Films & Documentaries

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Zurich held its 12th International Experimental Film and Video Festival on 22-30 May 2010, featuring new works by Jessie Mott, "creator of the most famous Flickr posting", and 80-year-old Canadian pioneer Michael Snow, as well as paying homage to the recently deceased Swiss descendant of Mélies, Klaus Lutz1. Peter Hulm looks back at the festival:

“W”  Oliver Stone’s new film, recounting the life of George W. Bush, is showing at the Fernay Voltaire theater near the Hyper Champion.  We went to the six o’clock showing Wednesday night. A total of five  people were in the audience, and two of them were editors from the Essential Edge. The third was the wife of one of the editors.  It is not hard to imagine why Stone’s film might bomb. Since Barak Obama’s election victory, most of us have heaved a sigh of relief and tried to erase the last eight years from our memories.  But it is a shame to let Stone’s film, which is a masterful mixture of comedy and extreme tragedy, go unnoticed.  Stone came under heavy criticism for historical inaccuracies in his film on JFK, which missed its mark.  But in “W,” he succeeds in accomplishing the nearly impossible—making us see Bush as a nearly sympathetic, if tragically failed, human being. It’s the story of a ne’er do well son, who means well, but can never quite make the grade, and whose father loves him, but knows from the start that he can only be a disappointment. He’s the eternal frat boy who never quite grows up, who is fun to have a beer  and watch Saturday night football with, but never fully grasps what the real world is really about.

This blog is contributed by Peter Hulm from his personal blog: Crosslines.ch

Geneva - The 8th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva (5-14 March 2010) offered the Nobel Literature Prizewinner J.-M. G. Le Clézio and a reading from his work, the UN Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, French star Juliette Binoche and diva Barbara Hendricks for a day of solidarity with Africa, several debates with leading human rights campaigners, and 10 days of films from the afternoon and evenings.

This year’s International Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH ) in Geneva is dedicated to cinematographers such as Tibetan director Dhondup Wangchen and all those who run grave risks making their films. Journalist Pamela Taylor explores the issue in this piece pulished by Infosud , the Geneva-based humanitarian and development news agency. Infosud also publishes the Human Rights Tribune.