•Written by Peter Hulm• ••Wednesday•, 02 •June• 2010 20:26•
Zurich held its 12th International Experimental Film and Video Festival on 22-30 May 2010, featuring new works by Jessie Mott, "creator of the most famous Flickr posting", and 80-year-old Canadian pioneer Michael Snow, as well as paying homage to the recently deceased Swiss descendant of Mélies, Klaus Lutz1. Peter Hulm looks back at the festival: •Written by Pamela Taylor• ••Wednesday•, 10 •March• 2010 22:54•
This year’s International Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH ) in Geneva is dedicated to cinematographers such as Tibetan director Dhondup Wangchen and all those who run grave risks making their films. Journalist Pamela Taylor explores the issue in this piece pulished by Infosud , the Geneva-based humanitarian and development news agency. Infosud also publishes the Human Rights Tribune.
•Written by Peter Hulm• ••Wednesday•, 10 •March• 2010 02:51•
This blog is contributed by Peter Hulm from his personal blog: Crosslines.ch
Geneva - The 8th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva (5-14 March 2010) offered the Nobel Literature Prizewinner J.-M. G. Le Clézio and a reading from his work, the UN Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, French star Juliette Binoche and diva Barbara Hendricks for a day of solidarity with Africa, several debates with leading human rights campaigners, and 10 days of films from the afternoon and evenings.
•Written by William T. Dowell• ••Sunday•, 05 •July• 2009 16:42•
BEIJING—Zhao Liang’s scorching film, “Petition,” was one of the most striking submissions at the 6th China Documentary Film Festival. Zhao’s two-hour documentary tells the story of Chinese petitioners, villagers who feel that they have suffered one injustice or another at the hands of provincial administrations and have come to Beijing to file a formal petition. Ignored by the bureaucracy in Beijing, they eek out a bare existence in makeshift shelters, and in one case, concealed in a hiding place under a bridge. Many previously squatted in Beijing’s squalid southern railway station before it was demolished to make way for the Olympics. Since provincial officials are evaluated partly on the basis of complaints against them, there is a common practice of engaging thugs, known as “retrievers” to intercept the villagers before they can reach the government offices in Beijing. Despite repeated beatings and rejections, the petitioners stubbornly refuse to abandon the official complaint process that gradually becomes the sole focal point of their lives. •Written by The Editors• ••Tuesday•, 12 •May• 2009 17:29•
GENEVA -- How can film-makers, whether through cinema, television, or webcasts, alert the public to avert or at least reduce risk in times of disaster, particularly weather-related catastrophes and climate change? Up till now, much of the work by media and film-makers has focused on the impact of disaster rather than seek solutions or help people know what they can do to be better prepared. The Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction , which will be holding its second international conference next month in Geneva (16-18 June, 2009), will stage an evening film festival at the Geneva International Conference Center on 18 June with selected trailers (Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid ) plus three shorts to illustrate the key issues at hand. There will also be a panel discussion with film producers and disaster experts.
•Written by Pamela Taylor• ••Thursday•, 12 •March• 2009 16:29•
Geneva, 14 March 2009 -- Nobel laureate and former World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz presented a film at the International Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH) illustrating his view that it is in the interest of rich nations to pay more attention to human rights in the developing world. Essential Edge contributor Pamela Taylor, who is an editor with the Geneva-based Human Rights Tribune (Please see recent Essential Edge piece on the HRT ), writes how Stiglitz maintains that international institutions such as his former employer the World Bank must do more to help developing nations through economic crisis. Stiglitz, who left his job as chief economist at the World Bank in 2000 following economic policy disagreements with the US government, has been very critical of the US and the IMF for encouraging poorer countries to adopt monetary policies he considers contrary to democratic processes and resulted in the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s.
•Written by The Editors• ••Wednesday•, 26 •November• 2008 15:17•
“W” Oliver Stone’s new film, recounting the life of George W. Bush, is showing at the Fernay Voltaire theater near the Hyper Champion. We went to the six o’clock showing Wednesday night. A total of five people were in the audience, and two of them were editors from the Essential Edge. The third was the wife of one of the editors. It is not hard to imagine why Stone’s film might bomb. Since Barak Obama’s election victory, most of us have heaved a sigh of relief and tried to erase the last eight years from our memories. But it is a shame to let Stone’s film, which is a masterful mixture of comedy and extreme tragedy, go unnoticed. Stone came under heavy criticism for historical inaccuracies in his film on JFK, which missed its mark. But in “W,” he succeeds in accomplishing the nearly impossible—making us see Bush as a nearly sympathetic, if tragically failed, human being. It’s the story of a ne’er do well son, who means well, but can never quite make the grade, and whose father loves him, but knows from the start that he can only be a disappointment. He’s the eternal frat boy who never quite grows up, who is fun to have a beer and watch Saturday night football with, but never fully grasps what the real world is really about.
•Written by The Editors• ••Monday•, 28 •April• 2008 15:43•
The Montreal-based Alternative Channel (www.alternativechannel.tv ) is holding its first international Forum 30 April 2008 in
The Alternative Channel itself is a recently established humanitarian and development internet broadcasting company that offers NGOs, concerned citizens, researchers and others dealing with global issues, such as climate change, food security or HIV/AIDS, an audio-visual and web TV platform for communicating their respective activities to the public but also for debating key issues. The day-long Forum, which will provide an award for the best video, is available live in English, French and Spanish from 9.00 am onwards on http://forum.alternativechannel
•Written by The Editors• ••Monday•, 10 •March• 2008 01:33•
The 5th International Human Rights Film Festival (7-16 March, 2008) is now on at the Maison des Arts du Grütli near the Plein Palais in