there is effectively no political difference between these parties. If either wins you get the same.

Now if you started wondering what your Facebook timeline looked like while reading the above join the club. I have some interest in politics but the process of it tends to make my eyes water. The team behind An African Election know this about me and most of the rest of you. But they can't just make a movie highlighting the dramatic aspects and squeezing it into quasi-fiction because they must also serve their subject matter and provide a pithy report on its events. The way this is done is quite conventional but its conventional documentary making with added concentrate.

First, by a few necessary black and white title cards we learn the salient facts of the case as it progesses (you don't even need to know where Ghana is to watch this film). Second, the key figures of the election, including the "retired" Jerry Rawlings are shown up close and more personally than you'd always want. Third, the commentary comes from media representatives in to-camera interviews which come in easily digestible portions. Last, the most affected group in the country are almost always on screen, the Ghanian people are so claustrophobically present in this film you might think the streets of Accra and everywhere else in the country are so full of animated bodies that there is no possibility of traffic. One warm spot in the film involves Rawlings in his car trying to explain a point of local and international politics and growing so excited about it that it takes him minutes to realise that his car has been stopped by a crowd of his adoring public who ogle him through the windows with huge smiles.

I'm not going to relate the progress of the election as told by this film as it does such a good job of drawing its audiences into its moment and offering a sample of the weight of the events as they unfold but I will say that never have I known a film about a political occasion to leave me with such an organic appreciation of what it was showing me. As far as political campaign documentaries go I'd happily put it up there with The War Room,   the extraordinary film of Bill Clinton's '92 campaign. This one, however, takes us further than the powerbrokers who are, after all, still at the mercy of the crowds around the ballot boxes.

The ballot boxes here are the humble but hot centre of the film. They are surrounded by standover men and gangs that need police in riot gear and even, in one case the presence of a tank to keep things nice. The sound of discharging weapons is a shock initially but soon becomes part of the overall cacophony. They might take their dictatorships seriously in the east coast nations of Africa but when they are given it they will meet the democratic process with a vicegrip. If you are like me and dread the queues at the polling places on election day you should see this film. I needed to.

HRAFF Review: BEER IS CHEAPER THAN THERAPY

Late night small town. A train howls and chugs across the screen as a series of titles inform us that this town, attached to a major U.S. military base has a roll call of social malaise and tragedy that fiction would blush to attempt. Shootings, suicides, depression .... everybody in? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder lives here. And then we see that for the past few minutes while we've been reading, that we've been staring at a stressful situation: a car idles at the railcrossing as the train keeps going past, effectively endless.

This is a documentary about a particularly cruel consequence of military service in war zones. Apart from a few snippets of video and snapshots the scene is entirely in Killeen, Texas, the town attached to Fort Hood an army base set up during the second world war. The fort and town have been a strange concatenation of military and civilian life ever since. Almost every shot of a local business includes an unmissable notice of support for the soldiers. The effect of this is odd, more like a town of collaborators professing loyalty to an occupying force than somewhere that's had over half a century to get used to the idea that most of it is made up of soldiers. It's eerie.

That eeriness never quite leaves the proceedings here as we hear the testimony of a number of soldiers who, whether active or retired from service, are still in this place like ghosts wandering in an earthly limbo. The accounts are not from their deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan but their experiences back home, or rather, in Killeen. We are confronted with a series of often marrow-freezing accounts of how these men have coped with life beyond the unimaginable stress of their short careers. One NCO owns that he has just come out of a mental hospital where he was surrounded by other ex-soldiers on suicide watch. He says he was the only one there who didn't want to kill himself but others, anyone he found who looked happy. He recalls this with an unblinking plainness that is both a tribute to his training and an accusation of it. And there's the rub...

It's not an elephant in the room because its presence neither surprises nor upsets but the central nerve winding through this film is masculinity. Not the military idea of masculinity but MASCULINITY pure and simple. It is there in the first sequence following the opening titles wherein a group of young men are showing off their big lowrider cars and souped-up utes which constantly growl like the spirit of manhood made animal. Many of them have their bonnets open which stand at rigid slants like a parade of hard ons. One young soldier in his civvies talks of his imminent deployment to Afghanistan with an infectious joy. It's easy to forget he's about to go to a situation that might squeeze out his staring living ghost within months. Another thread throughout depicts teenage soldiers at a tattoo parlour giggling about their choices of design. All of these are violent and challenging and the youths sumbit to the needle often squeezing a rubber hotdog shaped prop to cope with the pain that is stretching their acne-tightened faces into costant winces.

