2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Big Idea:

Encounter

Overview

2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Mar 1–29 • Screening Room
$8 Regular/ $6 YBCA member

For the last eleven years, every March we’ve presented a selection of powerful films with distinctive human rights themes. The power of film cannot be underestimated to challenge the viewer and promote calls to action. Rather than wallow in despair, the films in this program will put a human face on threats to individual freedom and dignity, and celebrate the ability of the human spirit and intellect to prevail.

Events

Salaam Dunk

Mar 1, 2012 7:30pm

Screening Room

By David Fine
Director in person
Basketball is much more than a game in this high-energy documentary about an Iraqi women’s team. For the young players, most of whom had never been allowed to play any sport, it is a blissful release from the realities of a war-torn nation. They come from all ethnicities and sects—Arab, Kurd, Christian, Sunni, Shiite—but the joy they discover in playing and the deep love they come to feel for the young American man who coaches them reveals an Iraq we do not see on the news. (2011, 82 min, digital)

Buy tickets
Better This World

Mar 8, 2012 7:30pm

Screening Room

By Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
When two young friends visit an Austin bookstore to hear a talk on upcoming protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, they are approached by a charismatic local activist ten years their senior, who quickly becomes their mentor. Six months later, they cross a line that radically changes their lives. The result: eight Molotov cocktails, multiple domestic terrorism charges, and a high-stakes entrapment defense. A dramatic story of idealism, crime, and betrayal, Better This World goes to the heart of the “War on Terror” and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in the United States after 9/11. (2011, 93 min, digital)

Buy tickets
Impunity

Mar 15, 2012 7:30pm

Screening Room

By Juan José Lozano and Hollman Morris
Impunity documents a highly controversial trial against Colombian paramilitary leaders accused of killing thousands of civilians. When the political and economic interests in the paramilitary war are uncovered, however, the process comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the victims’ families wondering whether they will ever know the truth surrounding the deaths of their loved ones, and whether they will be able to fight the perpetrators’ impunity. (2010, 85 min, digital)

Buy tickets
The Green Wave

Mar 22, 2012 7:30pm

Screening Room

By Ali Samadi Ahadi
The Green Wave brings us into the world of ordinary Iranian citizens who risked their lives during the Green Revolution of 2009 in the hopes of a better future. Interweaving online posts, video footage caught by those present, animated sequences, and extensive interviews, the film is an artistic portrait of modern political rebellion, an exposé of government-sanctioned violence, and a vision of hope that continued resistance may galvanize a new future not just for Iran but for the region as a whole. (2010, 80 min, digital)

Buy tickets
Pink Ribbons, Inc.

Mar 29, 2012 7:00pm
Mar 29, 2012 9:00pm

Screening Room

By Léa Pool
Breast cancer has become the poster child of cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless people walk, run and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Outraged and incendiary, Pink Ribbons, Inc. shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer has become obfuscated by a shiny, pink story of success. (2011, 98 min, digital)

Buy tickets