| Human Rights Watch International Film Festival |
| Written by Kevin Filipski | |||
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Human Rights Watch International Film Festival June 12-25, 2009 Walter Reade Theater, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza (West 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam) filmlinc.org  'THE RECKONING'  'THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD' Take the festival's opener, The Reckoning. This feature by Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy and Paco de Onis (to be shown on the PBS program POV in July) follows the intrepid prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he tries to bring warlords and other crooked officials to justice in Sudan, Uganda and Colombia at the same time the ICC itself tries to make itself legitimate in the eyes of a skeptical world, led by the United States, which wants no part of it. Battling against overwhelming odds to do what's right and just is what’s at stake, as it is in the festival's closing night film, The Yes Men Fix the World, in which the great pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno again do damage by posing as corporate heads and taking anti-free market stances that are anathema to those captains of industry. Of course, they go too far over the line, but when the delicious results include Dow Chemical's stock dropping in a matter of minutes or HUD and other government agencies post-Katrina with egg on their collective face, one can't help but admire their sheer guts in doing what they do, so successfully and intelligently. (The Yes Men Fix the World will be shown on HBO July 7 and at Film Forum in October.) The most pressing social, political, economic and racial issues are addressed in the festival’s documentaries, led by Joe Berlinger's powerful Crude, which takes an evenhanded (and exhaustive) look at the lawsuit brought by citizens of Ecuador against Texaco/Chevron for a disastrously massive oil spill several years ago; Berlinger smartly allows all sides their say, and only the sad—but predictable—lack of closure for those affected mars an otherwise estimable film. (Crude opens September 9 at the IFC Center.) Israeli filmmaker Naftaly Gliksberg has made Look Into My Eyes, a brief (75 minutes) but trenchant tract about the today’s widespread—and growing—anti-Semitism in Europe and America. With admirable aplomb, Gliksberg confronts those who see him as less than human, allowing their own ignorance and fear to reveal their bigoted selves, ending with a truly scary glimpse at Germans who pine for the return of a Hitler-type demagogue to save them from the awful Jews. At that, Gliksberg's film is not without a type of black humor that’s as necessary as it is rare for such a personal film. The current iron fist of Russian president turned Prime Minister Vladmir Putin is explored with depth and concision in Misha Novikova's In the Holy Fire of Revolution, which shows the movements of dissension trying to gain a foothold, led by the unlikely presidential candidacy of former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who speaks truth to power in his condemnation of Putin's heavy-handed policies and overbearing tactics. By showing those who treasure Putin's iron fist and its resemblance to the good old days of yore—especially, and surprisingly, among young Russians—Novikova's film is another essential document, as is Remnants of a War, Jawad Metni's heartbreaking account of the brave men and women who risk their lives trying to defuse the thousands of unexploded cluster bombs that the Israeli military lobbed against Lebanon in the 2006 war with Hezbollah. As provocative and informative as these films are, it would be even better if we didn’t need the Human Rights Watch Film Festival any more, which would mean that their work has been completed. Human history being what it is, unfortunately, many more editions of the festival are still to come.
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