Open Eyes - Films for Human Rights Education at Schools
1. Perspective - International Human Rights Film Festival
Perspective - the International Human Rights Film Festival has been carrying out political and social education ever since its founding in 1999. With the help of the twentieth century´s leading medium, the festival contributes to mutual understanding and promotes tolerance and friendship between people and cultures.
2. The subject and object of the project
"Film is a means of expression which affects our everyday life. The younger generation in particular obtains many of its moral concepts and direction from film and other audiovisual media." Horst Walther (Institute for Film and Film Culture)
Through the stories which the films tell, young people are provoked into tackling human rights, the notion of human dignity and alien cultures. We want to arouse openness and to raise awareness of the situation of minorities. Coming to terms with other, alien attitudes is an important prerequisite for accepting these other attitudes in the first place. The festival wants to challenge the subliminal glorification of violence which is alarmingly present in our mass media.
In 2003, Perspective created a programme which was aimed especially at schoolchildren, in the above-mentioned sense. In just one week, over 700 schoolchildren attended. We presented ten screenings for older pupils which were preceded by an introduction to the topic and followed by discussions on the following themes:
- Racism and xenophobia
- Violence in schools and media neglect
- The problem of the death penalty
- The Nuremberg Race Laws of 15 September 1935 and their consequences
- Flight, emigration and Fortress Europ
- Aids in Africa and India
- The everyday life and struggle for survival of streetchildren in Bucharest
- Genocide in Rwanda
- The effects of the Middle East conflict on children, who as Israelis and Palestinians (have to) live in completely different worlds
From 2004 onwards, we would like to expand these school screenings and plan, organise and implement them in conjunction with our colleagues from the One World - International Human Rights Film Festival in Prague. For two years now, our partner festival has been organising a project which is based on broad cooperation with schools and aims to make film and audiovisual material useful in lessons. The One World team has been working in conjunction with a team of educators and experts to develop a methodology which has thus far proven to be a great success in Czech schools. Together we would like to offer this project to German schools.
The Open Eyes Project
- provides insight into the fundamental human rights and values on which our societies are based. Through film screenings, post-screening debates, accompanying publications, simulation games and interactive teaching methods, young people should be brought up to believe in tolerant, inter-cultural communication and be sensitivised to protect this. The project challenges prejudice, intolerance, nationalism and xenophobia and offers schools help to comprehend contexts and develop own attitudes.
- is a building block for understanding film and media expertise, disseminates the meaning of audiovisual media and reflects by analysing their language and aesthetic. Moreover, we would like to make complex associations noticeable and to contribute to a conscious involvement with world images as well as to promote a critical judgement of the media in a social context.
- promotes international exchanges. The Czech experience serves as a point of departure for further developing media education which will be of help to other countries in the future.
3. Realising the project
3.1. Selecting the film collection
Together both festivals select eight documentary films which tackle human rights. The selection covers the following themes
- racism and discrimination
- the Apartheid era in South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions work
- people in Rwanda, the work of the International Tribunal in Arusha and the re-creation of traditional courts in villages which should enable reconciliation between neighbours
- victims of the civil war in former Yugoslavia and the International Tribunal in the Hague.
- the Middle East Conflict
- people who survived the Shoah
- the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and their consequences
- forced labourers in Nazi Germany
The selected films are translated by the festivals and subtitled in German and Czech.
3.2. The Use of Film and Video
3.2.1. At the cinema
In April 2004, the films were shown to schools in the afternoon within the context of the One World festival. From 14 - 21 February, 2005, they were presented by Perspective at the Nuremberg Filmhaus cinema. The films were shown to classes and other groups at 9 am, 11 am and 2pm. Each screening will be followed by a debate led by an expert.
3.2.2. In schools
The festivals have made available a VHS archive of these films so that schools can use them further in class and supplementary educational material is also on offer.
3.3. Production and distribution of audiovisual materials for schools
The selected films will be made available to interested schools on subtitled video cassettes. The festivals have secured the projection rights for these non-commercial screenings for educational purposes.
Apart from the film collections the schools are offered the following supplementary material:
- educational sheets and methodological instructions for individual films
- booklets with supplementary details about further sources of information and contacts
3.4. Seminar for German teachers
The aim of the seminar is for German colleagues to be able to learn from the experiences of the Czech Republic and to use example situations to show them how films can be used in class. Two lectors and one of the project coordinators from the Czech Republic, who have a two-year experience in working with audiovisual media in class, will take part in the seminar.
4. Our Czech partners' experiences
The charity "Clovek v tisni" works in close cooperation with the One World team to show films from the One World festival in Czech schools. At the moment, 217 secondary schools from every region of the Czech Republic are closely involved with this project.
Within the framework of this project, a cycle of seminars has been organised in which educators (predominantly from the areas of social sciences and the humanities) are taught to use audiovisual material in class. 306 educators have applied to take part in these seminars. The participating schools have been offered the opportunity of using the VHS documentary film collection, which the educators can then use in the context of ordinary lessons.
The cooperation of magistrates, district offices and the Ministry for Education and Culture is of significance. The afore-named institutions were made aware of the projects realisation and now support the project financially. Their representatives also take part in the events.
5. The significance of the project and the expected effect
Film and consequent debate offer a more open possibility for communication in comparison to traditional school lessons and textbooks. We believe that films and supplementary material can bring schoolchildren closer to a theme in an interesting and inspiring manner because film is part of the popular culture that they move in during their free time.
The significance of the project lies in the fact that the experiences gained in the Czech Republic will now be applied on a larger and international scale. The Czech experiences show that the methodology used has a wide multiplicatory effect. We expect this project to allow for the development of a methodology which can be used in other countries. Perspective and One World are founding members of the Human Rights Film Network (HRFN), an international union which so far comprises 17 human rights film festivals from Argentina, Germany, France, Great Britain, India, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, the Czech Republic and the USA. Most of these festivals are thinking of developing concepts to bring the subject of human rights into schools through the medium of film. The experiences from the Czech Republic and Germany will be exemplary for other festivals.
