The films featured in this year’s Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival are aimed at giving the audience a sense of “place.” The festival begins today with “The Man Who Saw Too Much,” about the career of a photographer in Mexico whose job it was to capture death and violence in Mexico City. Director Trisha Ziff says Enrique Metinides was the eyes of a community.
“The Man Who Saw Too Much” Opens Festival Tonight at 7 pm.
“They’re documenting the crime and the level of violence.” Ziff says, “And if those images didn’t exist the government would prefer that they were invisible to us. And that it would be an acceptable level of violence. This is not an acceptable level of violence in Mexico today.”
Director Trisha Ziff says it sheds a light on Mexico’s everyday violence that is not understood past the U.S border.
“In the united States you don’t really see those kind of images on the newsstand.” She says, “But you have extraordinary violence that is fictional in cinema or in video games. In Mexico you see those images in the traffic lights everyday of what happened to the city in the night before. And very accepted to see those images. You almost don’t see them anymore.”
Tonight’s opening film might force the audience to think about some of the more disturbing images we see on an almost constant basis in a different light.
“It’s really very important to think about who is taking that photograph? Who is that photograph being taken of? What should we see? And what should we not see? And how does it affect us in the long run? She says, “Do we desensitize to violence, tragedy, etc. if we constantly see it?”
Other films bring a sense of place closer to home. Take Friday’s screening of
“Trick or Treaty,” which delves deep into the transferring indigenous sovereign lands in Canada to the British crown. Festival co-programmer and Newhouse professor Tula Goenka says central New Yorkers can make a connection with the Onondaga nation.
“It’s the seed of the Haudenosaunee confederacy and indigenous rights are very much a local issue and a local story for us.” She says, “And it’s extremely important that whether, its student or people in Syracuse, realize we live on land that is not really ours.”
Goenka expects the question and answer period with the director will connect the film’s relevance to central New York or the rest of the world. She says the festival’s closing film called “Aligargh” sheds light on l-g-b-t rights in India.
“Gay marriage has become legal in the United States, but it hasn’t all over the world.” Goneka says, “For people to see the struggles to be with the person you love.”
Ziff will be on hand for a question and answer session after her film “The Man Who Saw Too Much”, Thursday night at 7 in the Hergenhan auditorium in Newhouse three.
OPENING NIGHT
Thursday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m.
Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3
“The Man Who Saw Too Much”
Trailer:http://themanwhosawtoomuch.com/site/trailer/
Friday, Sept. 30, 7 p.m.
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
“Trick or Treaty?”
Alanis Obomsawin (85 min, Canada, 2014, closed-captioned in English)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lst4meSmVck
Saturday, Oct. 1, 1 p.m.
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
“The Crossing”
George Kurian (2015, 55 min, Norway, Arabic and English with English subtitles)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trW0YXz4SBM
Saturday, Oct. 1, 4 p.m.
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
“Koza”
Ivan Ostrochovský (75 min, Slovakia/Czech Republic, Slovak with English subtitles)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOs0PTCC07A
Saturday, Oct. 1, 7 p.m.
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
“Aligarh”
Hansal Mehta (120 min, India, 2015, Hindi with English subtitles)