Government attacks on our welfare system represent “the biggest attack on the human rights of disabled people since the 1930s.”

A programme of short films including Camcorder Guerillas recent short “The Broadest Shoulders”, and a preview of our current film about privatisation and its effects on society’s most vulnerable.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion.

‘This presentation demonstrates a prototype of the Ethical Governor – a key component in the ethical projection of unmanned autonomous force…’
Animation drawing a parallel between computer games and army software which decides when and what is a legitimate target.

In the little village of Chotian, Punjab, India, the farmer’s cooperative society registered 25 farmer suicides related to debt in the last 7 years. The farmers drank pesticides to end their lives.

Indian physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva blames the the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s- an idea of Nobel Prize-winner Norman Borlaug to end starvation in the Third World, The Green Revolution led to increased food production but the environmental, social and cultural price that had to be paid was high- amongst the unintended consequences for the farmers of the Punjab, these included disharmony, debt and suicide…
‘Toxic Tears’ tells the personal stories of those for whom The Green Revolution was less than a blessing.

After the killing years of the Iran-Iraq War, a new generation arose, the children left behind: demographically a large proportion of the Iranian population of today is under 30 years of age.

‘Iran About’ is a journey into contemporary Iranian society through the voices of many young people who, anonymously, speak freely about what makes up everyday reality for them: the prohibitions, privations and even mortal risks taken in order to obtain what others take for granted- a bottle of wine or the chance to strike up a relationship…

A film about some of the issues which formed the background to the 2009 protests on the streets of Iran.

Facilitated by artists, including Rachel Mimiec and Katie Bruce, people of all ages are free to enter and engage with the spirit of The Public Square. Responding to materials on offer, The Public Square Manifesto, the artwork Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies, billboard, 2007 by Oliver Ressler, and, the backdrop of the Document film festival, participants are invited to create their own protest artwork around the theme of play and children’s rights.

Developed by the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and Rachel Mimiec, as part of Playable Spaces, for Inspiration 2011.

First time local filmmaker Deryck de Maine Beaumont screens his work in progress – My Egypt. Inspired by what was happening in Egypt in 2011 he took a camera and went there from Glasgow. This screening and workshop will look at Deryck’s footage and talk about the development of his first documentary film.

The young offenders unit in Cēsis, Latvia: a place governed by its own codes, where the unwritten rules are more powerful than the sanctioned ones…

A young Roma inmate fears he may be killed. After a long spell in voluntary isolation, he applies to the governor for a transfer to the adult prison. Though just a boy, he has family members there who can help protect him.
Secretive and uncommunicative, the inmates of the unit are the victims as much as the perpetrators of their own crimes- and still children themselves…

Trouble. Family. Prison. Drugs. Relationships. Violence. Admir comes from Bosnia. His family moved to Switzerland as asylum seekers when he was ten. What Admir knows best is violence- experienced or perpetrated. Admir is twenty years old.

One young Roma talks about his life before leaving Bosnia and his life since in Geneva- whilst awaiting impending deportation back to Bosnia…

Our School follows three Roma children in a rural Transylvanian village who are among the pioneer participants in an initiative to integrate the ethnically segregated Romanian schools. When their district is ordered desegregated, Alin, Benjamin, and Dana set out for the city school, looking forward to an education and new friendships, even as funds earmarked for integration are questionably used to build a “Roma-only” school in their village. Their innocent optimism quickly sours when the children are met with the hostility of peers and teachers alike.

Shot over four years, this portrait of rural village life and its rhythms fosters an admiration for the children’s spirit in the face of shocking instances of prejudice and ignorance. Their story touches on issues ranging from institutionalized racism in public education to the intractability of poverty, and defines the Roma children’s struggle in the starkest of terms regarding human rights. “Our School” is an absorbing, infuriating, and ultimately bittersweet story of tradition versus progress.

Winner of Silverdocs 2011 Sterling Award for Best US Feature.

An interesting take on the Kafkaesque quality of life in the old East Germany (DDR), possibly the most spy-infested state in history:

In a personal “truth and reconciliation” session, Peter- who was expelled from university, then jailed, then deported as a subversive, gets together with former friend ‘Hans’- who was actually spying on him for the Stasi. Together they read over the latter’s confidential reports- the very documents which led to Peter’s arrest.