But don't get me or this film wrong. It is ultimately about one strand of masculinity pursued to its very end point but at no time does it invite us to judge these men with their haunted eyes and burden of life-sucking shock. It is as futile to blame the military or masculinity itself as it is to imagine the world without warfare or the readiness for it. It is, however, important to acknowledge its effects and to know that its victims include those who return from it victorious and rewarded. What might be wrong is the rigidity of the machine to cope with changing circumstances and allow its units (at one stage identified officially as "products" by one ex-soldier) the same care after their damage as was given in the preparation for it. The final sequence of the film offers some promise as a group of ex soldiers stage a protest about the continued deployment of exhausted men. The scene of newly animated sufferers of PTSD running through the morning traffic with the energy of schoolkids, handing out fliers to uniformed men in cars on their way to duty.

A few more shots of the town and then some more of those low riders and for once, to me, the sight of a classic American gas guzzler modified to lift and fall and even allow a single wheel to rise from the ground like a quizzical eyebrow does not strike me as ridiculous. The out of uniform soldier at the wheel is delighting his kids with the antics. A boy in the back seat, his mouth wide open with joy, takes in the thrill of being in all that hardware doing all that cool stuff.

HRAFF picks

To whom it may concern...

I've made my picks for the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival screenings. All screenings at ACMI

Beer is Cheaper Than Therapy: tonight 6.30 pm

Planet of Snail: Wednesday 9.00 pm

An African Election: Saturday 3.00 pm

The Island President: Sunday 6.30 pm

Let come who will, my friends, my friends.

PJ

Check the interview I did with one of the festival's programmers.

Interview: HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS AND FILM FESTIVAL

The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival is upon us again. I spoke to my friend Tyson Namow who is one of the programmers of the film section of the festival about a few of the issues that occured to me after seeing the teaser program published on the website in March.

On that, I've been asked to point out that this interview was conducted in March, weeks before the full program was published. For the sake of clarity, the festival program does NOT include the documentary To Hell and Back again (I don't believe either of us suggested that it would but I'm happy to comply with this request).

P = Me (Peter Jetnikoff)

T = He (Tyson Namow)

P:  Could you tell us about your background such as it’s relevant to your being involved in the festival? What is your role?

T:I’m completing a PhD in cinema studies at Latrobe University.  I’ve also been teaching in the areas of cinema and media for a number of years at institutions including RMIT and the University of South Australia. And I also coordinate a film course for the Melbourne Free University. So it made sense to me to do some feature film programming for the Festival, given my vocational interests and my cultural interests. I’m also just keen to support volunteer-based organisations and up and coming festivals and events.

I was initially hired so I could give a fairly strong critical historical and aesthetic perspective on cinema. I wasn't coming from a particular human rights background or any particular political background to do the programming. So I think that’s actually good in terms of rounding off the programming team. Because you’re sometimes going to get people who come from more of an activist background or people who have done human rights work before, who may not have been much involved in cinema.

P:  Is that the case in the group of people who do the selection? Do they come from diverse backgrounds, not necessarily film-related? It is, of course an arts festival, not just a film festival.

T:  That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, there is a variety of backgrounds, some are from the festival administration side of things, some are film makers, some are film academics, such as myself, and then others will be coming from more human rights contexts to do with law, NGOs, things like that.
 

P:  Ok. I recently saw the documentary To Hell and Back Again, about an American soldier wounded in Afghanistan, and was moved by the portrayal of the man despite my opposition to the war. The film made impressive use of the approach of fiction cinema. With documentaries moving away from the always dubious notion of pure record, does a problem arise from choosing a film on its merits as cinema over those of it as a political statement?

T:  Yeah this is actually a really good question and it’s something I want to address at a conference that’s coming up at the end of the year in Canberra. Because it is very difficult, what some are talking about now, there’s this movement called docu-fictions which are not really mockumentaries or docu-dramas, they’re kind of something in between. They employ fictional techniques, unashamedly, to the point of wanting you to receive a documentary as a fiction film. Some filmmakers are taking it that far. It does raise some questions about how we approach the question of representing political issues, social justice issues, and what  the role of HRAFF is in educating the public and to what extent we are about 'issue' films.

