Human Rights Turn 60
Last week citizens around the globe celebrations gathered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
UN photo by H'rina DeTroy
From Pretoria to Paris panels, film showings, lectures and public ceremonies commemorated the signing of the historic document that enshrined theories of universal rights famously established in the French and American Revolutions.
At an event at the UN, and sponsored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ten short films were shown, each touching on one of the rights guaranteed in the Declaration. Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako’s film is a mediation on dignity and justice. Finding working people going about their business in the market, in their cars, on their way from place to place, he asks them the film’s eponymous question: “C’est Quoi La Dignite?”
His respondents’ stares are arresting. Some look at the viewer with confusion, others with defiance. “Why are you asking me,”one man demands. Though the lens of his camera, Sissako conveys the answer he seeks in the faces. This, he suggests, is what dignity looks like.
It was remarkable, and a not so subtle statement, of the UNHCHR’s concerns that among the international selection 2 of the 10 short films were from Israel/Palestine, both addressing the absurdity of the Palestinian predicament. In A Boy, A Wall, A Donkey by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad three young boys attempt to make a movie using the only technology available: first a neighbor’s intercom, and later the surveillance cameras mounted on the Israel’s “security barrier.” When members of the IDF approach the boys in a speeding military vehicle, the boys do not run, but ask only “Where’s the tape?”
Israeli filmmakers Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret take a different approach. In their film What About Me? a magical realist take on the subject of crossing borders in the occupied territories, a Palestinian businessman is refused entry to Israel with his load of bananas, while his talking donkey is waived ahead. Like Sissako’s film, What About Me was selected to address the issues of dignity and justice in the declaration.
Still by H'rina Detroy from the film What About Me?
Together the ten films offered a beautifully articulation of the strivings of a document that has shaped the way we think about ourselves and each other.
