Bamenda Human Rights Film and Arts Festival: Official Launching of the Festival

Monday, July 16, 2012

Official Launching of the Festival

Launching activities

Film Producers, Actors and Officials

Gwain Colbert (Co-founder of A Common Future) addressing the crowd at launching

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Presss Release : Bamenda Human Rights Film and Arts Festival July 15-21, 2012

Bamenda Human Rights Film and Arts Festival

July 15-21, 2012

Bamenda-Cameroon

The Bamenda Film and Arts Festival will run from July 15-21, 2012 in selected halls and cafes at the Bamenda municipality. The festival which is in its second edition seeks to articulate local, national and international issues through film and arts. It is a lineup of the most sort after box office films in Cameroon and abroad that clearly addresses related issues like governance, trafficking, the respect of human dignity, discrimination and above all, respect of international conventions and protocols. Being about the only film festival in this part of the country, the Bamenda event, which is the second edition, promises to be an awareness raising medium par excellence.

Through arts, the festival shall gather over 100 students to participate in shinning the light on human rights and their drawings shall later be displayed at a gallery on a university campus throughout the festival period. Through this, students shall be brought to promote, defend, and raise awareness on human rights issues in Cameroon, especially rape and sexual assault in the school milieu. This festival uses arts and film as a creative tool to disseminate knowledge and to influence public opinion on human rights issues. The festival shall screen some 18 selected films which each address the concerns of humanity and range from violence against women through non-discrimination to the upholding of human dignity in all its forms. The arts festival shall complement the film screenings as it seeks to ignite and instill the culture of human rights in the youth, especially in the school milieu as schools are at the centre of every community. The Bamenda festival reaches out to the audience as most of the screenings shall be on various community halls, cafes and university centre in the Bamenda municipality. Each screening shall be followed by a panel discussion and questions and answers from the audience on salient points.

The objectives of the festival are to improve the quality of Human Rights awareness and knowledge among the population of the Northwest Region. It shall also promote the core values of the International community’s human rights principles of a world free of discrimination, conflict and human rights violations through film festivals. The festival aims to encourage many more Cameroonian film makers and producers to inculcate human rights as key themes in the development of their films as an efficient and effective communicative vehicle in human rights education and sensitization. The primary target is the common man in the street that has hardly had an opportunity to receive human rights education, talk less of understanding the essence of the very first principle of human rights that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in rights and dignity.’ The festival would enable human rights education and sensitization to for once, leave the cozy confines of conference halls into the much flexible entertainment medium. The secondary audience would be the NGOs and Civil Society activists and film makers who are called upon to step up their activities as the festival seeks to celebrate the work they have done in the past.

The 18 selected films for the festival are; Widows @ War and WildLife Palavar produced and directed by Chop Samuel; Vice & Virtue as well as Asoni directed by Keka Sylvester; Tears from an Angel by Ihehon; Perverted Angel and Une Vie Une Histoire by Alfred Amandy, Elemo by Nchoutu Rami, The Evidence by Ngato Noutosii, Before the Sunrise by Agbor Gilbert, Your Mother My Wife by Molimi Cletus, The Woman’s World by Itambi Delphine, Atonement Calabash by Akuro Titus, Pension by Nyincho James, The Storm by CHRAC, Thinking Out of the Man Box by Anthony Porter, Rape and Incest produced by Aunties Association and the German Technical Cooperation, GiZ

A Common Future is a leading national organization that works to transform lives and build common frontiers by proposing alternative models of masculinity that are not in opposition to models of femininity and that allow men and women to share love, decision making and reproductive health issues. Drawing inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other related instruments, we help to organize communities in order to raise awareness and get people involved in promoting and protecting human rights. By strategizing with communities, schools and colleges across the region, we work to shift social norms and bring social change. A key strategy to our work of advocacy campaigns is the organization of film and arts festivals. The Festival is organized in collaboration with the Netherlands based Movies That Matter, the international Network of Human Rights Film Festivals, the North West Regional Delegation of Arts and Culture, the Bamenda City municipality, a chain of newspapers, Radios and TV channels as well as some local organizations.

Gwain Colbert Fulai

Co-Founder, A Common Future Productions

Organizer, Bamenda Human Rights Films and Arts Festival

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Monday, July 16, 2012

Official Launching of the Festival

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