On one hand, we’re raising public awareness about particular events and injustices occurring in the world. On the other hand, I think there is also a push to  be more of a pure cinema festival interested in questions about what it means to document the world, what is happening to the documentary genre, what are the ethics of filmmaking practice, and those sorts of things. I think both of these things are happening for HRAFF but HRAFF hasn’t quite worked out how to deal with them.

P:  Ok.

T:  To some extent I think there’s an ongoing tension and struggle regarding what is the primary aim and focus of the festival. I, personally, want to push legitimate questions about how things are represented, how cinema does or doesn’t do a good job in terms of bringing up issues of what’s happening around the world and I think there’s space for that and the film you referred to is clearly as much about representation itself and about a cultural understanding of war and a whole range of things.

So I’ve certainly been advocating a place for that. I also understand the criticism from some of the other programmers, or some of the other people within the festival, who have concerns that this might detract from our core, social issue raising agenda.  Does an interest in aesthetics and theory for its own sake threaten to obscure some really core emotional elements to a particular political idea?  I don't think it has to but I also certainly believe that we should be first and foremost about politicising the audience through film. It’s a difficult one so I think probably the answer is that, yes, it is a problem and that there is a tension there.

P:  With To Hell and Back Again because it does have those fictive elements in it it’s kind of spoonful of sugar isn’t it? Helps the medicine go down. If this is the case, if this kind of cinema is on the rise, a documentary that makes it easy to watch a documentary by behaving like a fiction film, is its legitimacy compromised? If that’s what a documentary is going to become -- however briefly if it’s a fad or if, like the Blair Witch Project effect, it’s going to really take over documentary filmmaking, what are you left with?

T: (laughs) Yeah, well of course in the history of documentary many would argue that documentaries would always have hybrid elements right back to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North where there’s clearly stylisation, scripted moments and so on. Maybe what’s happening now is a cluster of films which aren’t fitting into a kind of mockumentary or docudrama format but doing something else. I mean they are more or less documentaries but they’re entering a very interesting and maybe paradoxical space with their use of fictional techniques and hyper-stylisation. Basically there’s the idea that reality is always going to contain elements of fiction.

But clearly at the same time they are not saying that documentary doesn’t do something special.  Because they still talk about themselves as documentary films and the filmmakers still like this idea that there is still something authentic happening in terms of their film’s relationship to the subject. There’s still something that documentary does which fiction can’t.

Anyway I think it’s quite a paradoxical space. I think that’s one of the concerns that people are going to have to deal with. I think this is what caused some concern and disquiet among some of the fellow programmers: they felt that they were going into such an ambiguous space when watching these films. I think it’s the reception of it: the whole thing of “how am I meant to read this?” and “I’m not given clear signposts or enough signposts to feel comfortable about where the filmmaker is coming from” and “how am I meant to understand this act of war or this act of injustice?”

I think it’s going to be very interesting to see how spectators negotiate that sort of space. That’s very pertinent to how we program in the future . Maybe we really need to think about going, ok, maybe partly it’s about educating audiences, presenting the films in ways that help them through that, to give them context to what they’re about to see. But also, I think, maybe in a liberal society people who enter a theatre need to take some risks and need to think for themselves.

P:  It strikes me that it’s a problem that’s not going to go away and one never to be resolved. Either way, given that HRAFF has a particular focus that distinguishes it from universalist festivals like MIFF or alternative ones like MUFF, or the various ethnically-based ones. There is a likely perception of a string of human rights related films being a propaganda-fest. There’s a danger, it strikes me, that potential audiences might simply think they’re in for a lot of militant politics. Seems like quite a fight from the word go.


T: I think you’re right, I think that “human rights” is such a loaded term and that’s part of the problem. For me, personally,  I was never really sure it was the best title to have but you’ve got to work with what you got. Primarily, it’s a political film festival, it’s the politics of art and culture, and human rights is a big part of that. So yeah, I think you’re right, it’s a very loaded term. There’s plenty on the left who critique human rights as a discourse. And there are others in the community who are going to think it’s just going to be the latest “propaganda films” or an OXFAM educational film or something like that. So I think it’s really important that we convey the fact that that’s not what it’s about at all. And having people from my background  in there is precisely to get these much more compelling films that wouldn’t neatly fall under some sort of propagandist or educational umbrella. The film you mentioned earlier, To Hell and Back Again, is far removed from what probably a lot of people would associate with a human rights festival. And I think that becomes interesting when you do raise these questions about aesthetics and spectatorship which opens up a human rights festival to a whole range of agendas and issues which go well beyond how it can be tainted in terms of some of the things you’ve mentioned.