Like everything else in the DDR, nothing is simple or straightforward in their story: where others were blackmailed into working for the Stasi, Hans volunteered out of ideological conviction- then came to genuinely like Peter and value his friendship… whilst of course continuing to undermine him in his reports.

Remarkably, Peter doesn’t feel any bitterness towards Hans- he’s even grateful to him, in a way: Peter has since found out that he had 39 different people informing on him. And Hans is the only one to admit it…

A good insight into the insidious nature of the informer network of the DDR and how it reached into every aspect of life, poisoning even the most intimate and trusted relationships.

Palestinians in Gaza are depicted either as terrorists or as helpless victims. The Awajah family challenge both portrayals. Caught up in the Israeli assault of 2008, their son was killed and both parents injured. Now homeless and living in a refugee camp, they tell their story. Through it, the larger tragedy of Gaza is exposed, and the courage and resilience of its people shines through

The assault on Gaza in 2008 by the Israeli Defence Force was well-covered by the international media. We’ve all seen the images replayed a thousand times. Or have we? And what of the people who made it their job to get the world those images?

A selection of Palestinian journalists/camera operators describe their experiences of trying to report from frontline Gaza amidst the assault and the effect on them as individuals of what they witnessed, recorded and lived through. Cutting between interviews and the- sometimes literally- raw footage they shot of carnage, death and destruction, this builds into a powerful discourse on the moral dilemma of media in a war zone- does your duty as a journalist to keep on filming the horror as an act of witness outweigh your duty as a human being to put down the camera and come to the aid of the afflicted?

Be warned: this film contains deeply harrowing uncensored images that were not shown in full on any international news network- the real images of war which the conventional media routinely edits out as too graphic and disturbing. You won’t see this version of the Gaza assault on the BBC or CNN any time soon…
The reflections of the journalists on what it was like to witness these events yet keep on filming are intelligent, articulate and tragic. Taking its place beside previous Document highlights such as ‘Prisoner Of The Caucasus’ which did the same for the conflict in Chechnya, ‘Gaza On Air’ provides a sobering post-mortem on the politics of the assault and a thought-provoking meditation on the role of media in war.

48 years of dictatorship. Susana de Sousa’s riveting portrait of 20th century Portugal, through the pictures of dozens of political prisoners. This haunting documentary opens with a brief description of the regime that ruled Portugal from 1926 to 1974: “Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was its leader and political ideologue. The church, the army and the secret police (PIDE-DGS) were its pillars.”

Black and white pictures of men and women taken by their interrogators are re-examined by those to whom the faces belong. Young or old, urban or rural, working class or bourgeois, all were subject to humiliation. One in particular refused to succumb. His face is balled up in a resolute downward-looking grimace. “I either came up with an expression of contempt or I would do it like this – even when being beaten and barbarously tortured. From me, they did not get the pleasure of seeing a tortured face.”

The unidentified voices, recount the degradation of being interrogated, beaten, touched up, forced to relieve themselves in front of their torturers.

They talk about how their experiences in detention went on to affect their subsequent lives. For many, it is the first time they have spoken about what they endured under Portugal’s fascist regime- a subject that remains largely unexamined today.

Although 48 is ostensibly about Portugal under Salazar, the photos that are brought to life in such a hypnotic and
unforgettable manner tell the stories of all political prisoners, all those who are tortured, wherever they are in the world.

Introduction and Q&A with Andrea Kuhn, Director, Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival.
Part of an international exchange between Nuremberg & Document, two human rights film festivals from twinned cities.

The everyday life of refugees in a Hungarian camp: four languages, four different types of homesickness, four traumas, four struggles. A chance for a fresh start in a foreign country…

Lia, Ahmed, Bebe and Usama came to Hungary from Georgia, Somalia, Ivory Coast and Lebanon and, if only for a brief period of time, became each others’ neighbours. All of them left their homeland for different reasons- war, family issues, physical or psychological suffering. Their faces still carry the story on them. Their bodies still bear the marks.

