Tuesday night saw one such event, the “Which Human Rights?” documentary festival, kick off across three central İstanbul venues; contemporary art space SALT Beyoğlu, the Dutch Chapel and the renovated tobacco warehouse in Tophane.
An event launched in 2009 as a side event of the DOCUMENTARIST İstanbul Documentary Days, the festival, which runs through Saturday, will take audiences on a eye-opening cinematic journey from the harsh lives of forest laborers in remote Anatolia and the plight of child soldiers in Uganda to the ancient tradition of dancing boys in Afghanistan and perspectives on the Arab Spring in the aftermath of the revolutions.
Speaking at the official event opening held in the splendor of the historic Dutch Consulate in İstanbul, the Dutch consul-general, Onno Kervers, said the event had become somewhat of a tradition. “This is the third time we have hosted the ‘Which Human Rights?’ festival and I hope we will continue to for many years. This year the theme of the festival is children’s rights, which is very topical especially with regard to issues such as child labor and also human trafficking, which often directly affects children,” he said.
An evening that saw packed out theaters across all three festival venues, a screening of the classic 1979 documentary “Tahtacı Fatma” (Fatma of the Forest) by the late Turkish filmmaker Süha Arın was shown at the official opening at the Dutch Chapel. A moving tale offering an insight into the daily grind of forest laborers in Anatolia, this is the first time that the documentary has been screened in public for many years. The film focuses on the life and dreams of Fatma, a 12-year-old forest laborer who has been working up in the mountains as long as she can remember. It will be screened again at 2 p.m. on Saturday at the tobacco warehouse in Tophane.
Two parts of the Dutch production “Just Kids,” a series of six short films from the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Turkey, were also presented at the opening. Festival organizer Necati Sönmez’s “Fatma” tells the tale of a young girl working as a farm-laborer in eastern Turkey, while Ayfer Ergun’s “Aram” hears the worries of a young boy brought up in the Netherlands but faced with the imminent prospect of a forced return to Iraq.
Film categories featured in the program include “Children and their Rights,” “Portraits of Human Rights Activists,” “The Poles of the Arab Awakening,” “International Panorama,” “Animated Documentaries” and “Turkey: Which Human Rights?” All film screenings and activities featured in the program are free of admission, for more information see http://www.documentarist.org/insan/