P:  Then your problem is to get back to grass roots and get people along who’ll get into the things to begin with. There might well be an elastic perception of human rights as a concept . But you must, of course, start somewhere.

T: Yes (laughs)

P:  Reading the descriptions of the films described in the teaser in early March, I was immediately intrigued but then concerned. It's become almost futile to describe something as worthy without irony. Can this act as a barrier to HRAFF's potential audience when the target audience must include those beyond the converted?

T:  Yeah, that’s a very good question. I think it’s an ongoing thing about how you promote films. One thing is purely technical, how do you plug into social media, how do you plug into Y-Gen, and as you suggest, how do you plug into what is now second or third level irony (laughs)

P:  Where does it stop?

T:  Irony’s been round for a while (laughs). I think you’re deadly right, though. There is a hipster/twee/irony audience out there, the Wes Anderson or Miranda July kind of audience, and so you have to think about how to tap into that. It is hard though because there has to be a certain earnestness with what we do, there has to be a certain lack of play in the human rights context which may not necessarily fit the 'irony' audience. I think that’s where having those films like Hell and Back Again can come into play because you can say this is about something serious but it is also about other levels of meaning that as a spectator  you can engage with. It is about aesthetics as well. It is about questions of representation in documentary, so you can open up the human rights festival in ways that may reach those wider audiences too.

I should point out that there’s going to be light hearted stuff in there as well, more popular stuff working in different ways with different strands of audiences. Not everything is heavy. Some of the programmers will go more for the darker stuff and others lighter to create a balance.
One of the films is a kind of postmodern, soap opera from South America, called Prime Time Soap,  which is set in Brazil in the late 1970s during the last years of the authoritarian regime, but which is told in a kind of kitschy way. So there are different strands in there already.

P:  Ok,  there are a few countries or areas whose film industries seem particularly rich with politics, particularly South Korea which brings out a lot of genre films  horror films and social fables and political thriller which refer to its own years of military dictatorship (eg. Memories of Murder or  The President’s Last Bang)  and also Iran with its almost exclusively serious and confrontational films about various social ills (most recently A Separation). There’s almost no humour in the latter but they’re compelling. Compelling for two reasons: the window into another culture and insights into problems that we share. A Separation has much to do with the judicial process which is eye opening.  It’s very confrontational but they are also talking about the issues at ground level. Those films still only get marginal release but the flag is flying for Iranian cinema. To a lesser extent South Korea which more popcorn enjoyable films like the host which itself has a lot to say about the American influence on the economy and culture (it’s where the monster comes from). And really quite a lot of Korean films about revenge and “natural justice”. Interesting films because there’s nothing Western about them.

You mentioned that there is a balance struck between heavy and light. Would films like The Mother or Memories of Murder have a place, as they do examine political and social issues but are also popcorn popular in their country of origin, have a place in the festival?

T:  Yeah, definitely. There’s the cinema that is emerging from the Arab spring. The only reason we haven’t been able to program any of that is really just logistics. ACMII stole our thunder and screened some of the things we wanted, films like Microphone. We do try to tap into those areas and there are a lot of films coming out of that region.

But there is a balance, The opening film  is Under African Skies, which is about Paul Simon's Graceland record. It is directed by Joe Berlinger, who did the Metallica film, Some Kind of Monster, and also Crude. Under African Skies is pretty light and populist. It’s mostly about the recording of the album and its reception. It does tap into some of the surrounding issues about apartheid and the cultural embargos that were in force at the time. So there are those elements but it’s as much a music doco as anything else. So, those sorts of films can come through. The populist element plays a role. The entertainment value plays a role.


P:  That, I think, is important to get across. I haven’t found that message coming through so strongly but then again I haven’t seen the full program.

Let’s talk selection. What’s the approach and do the other festivals in the calendar in any way rivals for material?

T:  They can. There is a hierarchy. One of our prime questions is: has it screened nationally somewhere? We try to get the national premiere but are happy to offer the Melbourne premiere. There’s also context. If it’s sufficiently worthy and different we might well screen it along with one of the other festivals, such as one of the ethically based festivals or the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, say. We also have to deal with how the film has been distributed. That can make a difference. The producers and teams behind the films may have an international strategy and say, “well we’d like to screen it with you but we’d rather go with MIFF”.

P:  The thing that might damage your claim the most would be that, the perception that you are on the lower end of the pecking order if only because you’re new on the block.

