This is the third year of our Student Forum which aims to work with education institutions from across Scotland to create a space where students and other members of the Document audience can meet filmmakers, artists, academics and activists to discuss and explore human rights issues.

Does each gesture really make a difference? Can music and dance be weapons of peace? After several years, travelling over five continents, Lara encountered growing numbers of people who committed their lives to promoting change:

In 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, director Lara Lee embarked on a journey to better understand a world increasingly embroiled in conflict and, as she saw it, heading for self-destruction.

In Iran graffiti and rap become tools in fighting government repression. In Burma monks acting in the non-violent tradition of Gandhi take on a dictatorship. In Brazil musicians reach out to slum kids and transform guns into guitars. And in the Palestinian refugee camps of the Lebanon, photography, music, and film offer a voice to those who are rarely heard.

Through these stories, Cultures of Resistance explores how art and creativity can be ammunition in the battle for peace and justice.

Drawing on Popular Education and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, this workshop will invite verbal, visual and physical responses to the film ‘Cultures of Resistance’.

Popular Education creates spaces for the collective production of knowledge and insight and builds on the experiences of those participating. Theatre of the Oppressed physicalises oppression enabling participants to use theatre as a rehearsal for reality.

This workshop is presented by So We Stand, an emerging grassroots movement working for empowering social change to develop multiracial politics and self defence strategies for environmental and climate justice. More info at www.sowestand.com

The sequel to the award-wining ‘Punam’ shown at Document 3, ‘Big Sister Punam’ takes up the story of child labour in Nepal once again by revisiting the same family to see what happened next.

In 2005 Punam Tamang was nine, living in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur. Since her mother died when she was only five, Punam, her last-born sister Rabina and her two-year-old brother Krishna saw little of their father, as he worked from sunrise to sundown in a rice factory in order to earn enough money for their school fees. And so during the daytime Punam assumed the role of head of the family, caregiver and homemaker.

And yet, they were lucky in a way: some of the parents of Punam’s friends did not make enough money to afford the
school fees. Instead of studying, these children had to work in a stone quarry or brick-making factory to help their families get by. The poor five-grade school she attended represented Punam’s symbol of hope. She believed that education was the only opportunity for improving their situation, and dreamed of becoming a teacher and helping other children like herself.

Four years later, Punam is now thirteen and her life has changed. What she and her siblings had managed to avoid up until then has become an inevitabiity as her story takes us to the local brick-making factory…
A beautifully crafted and powerful film about the hard facts of child labour and the dignity of some of those who are enmeshed by it.

The film will be screened with low sound and lighting – to enable babies and tots to accompany their mums, and to enable mums to leave and return as necessary.

Thula Mama is a singing group where mums and babies aged from birth to walking, come together to learn and sing songs and lullabies from around the world all sung in a cappella harmony.

The screening will be followed by a session of ThulaMama, hosted by Cath Campbell, in the Electron Club. T

This collaborative event will facilitate connections between established and emerging film-making talent and charities and NGOs in Scotland who wish to creatively communicate Human Rights issues to the general public.

During the first hour, three of Scotland’s leading advocacy film practitioners; Media Co-op, Diversity Films and the Glasgow Media Access Centre will each screen examples of successful creative practice. Alongside the filmmakers will sit representatives from the organisations who commissioned the films. Facilitated by acclaimed Scottish filmmaker Nick Higgins, the ensuing creative conversation will explore the successes and challenges of issue-based filmmaking.

For the second hour, the audience will be split into pairs where the participant from the voluntary sector will be asked to outline some key campaign messages and the filmmaker partner can engage in a creative discussion. Everyone will then move into a new pair in a carousel style set-up. Whilst there will be no obligation of future commissioning, hopefully new creative relationships will blossom. The aim of the workshop is to raise awareness of film as a campaign tool in an interactive, fast-paced and (we hope) fun setting.

A short documentary narrated through a personal experience of partner rape, revealing the wider implications of rape myths. Sharon, a senior lecturer in Psychology, explains the prevalence of acquaintance rape, countering the common myth that rapists are strangers. She also explains that only a minority of victim’s receive justice.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the audience, Laura Connett, the filmmaker and Sandy Brindley, Rape Crisis Scotland.

The Basque Country, or that part of it currently contained within the political boundaries of Spain, is filled with political slogans: every second wall has its mural or its portion of graffitti that protests or puts the case for independence: despite the fact these are illegal and can get the culprit a jail sentence if caught in flagrante. And every time they are washed off, someone puts them back up the following night.

