Organizers of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival urged attendees at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Friday night to join the fight against continual violations of human rights worldwide.
The traveling film festival, which began in 1988, showcases fiction, documentary and animated films with human rights themes. The Boston event, which was the 12th of 16 festivals in different cities, featured highlights from the New York and London festivals.
During the festival’s four-day stay in Boston, 18 films from 12 countries were showcased in a trio of locations: the MFA, the Coolidge Corner Movie Theater and the International Institute of Boston. The films addressed a range of human rights issues, including homelessness, poverty, immigration and children’s rights.
“We’re not in the business of telling people what to think or how to think, but we just want them to think,” said Festival Director Andrea Holley.
Holley said the overall goal of the festival was about “putting things in a framework to be able to show a story through an individual’s eyes.” She said she hoped people would watch the films and think, “That could be me.”
The film Children Underground, a portrayal of homeless children in Romania, was shown Friday night at the MFA, and was followed by a discussion with the film’s director, Edet Belzberg.
Children Underground follows five children, all members of a “family” of abandoned, abused or runaway children, living in a subway station in Bucharest, Romania.
Before the film began, Holley warned the audience of the nature of the film.
“This is a very difficult film to watch, but it is impossible to turn away,” she said. “I am always asking people not to look away.”
The request proved difficult for audience members, many of whom bowed their heads, covered their faces, sighed and shifted in their seats as they saw eight- and 10-year-old boys using drugs, sleeping on cardboard boxes and begging for money, food and water.
Belzberg said she “naively thought” at first the five children who participated in the film would immediately be adopted or placed in homes or shelters shortly after the film’s debut.
She said this did not happen, but “for different reasons.”
The film won several awards, including the 2001 Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize for Documentary.
Linda and Aislynn Rodeghiero, who are mother and daughter, respectively, agreed the film was true to the atrocious conditions in Romania. They heard of the film through the “Romanian Children’s Relief,” a Southborough-based organization of which both women are members.
According to Aislynn, awareness is most important.
“By showing these films, people gain awareness and realize that what they think is a European and Asian problem can be seen two miles down the road,” Aislynn Rodeghiero said.
The Rodeghieros have traveled to Romania and worked with children in hospitals and orphanages in Bucharest and Bestritsa. Their apartment overlooked the subway station and surrounding plaza portrayed in the film.
“I’m hoping they will show this in Romania,” Linda said, “so the government can see how their children are living.”
The festival’s next stop will be the San Francisco Bay Area.
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