Social justice celluloid

Famous and fledgling directors present
their work at the fourth annual Montreal
Human Rights Film Festival

FIDDLING WHILE THE WORLD DRIES:
Jane Campion’s The Water Diary

by MATTHEW HAYS

Now in its fourth year, the Montreal Human Rights Film Festival has created an important niche within the city’s film-fest landscape, bringing an unusual and eclectic range of documentary and fiction films to be screened. This year’s selection travels across several continents, exposing issues of power affecting the rights of oppressed groups and individuals.

This year’s opening film is particularly noteworthy. 8 is an anthology film, in which eight prominent directors from around the world were invited to make a short film reflecting on a specific issue impacting human rights. Included in the mix is Gaspar Noé—perhaps a bit surprising, given his track record as a director who indulges in excess, in particular his gratuitous rape scene in Irréversible. Here, Noé shows us the plight of one bedridden man, stuck in a hospital in Burkina Faso as he deals with his AIDS diagnosis. The man tells us about trying to use condoms whenever he could, but still managing to contract HIV. Shot in a straightforward fashion, it’s a sobering look at the ongoing epidemic, one that continues to have a devastating effect on the continent.

Mira Nair (The Namesake, Monsoon Wedding) takes on equality between the sexes, showing us, however briefly, how one marriage is breaking down between a Muslim woman and her deeply traditional husband. She leaves a DVD note to her son, explaining why she felt she had to leave despite the pain it would cause. A strange combination arrives from Australia with the entry from Jane Campion (The Piano, Sweetie). Told from the perspective of a young girl, we hear about what happens to a rural community Down Under as the rains stop. The children attempt to cope by bottling their own tears. Amid the harsh reality are flourishes of magical fantasy—when one girl wonders aloud why clouds don’t hover closer to the earth, Campion unleashes the CGI and lets the children dance with the clouds in the fields. It’s a pleasing bit of levity in an otherwise seriously depressing short that sticks the global warming issue to us, point blank.

Before this past year, I hadn’t thought of Gus Van Sant as a social-issues filmmaker. But then he made Milk, and now this: a short film purportedly about infant mortality rates. After seeing this short, I’m not sure I’m convinced he’s a social issue filmmaker after all. It consists of shots of a hot teenage boy skateboarding his way through various streets and emptied swimming pools. Running over the shots are stats about infant mortality rates around the world. Not quite sure what the connection is, but the teen dude is sexy, without a doubt. This is perhaps the most unexpected entry within 8.

Media matters

Media commentary arrives in the short directed by Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire). He depicts a group of very weary and cynical TV producers as they attempt to figure out how to create an item about the G8 summit. With so many protests, with so many press conferences and statements from politicians and activists, how best to convey issues surrounding world hunger and the widening gap between rich and poor? When the producers take a break and leave the room, subjects of various documentaries leap out of the screens and create their own uplifting media segment—about the powers of micro-credit—in the hopes that when the producers return, they’ll broadcast the magically created news item. It’s a fun segment that manages to convey both hope and information without being too dour.

Other films at the fest include Afghan Girls Can Kick, Bahareh Hosseini’s poignant doc about young women who form Afghanistan’s first all-girl soccer team. The Art and Apathy is a film in four parts, in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is picked apart from the perspective of artists, describing how radical new ideas might bring an end to the conflict. Masaki Arai’s Little Baghdad takes us to the community of Iraqi ex-pats who have fled their country and live in Damascus. Since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, more than two million Iraqis have been forced to leave due to the conflict. This film, from Japanese television, tells us some of their harrowing stories.

Trans issues are explored in Making the Face, an Indian entry about Tom, a make-up artist who says he possesses the spirit of a woman but is in a man’s body. This gender identity issue means a boost to Tom’s career; both women and men say they feel comfortable with him because of his mix of feminine and masculine traits.

THE MONTREAL HUMAN RIGHTS FILM
FEST SCREENS MARCH 12–22 AT THE
CINÉMA DU PARC (3573 PARC). INFO:
(514) 842-7127 OR FFDPM.COM