Part memoir and part reportage, the book is in danger of being dismissed as a work of fiction. The reality, however, hits you hard when you see and hear a young Kashmiri girl attending sewing classes say, “Bomb blasts, curfew, killings have become a part of our lives.” She is among scores of Kashmiri women, embattled by everyday violence, who have been led to ponder on issues of security, peace, conflict management and transformation of the beleaguered State in the film There was a Queen. The 105-minute documentary produced by two FTII graduates was screened recently at the 5th Tri Continental Film Festival.

Film festivals — feature length or short — were until recently the domain of the State, but that is no longer so, thanks to advances in affordable video technology. NGOs, media groups, colleges, universities, art galleries and film societies are now coming forward to organise film fests. Some of these focus on specific genres and the Tri Continental Film Festival has evolved into a platform for human rights cinema from Latin America, Africa and Asia. The latest edition of this festival kicked off in the New Year at Delhi and is travelling to Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore and Kolkata.

“Human rights are rights that any person has as a human being. We are all human beings; we are all deserving of human rights. One cannot be true without the other.” These words of Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, ring true as the 26-odd films at the festival explore the narratives of violence, exploitation, destitution, apathy and inner turmoil in a range of genres — from investigative to fiction.

The people at the heart of these narratives include HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa, bonded labour in rural Brazil, seasonal labourers in the ship-breaking yards of Chittagong (Bangladesh), game reserve evictees in Kenya, project-affected families at the Three Gorges Dam in China, asylum seekers in the UK and Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli jail among others.

Ironeaters, an 85-minute film by Shaheen Dill-Riaz, takes us into the world of the 25,000 ship breakers in Bangladesh who work for less than $1 a day. The workers are trapped in debt and bondage, exchanging hard labour for inflated loan repayments. Working in inhuman conditions, the labourers have no safety equipment and are constantly exposed to hazardous waste.

In an email response, the filmmaker says, “These people are very simpleminded peasants… the ship-breaking industry is a place where Bangladeshis are, in fact, taking care of the garbage of Western civilisation. Through my film I want to sensitise the Western audience towards this human exploitation.”

Bangladeshi by birth, Shaheen is now settled in Berlin. Her documentary won the first prize at the Tel Aviv International Documentary film festival and the best documentary film award at the Achtung Festival in 2008.

The Iraq war comes into focus through the film On that Day, an investigative insight into the Haditha Massacre. On November 19, 2005, Iraqi insurgents detonated a roadside bomb, killing a US marine. In the ensuing hours, 24 Iraqis lay dead, including several kids. Featuring interviews with the two human rights activists responsible for exposing the massacre in Time magazine, coupled with testimonies from the three marines involved, the film reconstructs the shocking and tragic event. Zhenchen Liu’s Under Construction tells the story of families in Shanghai who are forced to leave their homes and move into buildings on the edge of the city, as part of the authorities’ effort to regenerate the city. The award-winning 10-minute film finds resonance with the former mill districts of Mumbai — a city whose politicians, ironically, aspire to turn it into a Shanghai — where out-of-job workers have been forced to move to distant suburbs after selling their kholis (dwellings).

Amidst all the human tragedies and hapless victimisations, there is also hope, as in the story of Ka Hswa Wa, a human rights activist wanted by police in Myanmar and Thailand.

“I want to go back to my country, eat my food, converse in my language. I am hoping the day will come soon when, without jeopardising the lives of my family, I will be able to get in touch with them,” says Wa, the protagonist in Total Denial.

The 65-minute film records how, in 1995, Wa along with the co-founder of Earth Rights International, Katie Redford, represented 15 Burmese villagers in a landmark lawsuit in the US against UNOCAL and TOTAL, the two companies involved in an oil pipeline project. The companies were forced to pay $10 million compensation.

Despite showcasing several such heart-warming and sensitive films, the festival sadly did not garner enough pre-event publicity. And so the tiny, 120-seater Little Theatre at Delhi’s NCPA was barely filled. Hopefully, the festival will attract greater numbers as it travels to other places in the country.

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