Press Release: ONE WORLD 2009 (11 – 19 March 2009)
International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Organized by People in Need
Held under the auspices of Václav Havel, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra, the Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg, and the Mayor of Prague Pavel Bém
An Official Event to Accompany the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU
One World is today the largest and most important human rights film festival in Europe and is firmly established as one of the leading cultural events in Prague and the Czech Republic. Every year, One World presents approximately 120 films from all around the globe and seeks to promote the best quality documentary filmmaking on social, politically engaged, human rights themes. In 2007 One World was selected for an Honourable Mention within the framework of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Prize for Human Rights Education.
What Will be Happening at the Eleventh Annual One World Festival
The eleventh One World festival will be held in Prague from 11 to 19 March 2009 and then travel to a further 29 towns and cities throughout the Czech Republic. In addition, a selection of One World films will be presented in Brussels and in Washington DC as part of the cultural programme of the Czech presidency of the council of the European Union.
.
One World is not just a film festival but also a discussion forum, which every year offers audiences an opportunity to actively participate in debates on topical political and social issues. This year will be no different in this respect. Apart from short debates after nearly every screening, there will also be three debating cinemas – the Divadlo Archa theatre, the Municipal Library (Městská knihovna) and the Institut Francais de Prague. Every day there will be an organised panel discussion on a topical issue at these venues after the screening of individual films.
Traditionally, the Lucerna cinema will be the focal point of the Prague part of the festival. The festival’s other cinemas will be the Světozor cinema (two theatres), the Divadlo Archa theatre, the Atlas cinema (two theatres), the Institut Francais de Prague, the Municipal Library (Městská knihovna), the Evald cinema, the Ponrepo cinema, and the Divadlo Minor theatre. The festival’s press centre will be at Langhans Gallery.
Tickets for films can be bought at the box offices of all festival cinemas for the same price as last year, i.e. 70 CZK.
A press conference will be held at the Atlas cinema at 11 am on Tuesday, 3 March.
New Features of the Eleventh Annual festival
As of 13 February, one thematic block with several films will be added every week to our on-line special at www.ceskatelevize.cz/jedensvet. It will be possible to watch these films in their entirety. Gradually, 25 feature-length films from various countries reflecting on the changes that Central Europe has experienced in the last 20 years will be made available at this address.
-
This year, we decided to reflect on the global challenges facing today’s world. Although we have excellent films about Burma, Iran, Kashmir, Darfur, Ecuador, Venezuela, Congo and North Korea, this year’s festival is not about particular issues. The supporting themes for this year’s event are water, oil, gas, the energy industry, global warming, the economy and the financial crisis. These are subjects that not only crucially affect us here in the Czech Republic but are also of vital importance to people in other parts of the world.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, we wanted our visual for this year’s festival to show how much we care about addressing today’s young people in their twenties, who represent the first generation in the Czech Republic to grow up in freedom. At the same time, it is also a generation whose lives will fundamentally influenced by current global challenges.
We are adding the following new sections to our programme this year: One World for Senior Citizens, One World for Parents with Small Children and One World in Pragues City Districts. Last year, we managed to reach an audience of more than 100,000 people. We hope and we believe that these special events this year will succeed in also attracting people to the festival who have heard of One World, but have not yet managed to attend it.
This year, we will also give our audiences a chance to see the films with the best attendances and which have been the biggest hit with audiences after the festival ends. The choice of films will be decided by your votes.
We would like this year’s One World to function as a space where audience can comment on matters that Czech and European political representatives are now dealing with on an international level. Consequently, in conjunction with the Agora civic association, we are preparing a whole range of debates on individual global themes as well as local issues. We will be inviting experts from various government ministries as well as politicians to these discussions, but we primarily want festival audiences to actively participate in them as well.
For the first time in One World’s history, we will be presenting a feature film. The film in question is Zdeněk Tyc’s El Paso, which deals with the issue of social exclusion and is inspired by the true story of a Roma widow and mother of nine children. We won’t just be screening this movie in Prague, but will also be showing it in the other towns and cities where the festival is being held. We want to use it as the basis for provoking a debate on how individual municipalities are (not) dealing with the issue of social exclusion.
