Geneva, Switzerland – I remember watching John Sayles’ 2007 “Men with Guns,” and thinking that something as terrible as the genocide which took place in Guatemala in the 1980’s, could not, or should not be fictionalized. A trio of new documentaries screened on the opening weekend of the 2011 International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva, both challenged and reinforced this notion.
At the heart of this dialogue is the portrayal of brutal realities through traditional documentary methods as in Pamela Yates’ “Granito” and the film “Impunity” by Juan José Lozano and Hollman Morris, versus the use of fictionalized characters, animation and multimedia montage in films like Ali Samadis Ahadi’s “Green Wave.”
Maybe it is no accident that the first two films focused on the irrepressible hope of humans in the face of oppression, while the latter depicted a sea of humanity defeated by ignorance.
Yate’s “Granito” is an examination and retrospective of her earlier work When the Mountains Tremble, an investigative documentary on the Guatemalan civil war, which looks at the roles and responsibilities of individual actors in shaping history.
As Yates recounts, “I had know idea I was filming in the middle of a genocide.” The documentary was highly successful in drawing international attention to the conflict, while the struggle for human rights in Guatemala was literally buried in the ensuing years.
Never the less, 25 years later, Mountains, which films two Guatemalan presidents as well as several guerilla members, had become a key piece of evidence in an international war crimes case, and Yates chronicles these events.
From the ex-guerrila fighter/transitional justice officer, to the genocide survivor/activists to the Nobel Peace Laureate (Rigoberta Menchu), everyone contributes a grain of sand or granito, towards the promotion of human rights, in Yates’ story.
Lozano and Morris’ Impunity picks up where Yates’ film leaves off, documenting implementation of Colombia’s 2005 Justice and Peace Process in which 32,000 members of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) voluntarily disarmed under a widespread amnesty.
The disarmament and peace process has been hailed as a historic achievement in Colombia’s 60 plus year old civil war, but the filmmakers question the durability of a process where principal human rights abusers are unaccountable to their victims; all of the 14 AUC leaders tried and convicted where ultimately extradited to the US for drug related crimes.
In the end, it is one of the 14 defendants who states that authorities are more disturbed “when we talk about those benefitting from ties to the paramilitaries,” then the dismembering of campesinos and the rape of women.
The Green Wave chronicles events in Tehran preceding and following the 2009 Iranian elections, using new narrative techniques which mix television footage and live interviews, with animated story lines and first hand blog and twitter accounts.
The title refers to the massive display of green cloth in the streets of Tehran as a show of support for opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, as well as an independent voice for millions of Iranians.
Ahadi creates a multimedia collage of a population in revolt, full of hope, fearless and demanding respect for human rights.
The realism of the animation is disturbing as this euphoria runs into the brick wall of the ruling Government and its enforcers, and the accounts turn to personal and collective despair at the prospect of a nation devouring itself.
As I walked out of the screening of Green Wave and into the street, I felt suddenly vulnerable, fragile and aware of my freedom of movement accorded those of us privileged or lucky enough to live in open societies. Somehow, seeing an artists’ rendering of someone being bludgeoned was at least as disturbing as the film footage used in the other films.
The festival runs through 13 March, with screenings at the Grütli, Alhambra, Arditi Auditorium and Uni Mail cinemas.
[…] will also lead a debate on human rights. Juan Jose Lozano, director of the documentary Impunity (read review in GenevaLunch) will be one of the panel […]