This year’s Tri Continental Human Rights Festival 2008 will include nine short documentaries which were made in response to the shocking xenophobic attacks that occurred in May.
As the violence began to escalate, South African filmmakers took to the streets and began to record the human stories, community response as well as the crisis caused by displacement of tens of thousands of people over a few weeks. Some of these filmmakers have come together to form Filmmakers Against Racism and will partner Tri Continental Human Rights Film Festival which takes place in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban from 15 August – 11 September.
Three of the Festival’s top films this year bring inspiration to what seems like hopeless situations. The Choir is set in a Johannesburg prison and highlights the redemptive power of music. Tapologo shows squalor being transformed into optimism through an HIV home-based care project set in an informal settlement, and Milking the Rhino takes us to remote rural communities in Kenya and Namibia where old style wildlife conservation programmes have been turned on their head, and new methods are turning poachers into protectors.
For more details see Screen Africa’s August magazine.
Dates and Venues for the Tri Continental Human Rights Festival 2008:
15 – 24 August: Cinema Nouveau, Rosebank, Johannesburg
22 – 31 August: Cinema Nouveau, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
29 August – 31 September: Cinema Nouveau, Brooklyn Mall, Pretoria
5 -11 September: Gateway Mall, Durban
For more information contact Arya Lalloo at email arya@uhuruproductions.co.za