As is the case every year at the festival, we will be welcoming dozens of foreign guests. Most of these guests are directors but we will also be hosting some of the protagonists from selected films. Our special guest this year will be the important documentary-maker Ross McElwee. Besides festival jurors, other guests who have so far confirmed that they will be attending One World include the documentary-makers Bram van Paesschen, Julie Bridgham, Anders Ostergaard, Luca Ragazzi, Gustav Hofer, Hanna Heilborn, Petr Lom, Dušan Hanák, Daniel Leconte and Philippe Val (the main character in the film It’s Hard Being Loved by Jerks and the editor of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which reprinted “blasphemous” caricatures of the prophet Mohammed).
Will Castro Let a Celebrated Cuban Blogger Come to One World?
One of the members of the Rudolf Vrba jury will be 33-year-old Yoani Sánchez from Cuba. Or at least, we hope that this will be the case. It all depends on whether the Cuban government will allow her to travel. The year before last, Yoani Sánchez decided to set up a blog. She did this to describe the frustrating reality of life on the “Island of Freedom” as Cuba was known in Soviet propaganda. In her virtual diary entitled “Generación Y” (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/ – the site is available in a number of languages, including English), she writes about how difficult life is in the country and she often openly criticises the communist government led by the Castro brothers. After just five months, her blog had been visited by more than 1,200,000 people. Because of this, Time Magazine updated its list of the 100 most influential people to include her, saying that “this courageous blog has found a way of telling the truth in a country like Castro’s Cuba.” Her blogging has been read far beyond Cuba’s borders. In April 2008, Yoani Sánchez won the prestigious José Ortega y Gasset award for Internet journalism. In response to this, the Cuban government blocked her blog, but Yoani managed to get around this obstacle by switching to a German server. The Cuban authorities also prevented her from travelling to Spain where she was meant to personally collect the award. Apparently, her request for a travel permit was still “under review”. We hope that her invitation to One World will not be “reviewed” in the same way.
Festival Programme
We will be showing 123 documentaries from nearly 40 countries around the world at the festival in both competitive and thematic categories. These films have been chosen from more than 1500 documentaries that were submitted for consideration.
Opening Film
The opening film at the 11th annual One World festival will be Burma VJ whose protagonist is a young Burmese reporter called Joshua. Together with some colleagues from the exiled Democratic Voice of Burma TV station, he decided to make a detailed record of anti-government demonstrations in September 2007 and their subsequent brutal suppression. Footage of the dramatic events from the cameras of these reporters appeared in the news bulletins of all important global media outlets and for a time it was the only way in which the world could find out about the actual situation in Burma. Using the detailed evidence provided by the work of Joshua and his colleagues (who risked their lives to do it) this film illustrates the indisputable importance of independent media in the fight against totalitarian power.
“With this film we would like to attempt something similar to what we achieved last year with the documentary called The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo,” says One World director Igor Blažević. “We dragged this issue out into the light of day, and we appealed to audiences by telling them we had decided to do something about the situation there and that we would be glad of their help. It seems to me that this is precisely the sort of thing that gives One World a subtler mosaic of meaning. Using the People in Need Friends Club, we organised a collection to help the Congolese women who had been raped. We went to the Congo with the money we raised, and not only did we distribute it among those who needed it, but most importantly we also opened a mission there, which is still operating and helping people to this day. And we shall continue to provide assistance there in the future. We would like to organise something similar this year based on a film about Burma.”
The opening screening of the film will be attended by its Danish director Anders Ostergaard and the deputy director of the Democratic Voice of Burma Khin Maung Win.
Competition Categories and Prizes
Besides the thematic categories, the festival programme offers the now-traditional three competition categories (the Main Competition, the Right to Know category and the Short Forms Competition). The winners of these competitions will be selected by three international juries.
The films in the Main Competition will be competing for the Best Film Award and the Best Director award. These prizes will be awarded by the Grand Jury. The members of this year’s Grand Jury will comprise Marie-Pierre Duhamel (a leading film critic and curator - among other things she is a member of the selection committee for the Venice Film Festival and she was director of the Cinéma du Réel international festival of documentary films from 2004 to 2008), Tonička Janková (one of the Czech Republic’s busiest editors of both documentaries and feature films – her recent work includes movies such as Night Owls and Citizen Havel), John Akomfrah (a filmmaker of Ghanain origin who is primarily known as one of the founders of Black British Cinema and is also a former member of the Governing Board of the British Film Institute), Gerd Kroske (a celebrated German documentary-maker whose films shot over extended periods of time are closely associated with the former East Germany and have won awards at several international festivals) and Alexandru Solomon (a leading Romanian political filmmaker who made his name with films such as the documentary Cold Waves, which was about the activity of Radio Free Europe during the communist era in Romania).
