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March 11th, 2010
Meg Hewings

The fifth annual Montreal Human Rights Film Festival brings rights struggles into focus

The struggles of Tibetans are well known; less so the plight of the Uyghur people. Over the past century, the Chinese government has taken over the far northwestern province of China (Xinjiang), but for millennia it was the homeland (Turkestan) of a peaceful Turkic-speaking Sunni Muslim minority with traditions in Sufism. Although the Uyghurs account for almost half of Xinjiang's population, Han Chinese (who relocated there in the millions) and Uyghurs loyal to Beijing basically control the province, while most Uyghurs are culturally, economically and politically marginalized. Protesters and resisters are regarded as terrorists, and imprisoned, extradited or forced into exile.

It's fitting, then, that the Montreal Human Rights Film Festival features The 10 Conditions of Love, Australian Jeff Daniels' doc about the Uyghur people and their de facto spokeswoman/leader-in-exile, Rebiya Kadeer. The former political prisoner is a distinguished guest at the festival and will participate in post-screening conversations.

Kadeer's is a spellbinding and epic story: A refugee child and poor housewife, she eventually divorced her husband, opened her own clothes-washing start-up and transformed it into a wildly successful trading company. She became a multimillionaire (the richest woman in China) and was invited into the halls of power and politics. Refusing to play puppet, Kadeer used her pull to denounce Peking's policy of assimilation in Xinjiang and continued to invest millions in improving the
condition of her people. She was eventually arrested and spent six years in captivity (in solitary confinement), and was released in 2005 thanks to the efforts of her family and Amnesty International.

Although the doc focuses on Kadeer's personal history, it also provides a glimpse into her current life in Washington, D.C., where she lives as a political dissident and gives voice to Uyghur in exile while working with a small, loyal staff in a few meagre cubicles. The film explores the tensions around her struggle and the taxing effects it has on her family (namely, her 11 children - the three who remained in China have since been jailed to thwart her outspokenness).

Other films at the Human Rights Film Festival also walk between the improbable, the uplifting and the depressing. Eyes Wide Open: A Journey Through Today's South America, by Gonzalo Arijon of Uruguay, runs the gamut from mythic to mystic. It's a poetic doc that treks from the Brazilian soybean plantations to the tin mines of Bolivia and into the jungles of Ecuador to explore how the new leftist leadership in the region poses a challenge to multinationals who are there to plunder natural resources. While Arijon's interview with Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America) structures the doc, he also intersperses his own revelations and interviews with farmers and miners with speeches from Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva and Evo Morales.

If you're looking for the latest about Iran, try Toronto multimedia artist Davoud Geramifard's Iran: Voices of the Unheard. It uses secret footage shot after the June 14 election and struggle against Iran's repressive regime. Iranians Farid Haerinejad and Mohammad Reza Kazemi also bring us Women in Shroud, which looks at the way the justice system in Iran treats women accused of adultery.

Other standouts in the program include Kim Longinotto's Rough Aunties. There is something simple and engrossing about every doc Longinotto makes; her ability to gain access to intensely intimate moments and portray women's work always captivates. Her latest follows the daily trials of a South African women's group that helps child victims of rape and violence.

Closing the fest is local Magnus Isacsson's Les Super Mémés, about the Franco wing of the activist group Raging Grannies.

Montreal Human Rights Film Festival
At various locations, March 11-21
For more info: www.ffdpm.com