Brazil holds Human Rights Film Festival

The 9ª Mostra Cinema e Direitos Humanos no Hemisfério Sul (Human Rights Southern Hemisphere Film Festival) began Monday (Nov. 3), in Brasília. The festival was organized by the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency, and will take place in all 27 Brazilian state capitals on different dates.

The exhibition aims to bring together films from a variety of countries and cultures of the Southern Hemisphere focusing on a range of human rights issues, including media democracy, the rights of people with disabilities, anti-homophobia, and other issues. Egypt, India, Jordan, Brazil, and other Latin American nations are represented, and audiences included gypsies, people with disabilities, elderly people, and low-income schoolchildren.

Filmmaker Lucia Murat, to whom this year's festival is dedicated, praised the initiative. “This is a very important initiative. Nobody makes movies to keep them for themselves, they make films for other people to see. And there are very serious problems with distribution, especially of independent films, films that talk about our identities, tell our stories, and [explore] new aesthetic formats ,” she said.

“Our purpose is to give wide visibility to these important film productions Brazil has been able to put out in spite of so many challenges and difficulties. Reaching out to these audiences is critical because they are the ones who really need to see themselves [reflected] in our film works [showing] the reality of Brazilians,” explained Human Rights Secretary Ideli Salvatti.

The 2014 edition of the festival is themed after the fiftieth anniversary of the military coup in Brazil (1964).

Translated by Mayra Borges