One of the films included in the main competition is Rough Aunties by renowned documentary-maker Kim Longinotto, which won a documentary prize at this year’s Sundance film festival. Set in South Africa, this film’s protagonists are remarkable women who look after abused and abandoned children in the city of Durban.
The Right to Know is a unique competition category presenting full-length, original and high-quality documentary films drawing attention to unknown or suppressed issues concerning human rights. These films will compete for the Rudolf Vrba Award. The jury that decides on this award deliberately does not consist of filmmakers but of charismatic and brave individuals who have themselves suffered violations of their human rights or who have long fought for the observance of human rights in their own country. A jury of this nature is something unique, but we believe that it is essential at human rights festivals for the work of filmmakers to not only be appraised by professionals but also by people who could themselves be protagonists in human rights documentaries This year’s jury contains people such as the coordinator of public screenings of human rights films in Belarus Aljaksandar Atroščankav, Daniel Messele, an Ethiopian living and studying in Prague who worked for three years as the programme manager for educational and social projects, as well as the aforementioned deputy director of the exiled Democratic Voice of Burma TV station Khin Maung Win and the Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez.
Among the films we have included in this category is Yodok Stories by the renowned Polish director Andrzej Fidyk. The protagonists of this movie are former prisoners of the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea whom the filmmaker persuades to rehearse and perform a theatre presentation about the cruel conditions they had to endure in Yodok.
In Life after the Fall, an Iraqi director records four whole years in the life of his family and offers a unique look at the transformation of Iraq from the fall of Saddam Hussein up to the present day. This viewpoint is all the more valuable because it is not an outsider’s take on the subject, but comes “from within”, directly from one of the country’s local inhabitants.
For a change, Letters to the President, the latest film from the Canadian documentary-maker of Czech origin Petr Lom, introduces us to Iraq’s neighbour Iran, or specifically its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom the director is allowed to film at close quarters. This produces a unique record of Ahmadinejad’s populist practices in action as he travels around Iran.
The distinctively titled Biutiful Cauntri offers an interesting view of the illegal trade in dangerous waste in the environs of Napoli, which is controlled by the local Camorra mafia.
The documentary Reporter is one of the films in this year’s programme that had its premiere at the Sundance festival. Its protagonist is the New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas D. Kristof, whose work in the Congo is the basis for the director to take an interesting look at the mission of modern journalism.
Besides documentaries, the Short Forms Competition category also includes experimental and animated films with a human rights theme. The films in this competition are under 35 minutes long and they will be vying for the Mayor of Prague’s Best Short Film Award. In keeping with tradition, directors and programmers of prestigious international documentary festivals will be invited to sit on this section’s jury. This year’s jury will include people such as the director of Holland’s Africa in the Picture festival and former director of the Amnesty International festival in the Netherlands Heidi Lobato, the documentary-maker, Indian cinematography specialist and contributor to many important international festivals Rada Sesic and Přemysl Martinek, the executive director of the Artcam distribution company and former programme director of Febiofest.
One of the movies in this category will be Jonas Odell’s latest film Lies, which won the best Swedish short film award last year. It has been screened at dozens of international festivals, including Venice, Sundance and Ottawa. It consists of three animated stories told with lots of special effects and whose central theme is lying.
Another of the films chosen for this section is an impressive portrait of 87-year-old Peter Sengepov, the last surviving Shaman from the Kazym River region. Officially entitled Old Man Peter this movie won the best documentary award at the Tehran International Short Film Festival.
A special award for a film that contributes to the protection of human rights in a remarkable way will be awarded by a special jury under the honorary chairmanship of Václav Havel.
The Czech Radio Award for the creative use of music and sound in a documentary film, the Students Jury Award for the best film in the One World for Students category, and the Audience Award will also be given out at the festival.
20 Years of Democracy in Central Europe
The thematic category 20 Years of Democracy in Central Europe recounts the last 20 years since the fall of communism, as they have been recorded by renowned documentary-makers and young filmmakers. We shall be presenting films that reflect in an original way upon the important challenges, successes and failures that accompanied this period of transformation. This programme will also be available on the Internet, where discussion forum will be set up with a view to inspiring a wider debate on these topics. One thematic block with several films will be added every week to our on-line special at www.ceskatelevize.cz/jedensvet. It will be possible to watch these films in their entirety, including, for example, Pavel Koutecký’s The End of Czechoslovakia in the Parliament, which captures the atmosphere in the celebrated parliament building between the National Museum and Opera Theatre on Wenceslas Square in 1992.