Through the simple expedient of stopping people in the street and asking them what the slogans mean, the filmmakers build up a fascinating picture of a people with a strong sense of national identity but conflicted views as to how to pursue their aspirations for autonomy from the Spanish state- some in favour of the armed struggle maintained until recently by ETA and its offshoots, and some of gradual political change within a parliamentary framework.
Through interviews with a spokesman for a political party working for independence, a young female activist arrested under Spanish anti-terrorism laws, and an anonymous political artist responsible for much of the graffitti, the case is made that like many other countries, the Spanish state may have cashed in on the post-9/11 paranoia to upgrade their anti-terrorism legislation in a way that could be used not only against those who commit acts of violence, but to muzzle any form of public dissent.

A thoughtful and informative film about the current state of play regarding Basque autonomy and the mixed opinions on the way forward held by the Basque people themselves.

Time for employers and government to Face the facts and the FACKs, to acknowledge death at work is a violent crime that isn’t rare and is rarely accidental. Over 1,000 people are killed in work-related incidents every year – many more than homicides – due to employers’ negligence and failure to comply in laws on health and safety. Yet few employers face any enforcement action at all, those that are prosecuted often receive paltry fines and hardly any directors go to prison for the decisions they made which led to someone being killed. In fact many employers are repeat offenders and some become serial killers.

Face the FACKS: The human face of workplace killing was made in memory of: Samuel Adams, Michael Adamson, Steven Burke, Andy Herbertson, Mark Wright, Lewis Murphy, Andrew Hutin, Annette Doyle, Graham Meldrum, Gordon Field, Craig Whelan and everyone killed at work.

Louise Adamson, founder member of FACK will introduce the screening and lead a Q&A with the audience afterwards.

Blanketmen charts the morale of Republican prisoners through the tumultuous period of the 1976-81 H-Block protest. Locked up for 24 hours a day, wrapped only in a blanket, denied any form of stimulus, beaten and degraded, the blanketmen displayed an indomitable spirit which saw them rise above everything their captors could inflict. In hardship they found humour; in silence they found song; in isolation they found each other; and together they fought, and they won.

Through the personal accounts of former prisoners the story of survival is brought to a new audience. Blanketmen is a fascinating insight into life during the protest, in particular it’s culmination with the deaths of 10 hunger strikers. 30 years later the h-block protest continues to ignite passions and stimulate debate all because of ordinary men who found it within themselves to never give up.

What should you do when you find out that 10 metres away from your apartment, on your kids’ playground, new buildings will be constructed? You take action, organise meetings with your fellow neighbours in the basement of the apartment block- the only communal space in the building- and try to fight together for your own rights.
Contemporary Bucharest, Romania: from one day to the next, the green spaces are disappearing because of the financial interests of a corrupt system.

Mumtaz Ahmed stands on the deck of his ship. He is a sailor who hasn’t seen the sea for months. And months. And months. A captain deserted by his crew. The last man on board.

When the cargo vessel Stratis II limped into the port of Barcelona in late 2007 after a hard storm in the Mediterranean, it was immediately condemned as unseaworthy by the port authorities. The owners abandoned it. As did the rest of the crew. It was Mumtaz’ first voyage as master of the ship. He was owed a lot of money in back wages.

So he waits: to get paid. For someone else to buy the ship. It’s a war of nerves between Mumtaz and luck. Maybe something will turn up. Maybe he won’t go down with his ship after all.
An odd, affectionate film about a man of principle caught in a loophole of international maritime law.

A Soviet family searching for a modest domestic paradise is swept into an immense disaster. This magically animated film combines drawing, photography and video to capture the surreal emotions of a too-real tragedy: Chernobyl 1986.

Leonid grew up in the village next to the reactor. The catastrophe broke his life, ruined his health, and threatened his unborn child when his work took him right into the contaminated zone. This animated film tells his story.
A striking and rather beautiful film reminiscent of ‘Waltz With Bashir’ in using animated sequences to depict unrecorded historical reality, with a set of simple and moving testimonies at its heart, and one decent, everyday couple.

The story of a group of ordinary men- neither specialists nor technicians- who were sent to Chernobyl following the nuclear accident in 1986 to help, then forgotten about. This film follows their struggle for recognition and justice.

Margaret Jaconelli purchased her Dalmarnock home in 1976. She has lived as the sole remaining resident of Ardenlea St since 2002. With the Commonwealth Games fast approaching, the council wish to demolish the whole street which occupies the site of the proposed Athlete’s Village.

All the other residents have been re-housed, but Margaret, as one of the few who owns her property, refuses to move until offered adequate compensation. The Council won’t negotiate. They’re working to a deadline. For four years she goes on a one-woman crusade to save her family from being evicted whilst the rest of Dalmarnock is flattened around them. Then at dawn one day in March 2011, over 100 police and sheriff officers arrive…

Mixing still photography, video reportage and interviews, this film follows Margaret’s story from March 2008 through to her eviction in March 2011.

