Directors’ statementWelcome to the second New Zealand Human Rights Film Festival We feel privileged in having the opportunity to bring you the second Human Rights Film Festival in 2006. We know that you will support us because your backing for the inaugural event last year was phenomenal. We have certainly been encouraged to try and make this an annual event. Your support for the Festival enabled us to meet our objectives of increasing an awareness of human rights issues, and raising New Zealand’s profile as a human rights society internationally. Our Festival has received a lot of interest from overseas film-makers and others involved in human rights film festivals. We will continue to develop those relationships so that we can bring you high quality human rights related films. We are particularly enthusiastic about the wide cross-section of the public that have shown an interest in the festival – reflecting the universality of human rights. We will continue with our aim of bringing the human rights message to our younger audience. This year we have expanded our schools programme to all the centres. Many of the features of last year’s festival have returned. The feedback we received last year indicated a strong level of support for the speakers’ panels. We have made some changes to the forum to allow for more discussion. We have another strong pool of panellists in all the centres. This year the 2006 festival is a celebration of the right to freedom of information. As Pinter noted in his Nobel Laureate Prize acceptance speech “to maintain [political] power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives.” The festival marks how human rights film-makers use the medium of film to bring news stories that others might not want us to hear or see. Our festival contains a number of high quality documentaries from across the globe, and touches on a range of human rights issues. A number of our films have won awards overseas. We are thrilled that we can bring you films with a New Zealand connection. On behalf of all the Human Rights Network members and friends who contribute countless hours to organising this event, and our sponsorship contributors, we take pleasure in welcoming you to the second New Zealand Human Rights Flm Festival. Carol Nelson and Boris van Beusekom |
