Awarded films in the international competition 1999

The jury's statement

We are "amusing ourselves to death", Neil Postman stated a couple of years ago. In times when not even a simple jogging outfit can be sold without advertising for the fun to be expected, in times when the most important information on a film that has just started is the millions of dollars of production cost, the International Human Rights Film Festival might seem like an anachronism, designed for only a few committed people. However, the contrary is the case. While the fun society spins around itself, the issue of human rights in other parts of the world is a question deciding about life and death, a question deciding about participation in society or exclusion from it. And also here, in our country, the issue of human rights does not belong to the realm of the past - just think about the situation of refugees, of detention prior to deportation, of expulsion to an insecure future that might even bring death. All the greater is the merit of the organisers who had the courage to get the 1. International Human Rights Film Festival off the ground, to show films that are not blockbusters and never will be. The jury and the audience have seen films that are close to the unbearable, films that give a good deal of insight into the human rights situation at the end of our millennium.

We have had trouble awarding one first prize among these films. The competing films cannot be compared to each other. They stand side by side, not one on top of the other. There is no judgement about human beings. Rather, human beings are taken seriously, their actions are made understandable by close observation. These films tell deeper truths, they touch the spectator, they motivate us to intervene.

The jury has decided to give three awards to three films, feature films and documentary films that complete each other - perspectives diverging so extremely that together they form a triptych. A prize of DM 3,000, however, cannot be divided. We chose the pragmatic approach: The prize money is awarded to a film we want to reach a broad audience:

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun by Djibril Diop Mambety who can only move with the help of two crutches, decides to make her way into the world of the boys selling newspapers. This film gives a picture of Africa that differs greatly from what we get via the media.

The jury regards this film as a metaphor for autonomy, a metaphor for the power and the courage to take one's life in one's own hands.

Laconic scenes put side by side, seemingly disjointed, depicting a certain environment - in an authentic, aesthetic manner, but never playing down, never brightening up. Stylistically, this film manages an odd jump from quiet naturalism to poetic courage. And this is where the last words of the film are directed to: This story is thrown into the sea. Who breathes it first will come to paradise.

Kisangani Diary by Hubert Sauper

In the jungle of Zaire, the film camera suddenly captures a large number of lost Hutu refugees. However, the camera avoids a false identification with the suffering of the victims. The film disturbs because it takes the position of the white man exposing himself to all this, ending in helplessness.

Accompanied by the sounds of an accordion, a brief contact between black and white lights up and fades again.

The film takes on the seemingly objective structure of a diary, and then undermines it with increasing subjectivity.

Memoria by Ruggero Gabbai, consisting of 93 interviews of Italian Jews about their memories of German concentration camps. Their narrations make them relive their experiences and their suffering.

Memoria creates an emotional and living closeness to a past seemingly long since known. This is thanks to the great ability of the people in front of and behind the camera in handling their past. An important step on the way to come to terms with one's past is the ability to allow for one's own vulnerability, the preparedness to be open for those experiences that can not be coped with. Instead of reconciliation, Memoria offers us humanity and desperation spreading out with great intensity.

Memoria was shown under the motto "Remembering for the sake of future". As could be seen with the Walser-Bubis controversy, it is part of our way of dealing with human rights issues, that we, the German people, have to confront ourselves with our own history time and again.

 

Wolfhard Gallhoff (Lecturer of Film Design, Nuremberg)

Ullabritt Horn (Director, Vienna)

Berthold Kremmler (Director Internationales Filmwochenende Würzburg)

Gabriele Müller (amnesty international, Cologne)

Klaus Wildenhahn (Director, Hamburg)


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