One of a series of short films on issues surrounding the redevelopment of Glasgow by photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie.

Short introductory talk by Dr Libby Porter (Urban Planner and Researcher, Glasgow University) and Neil Gray (Writer and Researcher, Glasgow University) about the Legacy of Mega-Events, and large-scale urban regeneration plans in the UK and worldwide.

A discussion will follow with a series of live accounts by residents – including carers from the Save the Accord centre, who are campaigning to retain a day care centre for people with learning disabilities, and Margaret Jaconelli, who has recently been evicted from her home. The residents will talk about the impact the Commonwealth Games development is having upon their lives.

This discussion, focusing on media portrayal and the right of residents to ‘stay put’ in the face of large-scale urban transformation and displacement, will be interspersed with a series of short films that highlight recent experiences on, and nearby, the site of the Commonwealth Games Village.

Young Demir dreams of a wedding. But his Roma tower block on the outskirts of a provincial town in Bulgaria is no place for romance. 25 years ago it had all you could ask of panel socialist heaven: from parquet floors to intercom, hot and cold running water, street lamps, benches under murmuring apple trees.

Someone called the place the Paradise Hotel – and the name stuck. But with the years the block gradually changed. The parquet disappeared. The water stopped. The lights went off.

But each of the 1500 inhabitants has their own idea how to get from Paradise Lost back to the dream.
And if you cross the field behind Paradise Hotel where heaven and earth meet, you will see Bozhidar “The God Given”, who protects everyone from evil- and the dangers of excessive happiness- in a documentary about panel integration, love, misery, a lot of dreams, a little lyricism and one Gypsy wedding.

In Managua, Nicaragua, teenager Sujeylin Aguiler raises her daughter Karla on the same streets she has been calling home for the past eight years. Living in a city park as part of a larger group of youngsters, mother and baby struggle to reach the little one’s first birthday as the baby’s father struggles with his own dependency on crack.

In a world of seemingly endemic addictions and homelessness, where children are raised by parents who are little more than children themselves, strength of character and human decency sometimes win through regardless. Beautifully told and full of hope, ‘Karla’s Arrival’ offers an intense personal story about second generation street children.

The extraordinary and enigmatic story of Jacques Foccart – the modest public official who stayed in the background but ran French foreign policy in Africa across the reign of three presidents…

In a stylish and probing film using extensive archive footage to great effect, Foccart’s power to make and break the leaders of a host of states across “independent’ Sub-Saharan Africa is explored, and the French government’s reluctance to leave colonialism behind in anything but name.

A kind of detective story about the last gasp of imperialism and it’s changing face in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the formal independence of France’s former African colonies.

The challenge to the ‘survival of the fittest’ view of humanity comes from one of three theoretical perspectives: Human Rights, Social Justice or Class. The dynamic for real social change in the world is where these three, despite the tensions between them, meet in action.

Between 12 and 14 February 2011, following uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, approximately five thousand people landed on the shores of Lampedusa. Video footage details one such landing, featuring oral testimony by volunteers, local inhabitants, and refugees.

Southern Italy is changing: what was once a place of emigration has become one of immigration due to the influx of migrants from Africa, Romania and the Ukraine. Moreover, the Northern League’s institutionalised discrimination through xenophobic laws constrain more and more migrants to move south, where proper infrastructure and the resources to accommodate this vast number of people are missing. Amidst violence and exploitation, the scant resources available are shared as best they can be.

The town of Donetsk sits in the old coal belt of eastern Ukraine. Here most people still work for low wages in the rundown mines, while a new class in designer suits with smart phones and media savvy make a lot of money.

No matter which side of the social divide you are on, coming from Donetsk you will almost certainly be an opponent of the Orange Revolution and a fan of the local football team, Shakhtar Donetsk. Billionaire Akhmetov invests heavily in the club, which is becoming a major European force as, packed with star Brazilian players, they make their way towards a victory in the UEFA cup final.

Yet this sporting success funded by an oligarch’s personal fortune only seems to highlight the wider social and political stagnation of the region. Off the pitch, for the ageing miners who are also the club’s most enthusiastic supporters, the outlook appears bleak as they attempt to keep their ramshackle mine open in the fading hope of future investment…

An affectionate satire on football, enthusiasm, oligarchs, and sport as a tool of power.

Sometimes you go in, all guns blazing, determined to challenge the perceived act of injustice, and go home happy, knowing you’ve maybe not set the world to rights, but hey, you whisper to yourself on the bus home: “At least I had a go.”