In Bicske, their ordeal continues in a different form. What if they actually get leave to remain? What if they have to start life over in an unknown country whose language they can hardly speak? Will they manage to find a job or an apartment? Will they be able to settle in a strange land, in a different climate?

‘Caught Between Two Worlds’ tries to shows what it feels like when you have to start from scratch in a country that isn’t home.

Here I Am is a collaboration between MIN’s Music and Theatre Production and Barrowland Ballet with a cast of adults and children from people seeking asylum, refugee, BME, migrant and local communities. Alongside professional dancers and musicians they explore and express how people struggle and suffer even when they are safe, and how their children bring light to their lives, helping them to find the strength to move forward. It features poems by Remzje Sherifi and choregraphy by Natasha Gilmore

In a world that has proved to be bleak and inhumane, three asylum seekers and refugees find a stream of light in the midst of the darkness. Composed from conversations and interviews with members of Maryhill Integration Network, Vox Asylum tells the real-life stories of three people who fled their homeland and found new hope in Glasgow.

Colours of Life is a display of cultural richness showcasing international dance styles and traditional costumes from AlbScott and Clan Macondo. It illustrates the way different cultures use dance to bring joy and colour to life, to overcome hardship, and to celebrate the human spirit and desire to create, perform and share our stories.

September 8th 1979: on this day, a massacre of Iranian citizens took place. It was the same month in which the director of this film was born…
(free entry to Zanzibar Musical Club)

8.00pm–10.00pm CCA 4

Zanzibar Musical Club

Philippe Gasnier & Patrice Nezan, France, 2010, 85mins

At sunset in the streets of the old town, the music clubs of Zanzibar buzz with the joyful sounds of Taarab, the unique music of the island, whose style reflects two millennia of cultural exchange and its place at the crossroads of the spice route.

Bearer of cultural identity and living tradition, the performance of Taarab is instrinsically linked to both the ceremonial and everyday life of the island. Its rhythms accompany the listener on every step of existence- from the most solemn to the most blissful moments.

Featuring artists such as the midwife and healer Bi Kidude, one of the most revered of all Taarab singers, this beautiful film immerses us in the colour, warmth and diversity of Zanzibar’s little known Muslim culture and the Taarab poets- custodians of a dynamic musical heritage that must assert itself in the face of tourism and economic change.

Few people outside the world of academia have ever heard his name, but Gene Sharp’s writings on non-violent revolution (most notably ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’, a 93-page, 198-step guide to toppling dictators, available free for download in 40 languages) have influenced a new generation of protesters living under authoritarian regimes who work for democratic change.

His ideas have taken root and his media-aware techniques have been deployed in places as diverse as Burma in the 1980’s against the ruling cadre, Serbia in 2000 in the protests which led to the downfall of Milosevic, right up to the Syria of today as protestors throng the streets of Hama and Damascus and the cellphone camera evidence appears on your TV news the same night.

But what of his amanuensis Colonel Tom? Where Sharp is the thinker and academic exploring philosophical concepts of freedom from the quiet of his office in Boston, Tom is the man of action, putting them into practise- a decorated Vietnam Veteran and former military hawk who became persuaded by Sharp’s ideas that non-violent regime change is more effective than military intervention or armed revolution, he now tours the world as the practical implementer to Sharp’s theorist acting as a’consultant’ to assorted revolutionary movements…

And while Sharp is arguably putting himself above or aside from politics in viewing philosophies of liberation as serving a universal good that can be adapted to combat the particulars of any repressive political system anywhere, what is the greater good that Tom seeks to serve, and where exactly do his affiliations ultimately lie? Is it a coincidence that many of the regimes he seeks to destabilise are on the standing US hit list of states unfriendly to their global interests?

The jury is perhaps still out on that one…

A fascinating and absorbing film on tactics of resistance which will be instantly recogniseable from news footage of demonstrations anywhere in the world over the last 10-20 years, and which covers a broad swathe of conflicts in the modern era, ‘How To Start A Revolution’ is definitely worth a look for all those interested in the discourse of contemporary protest in a media-led age.