Documentary makers put focus on social issues
THE Irish Council for Civil Liberties today launches the Human Rights Film Awards 2012. The competition, now in its fourth year, has become instrumental in expanding discussion of human rights in Ireland. The films the event has honoured have addressed a wide range of complex and emotive subjects. Last year’s winner was Listen to Me, an inventive and disturbing short relaying the horror of sex trafficking.
An open and inclusive enterprise, in effect the Human Rights Film Awards are open to anyone willing to pick up a camera to tackle a human rights issue. The core requirements are that films must be under 12 minutes in length and should address a human rights topic relevant to Ireland. The shortlisted works are adjudicated upon each year by a panel of film artists, rights experts, and public figures. Judges have included Stephen Rea, Brenda Fricker, Kirsten Sheridan, and Senator David Norris. All five shortlisted films will screen at a gala awards ceremony in June.
“The awards have a very broad remit,” says Walter Jayawardene, campaigns and communications officer with the ICCL. “We’d invite amateur and professional filmmakers, students, or anyone really with a strong interest in human rights, to submit a film focusing on a human rights issue in or relating to Ireland. It’s all about presenting a human rights issue in an imaginative way. In terms of genre we’re open to anything. It could be an animation, a drama, a documentary. And films matching those descriptions, as well as others, have been shortlisted over the past three years.”
Jayawardene says one of the aims this year is to bed down the youth-focused strand of the competition, the Human Rights in Under a Minute challenge, which will be launched in January. “This year we’re going to make it a more integral part of the competition and the awards ceremony.”
Though open to amateur and professional alike, Jayawardene stresses that the awards can provide a unique platform and focus for filmmakers to launch their careers. “We want to encourage young and emerging filmmakers to apply their talents to the social and human rights context,” he says.
Fran Cassidy, whose film Freedom Driver — about disability activist Dara Gallagher — took second prize last year, is one emerging filmmaker who has benefited from the competition.
“The ICCL recognition was a hugely positive experience,” says Cassidy. “I can’t say enough good things about the people involved in ICCL or the work they do. To have a film that was essentially made in my sitting room over many laborious months get a screening in the Irish Film Institute in front of such a distinguished audience, and alongside the other shortlisted films, was a massive boost.”
The experience inspired Cassidy to seek formal training and he credits it as a factor in his getting a place on the MSc in Digital Feature Film Production that Filmbase runs in association with Staffordshire University.
“The awards really are an excellent opportunity for aspiring filmmakers,” says Cassidy. “My involvement has opened up a pathway to progressing in the film world that would have been very difficult for me to create otherwise.”
In addition to his studies, Cassidy is working on a couple of documentaries, one on the topic of homeless and drug services in Dublin, and another with a group of asylum seekers. “From a film-making perspective I am more interested in human stories than ‘worthy’ issues,” he says, “but when the former can illuminate the latter it is very satisfying.”
The way in which film can illuminate and transmit often very complex issues is precisely what drew the Irish Council for Civil Liberties to set up the competition, says Jayawardene: “Human rights organisations often find themselves caught up in the minutiae of the law and policy, all of which is very important. But it’s very challenging to use the written word to illustrate the reality of what human rights mean and their importance. The real way to do that is to give examples to people and make it relevant to their daily lives. Then people start to realise the importance of protecting human rights.”
* The deadline for entries to the ICCL Human Rights Film Awards is April 16, 2012. See: www.humanrightsfilmaward.org
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