Bearing Witness
by Chris Herlinger

NEW YORK -- With its usual sense of urgency and commitment, the 18th annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is once again providing a venue for filmmakers not afraid to grapple with the world's moral problems and ethical dilemmas -- not to mention an eagerly awaited early summer fix for lovers of documentaries and international political dramas.

Co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at Manhattan's Walter Reade Theater, the June 14-28 festival has become a well-established New York institution that, in the words of its director, Bruni Burres, suggests "there is still hope" in the quest for human rights -- a fitting idea for an event presented by an advocacy group that for nearly three decades has defended the human rights of people around the world.

The festival "highlights the different avenues that are open to stopping human rights abuses," says Burres, who heads a team of film selectors and festival organizers that this year brought New York audiences 21 films and three shorts from 17 countries -- in all, 16 New York premieres.

If it all sounds like a dose of "good medicine," lovers of film needn't despair. The festival is committed to what Burres called "character-driven" films, be they documentaries or dramas, and not far from the surface of many of them are potent themes connected to religious concerns.

The opening night film, MON COLONEL ("My Colonel"), a French-Belgian film in the tradition of the 1965 classic "Battle of Algiers," examines the French presence in Algiers and resonates strongly with contemporary events, from Western armed forces in predominately Muslim countries to debates over "terror," what constitutes "civilization," and the ethical dilemmas arising from acts of state-sanctioned torture.

The film includes numerous images redolent of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. That seems to be no accident, as co-writer Costa-Gavras, the acclaimed Greek filmmaker, recently suggested when he said, "Today, in other countries the same horrors are still taking place, committed by the same 'colonels' and defenders of democracy as there were in France at that time."

Yet the film is not a diatribe, and Burres says it and other films in the festival ask audiences not to look at the world in modes of black/white, either/or.

A different ambiguity, not to mention a kind of quiet, unnamed, and stark spirituality is on display in Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal's MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, which Burres said "really digs at preconceived notions of either the left or right" on the issue of globalization and its effects on the environment.

The film is a portrait of photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose work centers on massive, large-scale representations of the ways industrial changes are affecting the global landscape. Seen one way, the film is also a provocative, understated meditation on the state of the world today.

"The film tries to make you think about these issues without giving easy answers," Baichwal said at a forum following the showing of the documentary. Though much of it was shot in China, its significance is global. "It's not about China, it's about all of us," said Baichwal. "We're all deeply implicated."