Europe in the (One) World
Europe in the (One) World comprises a collection of films that will explore contemporary world problems and global challenges that Europe, led by the Czech Republic as the president of the EU Council, has to deal with. To a considerable extent, the themes and priorities of the Czech EU presidency correspond to the themes tackled by One World on a long-term basis. Special debates will be dedicated to the films and subjects presented in this category. These will be organised by One World in conjunction with the Agora Central Europe (Agora CE) civic association. “During the eight days of the festival in Prague, a major debate will be held every evening. Representatives of Czech ministries and politicians will be invited to these so that they can discuss crucial issues such as the financial crisis and its impact, or possibly even the future of the automobile industry, with experts, journalists and One World audiences,” says Blažević. “We also won’t be neglecting issues connected with global warming and declining resources as well as a related rise in oil prices and the search for alternative sources of energy that are safer and more environmentally friendly. We are preparing similarly structured debates in around 12 other towns and cities where the festival is being held. We are doing this to give One World audiences who watch films on global issues a chance to discuss these subjects with people who are currently representing the Czech Republic in important EU proceedings and people who are formulating the Czech Republic’s political stance on the international stage. And we call on One World audiences to not simply approach these debates as people passively listening to the opinions of others, regardless of whether they are political representatives, state officials or experts, but to actively participate in these events and to express their opinion.”
The Economy
Under this now very topical subject, we have included the American documentary I.O.U.S.A., which deals in great depth with the growing indebtedness of the United States and its impact on the American economy and the lives of ordinary people. At the same time, it takes us back a little bit to the places where the global financial crisis started. Problems began with Wall Street and American mortgages. Then it only took a couple of months before the entire world found itself on the brink of a global recession. At present, European governments are pumping billions of euros into reviving the economy, and yet more and more bad news from all corners of the globe keeps appearing in the media. The screening of this film will be followed by a debate on the current financial crisis with politicians, economists and bankers.
For many years, the automobile industry has been the driving force and foundation stone of the Czech economy. Now, however, our car plants have been forced to let people go or to limit production, which automatically has an impact on the entire Czech economy. After screening films on this subject, debates will be held on the future of the automobile industry, both in the Czech Republic and around the world.
The Energy Industry
At present, we are gripped by the threats connected with global warming and the need to limit emissions, declining stocks of oil and the growing use of oil and gas as a trump card in geopolitical strategies for a new world order. One of the key questions of our age and also one of the crucial issues that the Czech presidency of the EU Council has been dealing with since early January is the need to ensure energy supplies, which are also clean and safe, for further economic growth. Oil is really running out and it will only get more and more expensive. What is the best alternative? Bio-fuels, nuclear power or solar energy? There will be many debates and films linked to these questions, including, for example, the Dutch movie Petroapocalypsis Now, which deals with the alarming depletion of oil resources in an interesting manner. Here Comes the Sun and The Nuclear Comeback are films that investigate the possibility of using other sources of energy. The first film looks at solar power while the second looks at the potential of nuclear energy.
Europe as a Global Player
Europe as a Global Player is another subtopic in this category. It will tie in with debates on Europe’s activity in international politics and whether the European Union, and the Czech Republic as a member state, can or cannot do something more with the challenges posed by new, populist, authoritarian leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There will also be discussions about what the EU can do for the oppressed peoples of Burma and North Korea and how it can go about it. The Reckoning is an example of one of the films included under this topic. It was premiered in competition at the Sundance festival. Its protagonist is the Argentinian lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo, who is the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The documentary looks at the difficult work he does in Uganda, Sudan and Colombia. (In this context, it is interesting to note that the Czech Republic is currently the only EU member state that has still not ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.)
The latest film by renowned documentary-maker Masja Noviková In the Holy Fire of Revolution looks at how the Kremlin led by Vladimir Putin systematically sabotages all events held by the opposition Russian politician and form world chess champion Garry Kasparov. This film will be followed by a debate on whether the Czech Republic and the EU can do anything to support Russian democrats.
A Blue-and-Green Planet
The Blue-and-Green Planet category (touching on issues such as permanently sustainable development and the prudent use of resources, oil, gas, water, global warming, etc.) comprises one of the three main themes that this year’s festival will be focusing on.
