The 7th International Film Festival Watch Docs – Human Rights in Film is currently taking place in Warsaw. The festival is organized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Public Film Institute and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. The best documentaries from around the world, which use an interesting and original form to deliver contents associated with human rights tactics, will be presented during the festival that will last from 7 to 16 December.(10-DEC-07)

Written by Agnieszka Chmielecka/ HRH Warsaw

The festival is a true feast of involved documentary. The program includes over 60 films from around the world, including 40 titles that have previously not been shown in Poland (although they have already been recognized on many occasions during large international film festivals). This year, for the second time now, the Festival was based on a competitions formula – during the first competition, fourteen feature documentaries will be in the running for the WATCH DOCS award and during the second one, sixteen short-subject films will compete for the Jacek Kuron award. An international jury will select the best films.        

bialoruski_walcInter alia: “The Belarusian Waltz”
Yesterday’s and today’s projections included inter alia “The Belarusian Waltz”, a Polish-Norwegian documentary directed by Andrzej Fidyk, one of a series of 6 films created on the initiative of the Rafto Human Rights House. The film tells the story of Alexander Pushkin, a Belarusian performer, who provokes the Republic’s highest authorities using irony and humor – a weapon exceptionally unbearable for totalitarian mentality. The “The Belarusian Waltz”, a film both amusing and bitter, was nominated to this year’s European Film Award.       

What else apart from films
The festival also consists of retrospectives and thematic blocks – “Color of Terror”, Nearest East” and “Face Left!”. This year, the Festival’s program is additionally supplemented by a section entitled New Polish Films. Apart from films, the organizers also offer meetings with filmmakers, journalists, politicians and nongovernmental organization activists, as well as the opportunity to participate in interesting panel discussions: “Transparently and with Solidarity” and “About the Crime of Hatred”.

The festival’s guests  includs inter alia Therese Jebsen, executive director of the Rafto Human Rights House, who met with the coordinators of Watch Docs and the Traveling Festival and held a lecture for them regarding: movies about human rights as tool for a social change.

r_panhThe festival’s special award
This year’s Marek Nowicki Special Festival Award will go to Rithy Panh (right)
– Cambodian documentary filmmaker living in Paris, author of the shocking film “S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine”, which received the majority of all significant European film awards in 2003. There will also be an opportunity to see six other films from this director, including the newest one – “Paper cannot wrap up embers”, which was recently been given the European Film Award in Berlin.

The announcement of competition results and the presentation of awards will take place during the Festival’s closing ceremony on 16 December.