T:  It’s true, at this stage, we are quite low.

P:  I don’t think it would necessarily work against you but for the possibility that your program might lack the variety that the others revel in.

My concern is that after all the boss hens are sated, is there a festival that does justice to the concept or has there been the perception “if only we’d have got that we could have had a coup” which might have raised the profile?

T:  Yeah I think that there are certain films that could help that but I really don’t know that those films on their own are going to do that because it’s as much about how we promote ourselves and how we screen the films. Part of what we have to do is use the pull factor, something special that we can do for them, something that even MIFF can’t do. So our task is finding that special thing, a special context that we can give the film, a way that we present it and a certain audience that we get for a screening and a certain attention that we can give it which you might not get in the MIFF context . Our task is not just to get those bigger films.  I should add too that the bigger festivals also can offer a lot of new work from auteurs which are a big draw.

P:  Are we talking the unapproachable cinegod like Godard or some more amenable auteurs who might, if you paid their way come and represent their work here.

T:  It is some of that, getting the bigger names. It’s also some of the newer filmmakers. I think we really need to plug in more effectively (and this is part of teaching audiences):  this is a new auteur, this is a new exciting filmmaker. And whether or not we can get them in person, we can at least let people know that there is a kind of urgency in being there to see their work. You pointed it out before: out of all the social media and cultural sources out there, why would someone go out on a  Thursday or Friday night to a HRAFF film when they can do so many other things or when MIFF is only one or two months away? I think there’s a need to create that sense of urgency that this is an established filmmaker and it’s not just some kid out of college who’s politically engaged and has shot something cheaply that looks like a student film. Because we’re really not looking for that we’re looking for high quality products. So, I think it’s definitely something we need to work more toward, really promoting new wave filmmakers and new wave films as well. This is what ACMII and MIFF do, they’ve obviously got more money and exposure than us . But I think there are ways we can also tap into that and potentially show what they don’t show, more subversive things, perhaps. That also ties into what we’re doing to tap into different regions of the world , different cultural expressions and maybe sometimes even more problematic areas around human rights and political issues . We should never be about promoting a single idea. And I think HRAFF doesn’t do that. It is willing to show films that challenge ideas about human rights and even shock some people about what a human rights festival might do. I don’t think we do enough of that yet. There’s still a bit of a safety and populism. That’s part of the discussions you have as a film programmer.

There was one film Phnom Penh Lullaby that I and a fellow programmer thought was an incredible film but very problematic and ambiguous. Other festival programmers really struggled with it as a film and whether or not it was exploitative.

I think we really need to think more clearly and confidently about the value of having some of those films in and these new wave filmmakers and what is current in terms of thinking about cinema like the docufiction thing. How do we deal with that? Everything that’s happening on Youtube. Web series. All those things. How are people receiving and understanding things and how can we work with that environment Maybe even politically challenge that environment in a clever way . How are things being represented? How are people experiencing film? How are they getting their knowledge of the world and how can we get films that deal with that ?

P:  It’s not just locating the filmmakers and the films and trying to identify them with what’s happening throughout the world, keeping a finger on the pulse, but it’s important as a crossover to think of the legitimacy of having high quality films. But YT and FB have changed the game of what  a showcase of the moving image might be, from the Avatars down to the smaller indies. There is also YT used to everything from jokes to guerrilla cinema, a link with Soviet era samizdat; anything forbidden that is allowed to flow.

Is there a possibility with something happening with these more immediate media outlets on the guerrilla level (as well as oddities like Kony 2012) Can the website be further engaged to point to this kind of activity. Might that not be an enriching thing?

T:  I think so and using panel discussions for those sorts of things and the arts side of the human rights festival you could have installations that deal with that. While I’m not so familiar with the greater arts context of the festival I can see the need to embrace the new media and also just the online interactive documentaries they talk about these days . I think there’s definitely ways we need to plug into that but I also think that what’s important and I think you would agree with me here that is creating this kind of cinema space unto itself and that doesn’t mean naively harking back to some golden age but i think it is important to preserve some kind of viewing experience in the context of everything else that’s going on and I think that’s why these festivals are so important and the microcinema s that you’ve been involved with and myself as well. You know to keep that unique and distinct experience alive as well in relation to all these other sorts of things going on. So I think there’s a double role there, if I can put it like that.

Me again. The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival is runs from the 15th to the 27th of May in Melbourne and then travels to other cities. I'll be going and reviewing. Details HERE