Examples of films in this section include the Oscar-nominated The Age of Stupid. This movie by director Franny Armstrong and Oscar-winning producer John Battsek interestingly combines documentary, drama and sci-fi with elements of animation. The main character is an old man (played by well known actor Pete Postlethwaite) who lives in the devastated world of 2055 and watches archive footage of various natural landscapes filmed in 2008, which have since been destroyed. And he asks the question: “Why didn’t we stop climate change when it was still possible at that time?”
Flow: for Love of Water is another film on this topic. It looks at the privatisation of water resources and infrastructure from a number of different angles. This picture won the International Jury Award at the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films.
Besides many other films that correspond to the themes of a Blue-and-Green Planet, Everything's Cool, an American documentary on climate change, will also be broadcast on Czech TV on 8 March.
Europe without Barriers
The motto for the Czech presidency of the EU Council is a Europe without Barriers, which reflects the intention of the Czech government to promote a liberal concept of the free movement of people, services and capital within the EU and to knock down various barriers that still persist in the Union. With the dramatic advent of the financial crisis and economic recession, this task now appears more difficult than it seemed when it was first adopted, because suddenly the voices of those who favour protectionism and the introduction of new barriers have gained in strength. One World has decided to focus on a number of barriers that still endured in Europe before the crisis. In debates and films, we will touch on the issues of asylum and migration policy as well the integration of socially excluded minorities and questions linked to the idea of Europe as a “melting pot” of various, nations, religions, races, etc. We have included the intellectually oriented It’s Hard Being Loved by Jerks in this category. This deals with the case surrounding the reprinting of “blasphemous” caricatures of the prophet Mohammed by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Another film in this category is the documentary City of Roma. This takes us to the Bulgarian ghetto of Nadhezda, where more than 20,000 Roma live behind concrete walls. Their children go to segregated schools and local-authority elections are being prepared there.
Images of Africa
This year, we will also be focusing on Africa, and in the Images of Africa section we shall introduce audiences to the most interesting documentaries on Africa as well as movies by foreign filmmakers about Africa.
Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a film portrait of a group of brave women who staunchly stand up for peace in Liberia.
The protagonists of the visually engrossing documentary Barcelona or Die are two Senegalese, one of whom attempts a dangerous voyage to a better future in Europe while the other decides to remain in the suburbs of Dakar and help the local community.
Czech Documentaries
The permanent Czech Documentaries category introduces high-quality Czech documentary films, which have been made in the past year, to local audiences and foreign guests. One such film this year is Helena Třeštíková’s René, which has won many awards including the Prix Arte prize for best European documentary from the European Film Academy, and Ivetka and the Mountain by Vít Janeček, which won the Best Czech Documentary of 2008 at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.
We will also be screening Gyumri, a captivating and visually exquisite documentary by director Jana Ševčíková about the Armenian city of Gyumri, which suffered a devastating earthquake 20 years ago. This film will also launch “Echoes” of One World in Washingtonu DC on 25 March.
The festival will also be presenting the world premiere of Forgotten Transports to Poland. This is the fourth of four 90-minute films by Lukáš Přibyl, which comprise a mosaic of memories from Jews transported from Bohemia and Moravia to concentration camps and ghettos in Latvia, Belarus, Estonia and eastern Poland.
Panorama
In the extensive section called Panorama, we present films that explore society-wide problems affecting today’s world as well as some interesting personal stories. One such film is Z32 by the experienced Israeli director Avi Mograbi. The protagonist of this movie is a former Israeli soldier who actively took part in a retaliatory operation under the codename Z32. During this action, two Palestinian police officers were killed. With the director’s help, the soldier tries to come to terms with this painful experience.
A Collection of Ross McElwee Films
This year, we are paying homage to Ross McElwee, the important American documentary-maker. The work of this filmmaker and teacher at Harvard University will be presented for the first time ever in the Czech Republic. One World is offering four documentaries from Ross McElwee’s oeuvre. The first of these is Sherman’s March, which will be screened on 14 March. This 1986 film is McElwee’s most celebrated movie and it won the main jury prize at the Sundance festival. In subsequent days Time Indefinite (1994), Six O'Clock News (1996) and Bright Leaves (2003) will also be screened. The director has accepted an invitation to the festival and he will attend the screenings of his films. An open Ross McElwee master class will also be held for students of the FAMU film school and the general public in the Municipal Library after the screening of Bright Leaves.
One World for Children
As has been the case in previous years, film screenings for primary and secondary schools in all the towns and cities where the festival will be held will also comprise an integral part of One World.