Other days you sit there slumped in a corner feeling like the fight has been well and truly knocked out of you.
Your taxi driver’s racist, your partner is making impossible demands of you and you’ve been shafted at work again. How do we register our discontent with everyday life? Playwright Wendy Miller leads a workshop exploring Resistance In Everyday Life. What forms of personal protest do we invoke and why, treading the metaphorical line between silence and violence…

In a remote corner of the West of Ireland sits Broadhaven Bay. It is the perfect picture postcard, where the high cliffs of Erris Head and the Stags of Broadhaven stand sentry at the mouth of the bay against the mighty Atlantic, as if protecting the delicate golden sands of Glengad beach and the tiny village of Rossport, which nestles behind the dunes.

However, this peaceful tranquility belies the turmoil that lies beneath, and the unique nature of the coastline which has sustained generations of farmers and fishermen, has also delivered to Shell Oil the perfect landfall for the Corrib Gas Pipeline.

In the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.

The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.

Oliver Ressler is an Austrian-born artist who produces projects in public space and films addressing forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt and The Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Kraków. His films have been screened around the world.

Recorded in Armenia in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, the film follows the market trader’s struggle to survive the crisis of a post-Socialist reality that has closed many local factories and dissolved social safety nets.

In consejos comunales, the people of Venezuela collectively decide about the community’s concerns. These councils, built from the grass-roots, aim to create a form of self-government, parallel to the institutional framework.

The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A exploring the role of politically engaged art in protest and human rights issues, led by Katarzyna Kosmala.

Katarzyna Kosmala, PhD, is a reader in Visual Culture and Organization at the University of the West of Scotland, a visiting research fellow at GEXcel, Institute of Thematic Gender Studies, Linköping University & Örebro University, Sweden and a curator and freelance art writer.

www.ressler.at

Rachel Amey is an Edinburgh-based writer, performer and poet. She has written and performed for Glasgay! as well as a number of Scottish theatre companies and plans to tour her one-woman show ‘Where Have I Come From? Where Am I Going?’ at festivals across Britain next year.

Sarah Cassidy is a half-Scottish, half-Jewish comedian who made her debut on the British comedy circuit just over a year ago. Her sharp and personable style allows her to take on everything from Sarah Palin to criticism of British culture. Based in Glasgow, she performs across Scotland, the North of England and London.

Finalist, Manchester’s Lass O’Gowrie’s Old Speckled Hen Comedian of the Year

Finalist, Leicester Comedy Festival Midlands Stand‑Up Competition

“shows quite some promise” – Chortle

“intelligent… well-crafted” – Gigglebeat

Zanda is a 28-year-old woman, trying to survive with her two children in a god-forsaken Latvian village. Valdis is serving a year’s sentence in prison for physically abusing them.

‘Family Instinct’ follows Zanda over the course of a year as she tries to cope with the hardships of poverty and the amorous and frequently drunken attentions of several local men. Finally the local community force her to make a difficult choice: to stay with Valdis or with her children. But Valdis is due for release from jail…

An unflinching look at the lives of people on the extreme margins of Latvian society, the film draws you into a claustrophobic world which is at times shocking and heartbreaking, but whose central characters can still rise to humour and even optimism in the face of terrible adversity.

‘Family Instinct’ was winner of the International Competition at Silverdocs.

There is a place is a collaboration between Tibetan Chinese dancer/ choreographer Sang Jijia and Scottish screendance artists Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson, shot on location in the Scottish Highlands.

Produced in 2010 by Goat Media, in association with Dance House Glasgow and City Contemporary Dance Company Hong Kong.

Awards: Best Screendance short, San Francisco Dance Film festival, 2011: Best Screendance short Dance Camera West, Los Angeles, USA, 201; Special Jury mention, Napolidanza, Il Coreografo Elettronico, Italy, 2011.

Moment

(videodance) 7 minutes/1999

Two women in a space. They are dancing. Their relationship moves through different moods and states.

Their characters are gradually revealed through fragments of action. The significance of the moment, whether solitary or between them, is explored as time is slowed down, stretched, speeded up, repeated and stopped.
Moment was awarded the ‘Best Screen Choreography’ prize at the IMZ Dance Screen Festival in Monaco 2000.

A meditation on Contact Improvisation. Multiple layers of perception emerge through the moving cameras, the editing and the sound track, creating a multi-perspective experience of dance.

The concept of observation is important as this happens between the dancers and the cameras and amongst the dancers themselves, not only through sight but also through hearing and energy.

Commissioned as part of the Arts Council England’s ‘Capture’ series, Sense-8’ has been screened at many venues around the world, including Sydney Opera House and the  Reel Moves tour of Australia and New Zealand.

This documentary celebrates the power of the creative arts by profiling the successful Adugna Community Dance Theatre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

What began as an experimental project in the streets of Addis Ababa is now a vibrant, internationally acclaimed, success story. It is a story of a struggling urban population and of empowerment; a story of social outreach and advocacy and of feeding skills back into the community.