By: Christine Umali WITNESS, Posted: Nov 10 08

Global

documentary, film, Sheffield Doc Fest, social issues

--- 5 days of documentary films, industry panels, and an inspiring church service devoted to social issue filmmaking ---

Sheffield Doc/Fest invited WITNESS to participate in the festival to meet up with social issue filmmakers and other nonprofits using video for social change. They also screened two WITNESS videos - Outlawed, about torture and rendition used in the war on terror, and Entrenched Abuse, about forced labor in Burma. Outlawed screened with a surreal and fascinating documentary called Full Battle Rattle, which is about a US army training facility that simulates Iraqi villages with full scale reenactments of bombings, attacks and everyday life in Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqi Americans portrayed villagers and another group of soldiers back from Iraq played insurgents.

Other screening highlights included The New Ten Commandments, a compilation of ten short films about human rights in Scotland to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each film takes on a different right in hugely varying styles which make you laugh, cry and cringe. MoveOn chronicles the inception of MoveOn.org from an online petition created just after September 11th culminating with the election of Barack Obama. Screened as a work-in-progress just 2 days after the election, the climactic scene was just a text card and the audience filled in as a cheering crowd.

The highlight of my festival was BRITDOC’s Saturday Service, a session about social issue films that took place in a chapel. BRITDOC funds, develops and distributes documentary films with a focus on social justice. Speakers included Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa Llodio from Doctors Without Borders, Diana Ingraham from SILVERDOCS, Patricia Finneran from Sundance and Robert West from Working Films. Here’s an interview with Robert filmed while the BRITDOC team was setting up the chapel:

WITNESS’s own Sam Gregory also spoke and we both led breakout groups to discuss the pros and cons of filmmakers partnering with NGO’s. Admittedly I was a little surprised by the level of anxiety most of the filmmakers expressed about working with third sector partners. Though there may be difficulties, I think you can’t create a film about a social issue and pretend you are producing in vacuum. Perhaps that’s why I work for WITNESS.