The One World for Children section presents shorter films that have been compiled in two blocks, which are intended for kids aged 9 to 13. This will include films such as the formally exquisite document Mbeubeus, which draws attention to the desperate situation of many African children, who are forced to toil in life-threatening conditions instead of going to school.
The protagonist of the film Quamar: Working to Live is an 11-year-old Indian girl called Kamar, who is eloquent, unaffected and above all mature beyond her years. Instead of going to school or playing children’s games with her peers, she has to help in the household and work very hard.
One World for Students
One World for Students is a section intended for older audiences, i.e. for those who are in the higher grades of primary school and secondary school students. One of the films in this section is Afghan Girls Can Kick, which is about members of an Afghan women’s football team, who despite the ongoing danger and uncertainty in their country successfully disrupt the traditional “male” stereotypes of their society and look to the future with a greater sense of hope.
Olga Sommerová’s Seven Lights is another film in this section. Its principal characters are six Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and the Second World War who relive their experiences of these events for the camera. The force of their testimony is made even more powerful when they themselves warn of the dangerous conduct of people today who publicly align themselves with Nazi and nationalist ideas. There will also be debates on this subject after the film is screened.
Once again a special student jury will decide on the best film from the One World for Students category. For older audiences, a discussion will be held after each film screening with an expert on the given theme. Last year, the festival’s school screenings were attended by 10,000 people in Prague, and by a further 34,000 in regional areas.
One World for Parents with Children and Senior Citizens
Furthermore, in conjunction with the Divadlo Minor theatre, this year will be the first time we present a programme lasting several days called One World for Parents and Children, which consists of short films for the youngest audiences. Special festival film “packages” will be created as part of the screenings for parents and children. These will comprise two or three films, which will be prepared for various children’s age groups. After the screening of each movie, audiences will reflect on the film with a guest.
Screenings for parents with a special children’s corner for their children will be shown in the early evening, and they will be accompanied by a debate with an expert or the filmmaker themselves. These screenings will be intended primarily for parents, who have small children and want to attend One World, but who have no one to look after their kids. That’s why we have set up a children’s corner, where kids will be able to play while their parents are in the cinema.
At 2 pm on Thursday, 12 March and Wednesday, 18 March, we will be hosting two screenings with a debate for senior citizens. Films from our programme have been selected by actual representatives of the elderly community and admission for these people will be free.
Accompanying Programme
Besides film screenings, it is now traditional for the festival to also offer a rich accompanying programme. Apart from debates, filmmakers’ dialogues, a concert and exhibitions, we will also be hosting a conference on the Media and Poverty. This seminar will bring together journalists from the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia as well as journalists from other European states and developing countries from the so-called “Global South”. Part of the event will comprise two days of practical training for journalists on how to write about development issues, and a one-day conference on the role of the media in the fight against poverty.
In the course of the festival, an exhibition of photographs from the Congo by Lenka Klicperová from the monthly periodical Lidé a Země and by Markéta Kutilová from People in Need will be held at the Divadlo Archa theatre. These pictures will emphasise the work of this organisation in the Congo as it helps local women who have been raped during the civil war there. After the Prague part of the festival ends, this exhibition will also travel around other selected towns and cities where One World will be held.
An exhibition of photographs by Jindřich Štreit and Marie Zachovalová will also comprise another festival accompanying event. This will complement the film Černá srdce, which presents the perspective of two directors (Monika Rychlíková, Břetislav Rychlík) and two photographers (Jindřich Štreit, Marie Zachovalová) on four Roma families. The film was shot from December 2006 to December 2007 in a Roma settlement in Slovakia, a rural community in Hungary, an industrial area in Poland, and a suburban Roma community in the Czech Republic.
At 9.30 pm on Wednesday, 18 March, together with the Divadlo Archa theatre and the Afrique en Créations festival, we will be presenting a French theatrical production of a speech by Barack Obama on the race issue in America called We Are All Africans. This stage recreation of Obama’s celebrated “A More Perfect Union” address in Philadelphia, which promised hope of a change, not just for Americans but for others as well, will be held in the Archa theatre’s small auditorium. It will be presented to a Czech audience by the African-American actor Vincent Byrd Le Sage. The event will be staged by the Benin-born French dramatist and director José Pliya.
One World on Czech TV
As in previous years, highlights of One World will be shown on Czech TV during the Prague leg of the festival. Nine programmes will be screened every day from 11 to 19 March. These will be directed by Martin Dušek and Ondřej Provazník, who made the successful documentary A Town Called Hermitage, among other things.
