2005 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH TRAVELING FILM FESTIVAL
November 13th - 20th

A week-long series of films and discussions highlighting the challenges to human rights today.

Film Tickets $5 | $4 for Students and Seniors. Available before each screening.
Festival Passes $25 | $20 for Students and Seniors. Available through SPACE.

OPENING NIGHT - Sunday, November 13th, 6:30pm - Free to the public

Join us for a screening of Occupation: Dreamland. Followed by Q & A with Andrea Holley from Human Rights Watch. Food provided by Flatbread Company.

Sunday, November 13th, 7pm
OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND
Garrett Scott and Ian Olds - USA - 2005 - 78m - doc
Sponsored by Scales Restaurant

Occupation: Dreamland follows one squad in the US Army's 82nd Airborne deployed in the doomed Iraqi city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. The film features a series of remarkably candid interviews with the squad's soldiers who detail their sometimes shocking daily life as disillusionment creeps into their mission. Occupation: Dreamland brings a first hand view of the moral and operational complexities inherent in American warfare in the 21st century. As low-intensity conflict proliferates, distrust between the Iraqi civilians and the US soldiers stationed in Falluja increase leading to skepticism and greater confusion on all sides. The film presents a fascinating look at the last days before a final series of assaults in the spring of 2004 effectively destroyed Falluja.

Monday, November 14th, 7pm | Tuesday, November 15th, 3pm
DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE
Hubert Sauper | France/Austria/Belgium | 2004 | 107m | doc
Sponsored by Videoport

An artfully filmed look at the crumbling underside of globalization, Darwin's Nightmare focuses on the Nile Perch a predatory species introduced into Lake Victoria in the late 1960's. Since then, the fish has voraciously devoured almost all of the native fish species, shifting what was once a diverse ecological system towards a dead-end monoculture. As a result, the economic stability of the Tanzanian Lake Region has been uprooted, with farmers abandoning their fields to follow the European appetite for the perch's white filets. Complicating issues are the hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes that come to haul the fish while quietly delivering their deadly cargo of arms to supply the raging civil war in nearby Angola. Renowned director Hubert Sauper has managed to create a haunting and darkly beautiful portrait of consumer democracies gone wrong.

Tuesday, November 15th, 7pm | Wednesday, November 16th, 3pm
LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR
James Brabazon and Jonathan Stack - USA - 2004 - 102m - doc
Sponsored by Peace Action Maine

In Liberia, the summer of 2003 was pure insanity: two armies were in the final battle of a decade - long civil war, holding the capital under siege while thousands died from mortar shells launched from afar. As the soldiers, mostly teenagers, fought a bloody urban battle, the nation prayed for American intervention to put an end to the violence. Liberia, a country founded by freed American slaves, has a long intertwined history with America. While the rebel army, the LURD, attempted to overthrow the Liberian government, President Charles Taylor and his army maintained a strong grip on the city. The film journeys to the heart of the conflict by covering both sides: while two-time Academy Award nominated filmmaker Jonathan Stack covers the defense of the capital from the inside, his filmmaking partner, veteran photojournalist James Brabazon, travels with the LURD rebels as they fight their way closer to the capital. The film situates the fighting within the larger international political context, focusing particularly on America's weak response. It completes the picture with a series of exclusive interviews with the elusive Charles Taylor, a man since indicted for war crimes for heinous abuses against civilians, sexual slavery, and the use of child soldiers. The film presents the complex layers of the conflict and raises questions regarding the moral responsibility of the U.S. to respond to a growing humanitarian crisis.

Wednesday, November 16th, 7pm | Thursday, November 17th, 3pm
STATE OF FEAR
Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy - USA/Perú | - 2005 - 94m - doc
Sponsored by The Waynflete Human Rights Group

How can an open society balance demands for security with democracy? State of Fear dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a "war" against terror, a "war" potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain. The filmmakers masterfully blend personal testimony, history, and archival footage to tell the story of escalating violence in the Andean nation and how fear of terror undermined democracy, making Per' a virtual dictatorship where official corruption replaced the rule of law. Terrorist attacks by Shining Path insurgents provoked a military occupation of the countryside. Military justice replaced civil authority. Widespread abuses by President Fujimori's Army went unpunished. Terrorism continued to spread. Though the film traces events in Per', where nearly 70,000 civilians eventually died at the hands of Shining Path and the Peruvian military, it serves as a cautionary tale for other democratic nations such as the United States.

Thursday, November 17th, 7pm | Friday, November 18th, 3pm
THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX
Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt - USA - 2005 - 76m - doc
Sponsored by The Maine Civil Liberties Union

The national debate over federally funded "abstinence-only" sex education programs plays out in full force in The Education of Shelby Knox. Fifteen-year-old Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas is a self-described "good Southern Baptist girl," who herself has pledged abstinence until marriage. When she finds that Lubbock has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the nation and that her county's high schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, she becomes an unlikely advocate for comprehensive sex education, profoundly redefining her political and spiritual views along the way. "I think that God wants you to question," Shelby says, "to do more than just blindly be a follower, because he can't use blind followers. He can use people like me who realize there's more in the world that can be done." Here is a story for our times, where the combustible mix of politics, family and faith are not as predictable as the red state/blue state divide would suggest.

Friday, November 18th, 7pm | Saturday, November 19th, 3pm
STREET FIGHT
Marshall Curry - USA - 2005 - 83m - doc
Sponsored by The Portland League of Pissed Off Voters

Called "the best American political documentary since 1993's The War Room" by the Washington Post, Street Fight tells a riveting story about the underbelly of American democracy. It chronicles the bare-knuckles race for Mayor of Newark, N.J. between Cory Booker, a 32-year-old Rhodes Scholar/Yale Law School grad, and Sharpe James, the four-term incumbent and undisputed champion of New Jersey politics. Fought in Newark's neighborhoods and housing projects, the battle pits Booker against an old style political machine that uses any means necessary to crush its opponents. Even the filmmaker gets dragged into the slugfest, and by election day the climate becomes so heated that the Federal government is forced to send in observers to watch for cheating and violence. The battle sheds light on important American questions about democracy, power and -- in a surprising twist -- race. Street Fight presents a rarely seen look at a kind of electioneering that is not just about spin doctors, media consultants or photo ops. In Newark, we discover, elections are won and lost in the streets.

Saturday, November 19th, 7pm | Sunday, November 20th, 3pm
THE BOYS OF BARAKA
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady - USA/Kenya - 2004/2005 - 84m - doc
Sponsored by Green Design Furniture Co.

On September 12, 2002 twenty "at risk" 12-year-old boys from the tough streets of inner-city Baltimore left home to attend 7th and 8th grade at Baraka, an experimental boarding school located in Kenya, East Africa. Here, faced with a strict academic and disciplinary program, as well as the freedom to be normal teenage boys, these brave kids began the daunting task of putting their lives on a fresh path. The Boys of Baraka focuses on four boys: Devon, Montrey, Richard, and Romesh, Richard's brother. Their humor and candor give intimate insight into their optimism, despite the tremendous obstacles they face both at home and in school. Through extensive time with the boys in Baltimore and in Africa, the film captures the kids' amazing journey and how they fare when forced to return to the difficult realities of their city. The Boys of Baraka zeros in on kids that society has given up on'boys with every disadvantage but who refuse to be cast off as "throw-aways."