On Sunday, 8 March, as part of an evening devoted to One World, the American documentary Everything's Cool will be screened on Czech TV’s ČT2 station. This film looks at climate change and it was shown at last year’s festival.
One World in the Czech Republic and Around the Globe
One World is traditionally held in Prague, but it also takes place in many other towns and cities throughout the Czech Republic in cooperation with local organizations, namely: Bílina (30 March – 3 April.), Brno (17 – 24 March ), České Budějovice (17 – 20 March), Děčín (26 – 28 March), Hlinsko (6 – 8 April), Hluboká nad Vltavou (26 – 28 March), Hrádek nad Nisou (24 and 25 March), Hradec Králové (23 – 28 March), Chrudim (6 – 8 April), Jablonec nad Nisou (29 March – 2 April), Karlovy Vary (27 March – 4 April), Kladno (26 – 29 March), Libčice nad Vltavou (3 – 4 April), Liberec (23 – 29 March), Mělník (19 – 21 March), Nový Bor (27 – 29 March), Olomouc (23 March – 1 April), Opava (30 March – 3 April), Ostrava (16 – 22 March), Pardubice (30 March – 4 April), Písek (22 – 24 March), Plzeň (23 – 28 March), Rožnov pod Radhoštěm (6 – 8 April), Tábor (2 – 7 April), Tanvald (23 – 25 March), Teplice (18 – 22 March), Třinec (3 – 8 April), Ústí nad Labem (16-21 March) and Ústí nad Orlicí (1 – 4 April). In most of these towns and cities, regional “echoes” of the One World festival are taking place under the auspices of district commissioners and mayors and in cooperation with local NGOs.
As part of the cultural programme for the Czech presidency of the EU, a selection of One World films will be shown in Brussels (27 – 30 April) and Washington DC (25 – 28 March), where Jana Ševčíková’s documentary Gyumri will open this movie showcase. For the second year running, the One World Romania (20 – 24 March) and One World Bulgaria (23 – 28 April) festivals will also be held. One World helped set up these events last year. Smaller One World showcases will also take place in New York and Beirut. In addition to these events, we have prepared a special competition for human rights films for the Ljubljana International Documentary Festival in Slovenia (25 March – 30 March.). This event should also screen the most interesting films from last year’s One World.
One World in the City Districts of Prague 11 and Prague 4
This year, we would like to slightly disrupt the “centralised” nature of the Prague part of the festival. Consequently, we are preparing pilot festivals in two city districts, which are further away from the centre, but which each have good facilities for organising interesting cultural events and other happenings. The selected city districts are Prague 4, with its Novodvorská Cultural Centre as well as a screening venue at the Spořilov Cultural Centre, and Prague 11, where screenings will be held at the Zahrada Cultural Centre. We took this decision in order to bring the festival closer to our audience and to also generally strengthen the choice of cultural events in the given city districts. In cooperation with the Novodvorská and Spořilov Cultural Centres, we are preparing a full programme, which will contain screenings for primary and secondary schools as well as evening screenings for the general public. From 16 to 20 March, a selected film will be shown at these venues at 7 pm, and each screening will be accompanied by a debate.
A Few Words from the Founder of the Festival:
In all the previous years in which we have held One World, we have strived to acquaint audiences in the Czech Republic with the situation in countries and locations such as Burma, Cuba, the Congo, Chechnya, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Rwanda, Tibet, Iraq, Darfur, Israel, Palestine, etc. Using powerful and authentic stories from places where human rights are being abused to a great extent, and where people still yearn and fight for freedom, justice, dignity and emancipation from poverty, we have sought to foster empathy and understanding and to inspire people to take action and show solidarity. This was based on our conviction that in a globally interconnected world, which the Czech Republic is an integral part of, people should pay attention to mass crimes and the sufferings of others, and they should try and do something about it, however small it may be.
This year, for the first time, I have the feeling that it is no longer necessary to convince the public that we are part of one world. Practically every day all of us are experiencing firsthand the interconnected nature of this planet. All at once, we are being overwhelmed by this fact and it is as though we all find ourselves ill at ease and unable to believe what has suddenly befallen us. We sense how global problems are directly and very specifically affecting our own lives, regardless of whether it concerns expensive oil, uncertainty surrounding gas supplies, rising food prices around the world or climate change. I think it won’t be long before we begin to realise that not even water is a given and very soon it won’t be taken for granted. I say all of this without even mentioning the financial crisis and recession, which has seen many people lose their jobs and left many others afraid about whether it might also affect them. And all this is happening at a time when the Czech Republic is presiding over the EU Council. Our politicians and state officials are dealing with an international crisis and our domestic politics have suddenly taken on an international dimension – it is no longer something that is simply happening on our own patch.
At a moment when the idea of “one world” is something that is very present in our lives thanks to the Czech presidency of the EU Council, it is very exciting for me personally that we can really comment on world events after experiencing twenty years of freedom. We can now influence these events and we have an important role to play in them. This statement is not some kind of insane bombast. For me, what has occurred in this society thanks to our membership of the EU is almost a miracle. Twenty years ago, and for many long decades before that, people lived with the knowledge that history was primarily made somewhere else and that it was always something that simply swept through the Czech Republic, as in the case of the Nazi and Soviet-led occupations of the country. Without having any say in the matter people were occupied by foreign forces. They were beaten into passivity, inaction and a feeling of powerlessness by fear and repression. Now, however, thanks to twenty years of freedom and Czech membership of the European Union, things are different. We suddenly find ourselves playing a significant role in creating history together with others. And this is not a question of politics but of civic engagement. My own personal experience and that of my colleagues in One World, has affirmed my conviction that every one of us can genuinely get involved in some way and strive for something. I am convinced that the freedom of Europe and democracy provides an opportunity for people to achieve something and to influence events beyond their “own backyard”.
There is one more thing that is important for me in this, the eleventh year of One World. For the past eighteen months I have been intensely aware that a new generation has grown up here and that its voice is beginning to be heard. This is not my generation or that of the younger people on my team who also experienced communism or at least saw it come to an end in Central Europe. When we started with People in Need in the early 1990s we felt a moral imperative that had been shaped by our history. We felt “we must help others who are oppressed, because we ourselves have experienced what it means to live in bondage.” The experience of the new generation, however, is fundamentally different. On the one hand, unlike us, they have grown up in a free society and have developed accordingly. On the other hand, the major issues that we are now dealing with at this year’s festival will have a fundamental influence on their lives. In the next forty years, they will be the ones who will have to endure the negative impact of climate change, depleting water resources, oil shortages and global overpopulation. That is, of course, unless they decide to do something about it while there is still time. The consequences of global warming will not have a major impact on my generation but they will affect the generation that comes after me. And if this generation does not heed these great challenges and take action, they may be overwhelmed by them. It is similar to the situation when I was a young man in Bosnia, where the lives of many young people who had many different ideas about their own lives were ultimately crushed by war, even though this was something we did not precipitate, cause or want. This is the main reason why we would like to discuss these major issues with the first generation in this country to be born and reared in a democracy. This is also what inspired the visual design we have chosen for this year’s festival.
In this context, I would really like this year’s One World to function as a space where audiences can comment on matters that Czech and European political representatives are now dealing with on an international level. This is why we have prepared a whole range of debates, both on specific global issues and on local problems. We will be inviting experts from government ministries as well as politicians to these debates. Most importantly, however, we would like festival audiences to take part in these debates as well. And we don’t want them to simply ask questions from the floor, but to sit directly at a round table as equal partners in a dialogue about the challenges facing the world today. We want them to be able to contribute their own opinion to the debate.
Another important aspect of this year’s festival is that we are giving the Homi Homini Award to Chinese human rights activists from the Charter 08 movement. In this respect, it is wonderful that the Czech Charter 77 initiative has inspired people on the other side of the world to such an extent, thirty-one years after it was first launched. And it has inspired them in a good way. The Chinese chartists also don’t want to cause violence and unrest, but are striving to hold a constructive dialogue with the powers that be to try and find a route to freedom based on compromise.
Another interesting departure for this year’s festival is the fact that we have included a feature film in our programme for the first time ever. The film in question is Zdeněk Tyc’s El Paso, which deals with the issue of social exclusion. Besides the fact that its content fits in with our programme, it is an excellent example of how One World is different to traditional movie festivals in that we can give the film another dimension of meaning, which it wouldn’t have if it was simply shown in a theatre. By hosting debates, holding school screenings and acquainting the wider public with the ways in which one can work with socially excluded communities, we can use films like this to help resolve this problem, which is not only a social issue but a political one as well.
Igor Blažević
For more information go to: www.oneworld.cz