How to start a human rights film festival: Expertise,training and collective media activism

Introduction

There was a single slide projected on a screen at the front of the room. It read, ‘Freedom of speech means you may offend someone’. The possible responses were as follows: (A) agree, (B) kind of agree or (C) disagree. It was March 2012. The answer was obvious to me then. I was in the Hague conducting participant-observation during ‘Cinema Without Borders’, an international training workshop on how to start a human rights film festival (HRFF), organized in tandem with the Movies that Matter festival. The people in the room were from all over the world: Netherlands, Czech Republic, Germany, Jordan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Serbia, Colombia, Cameroon, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines, Kosovo, South Africa, Libya and Sri Lanka. The workshop’s organizers generously gave me, a researcher from the United States, permission to sit in on the week’s meetings and accompanying festival events. We were all instructed to look at the statement on the slide, and then choose from the possible answers – A, B or C – moving to a designated corner of the room once we had our answer. I was from the United States, home of the First Amendment. ‘Freedom of Speech means you may offend someone?’ I moved, without hesitation, to the corner of the room designated for those who ‘Agree’, fully expecting the rest of the group to join me there. And yet, as I scanned the room, the great majority of our group went with answer B: they partially (kind of) agreed that freedom of speech means you may offend someone. A few stood with me in the A area, and a few went with C. This interaction pushed me to more clearly see the limits of my own understanding, to notice how where I was from shaped how I understand the world and to ask why others might see things differently. ¹

In this article, I examine how stakeholders in the Human Rights Film Network (the Network) support and mentor activists around the world in how to start an HRFF. I focus on the role HRFF training workshops and the Network’s handbook ² play in connecting and offering guidance to media activists around the world, in turn expanding the global reach of human rights media activism. The field work I discuss here is part of ongoing research I began conducting at HRFFs in 2011. Over the course of several years, I was able to attend member festivals in Western and Eastern Europe, South America, North America, West Africa and South Asia. In November 2011, the Network allowed me to join them during their annual members’ meeting in Amsterdam. Then, in 2012, I was given permission to sit in as a participant-observer at two HRFF training workshops: the ‘“Recontre du Festivals” on Human Rights and the Freedom of Expression’, organized alongside the Ciné Droit Libre festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and the biannual, utopian-titled ‘Cinema Without Borders’ workshop in the Hague. ³ In the years that have followed that initial field research, I have continued to track the Network’s membership and activities, including the 2015 revision of its handbook on how to set up an HRFF. ⁴ The Network and its member festivals offer a number of critical forms of support to emerging human rights–focused media projects around the world including the following: (1) offering informal advising to new festivals and potential future member festivals, often by serving as a jury member or guest at those emerging HRFFs; (2) standing as an ally for human rights defenders and filmmakers; (3) providing financial support/funding; (4) publishing and distributing a free, online handbook on how to set up an HRFF – now in its second edition – and (5) organizing international training workshops.

As organizers of established HRFFs (often from wealthier, developed, ‘Western’ countries) have sought to sustain and grow the Network through training workshops, their wisdom about how to organize an HRFF has not always matched the context, needs or stakes faced by organizers from poorer, less developed, ‘non-Western’ countries. I use the imperfect terms Western/non-Western here to mirror a dichotomy outlined in human rights scholarship signaling power relations. In this dichotomy, the ‘West’ is both a geographic place and also a hegemonic imaginary. The Cinema Without Borders workshop leaders and participants came together in the Hague around a shared ideal (human rights) and a shared aspiration (to put together human rights–centered film events in their local communities). The brief workshop exercise described in the opening of this article demonstrates how even seemingly shared concepts, so-called ‘universals’ – like human rights, like freedom of speech – are grounded in particular cultural ideologies and thus flexible. As my research findings demonstrate, the workshop participants reshaped the human rights universal in their own media activism in markedly different ways based on local meanings and lived experiences. Those differences emerged through interactions I witnessed and were most clear in moments of misunderstanding, disagreement, concern or even just curiosity.

I argue that these interactions are a powerful example of what Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2005) terms friction: ‘the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ (p. 2). Global interactions are defined by friction because they are inherently marked by a power differential, inevitably awkward. Tsing argues that universals like human rights facilitate global interactions via their capacities to travel and to help people speak to one another across distance and difference. And yet, universals also allow us to assume we understand each other, when really we are using the same words to mean something quite different (Tsing, 2005: xi). ⁵ Rather than reject universals because of such messiness, Tsing encourages us to understand it as a defining characteristic of interactions across difference and a key ingredient for productive global exchange. My work here is an ethnography of those global connections: I examine the media activist practice of international HRFF training workshops as sites of friction – sites that connect stakeholders whose relationships to human rights are quite different and thus provide fertile ground for interactions defined by their ‘awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities’ (Tsing, 2005). Friction is always potentially productive, but it requires recognizing the limits of one’s own understanding, a willingness to embrace differences, a politicized commitment to listening, even (especially) when understanding is difficult, as well as an awareness of the tendency to privilege Western perspectives and experiences. Friction is not a sign that workshop leaders are doing anything wrong, but rather serves as a reminder that employing human rights as a universal can risk centering Western understandings in activist spaces and collective interactions that strive to be global. Friction also demonstrates the productive messiness of collective (media) activism, and the role that universals can play in making global activism possible.

Though defined by uneven flows of knowledge and power, I argue that HRFF training workshops provide an important case study for how activist collaboration can work productively in an era defined by the global circulation of cultural forms and practices. They are sites of global exchange where the meanings of human rights media activism are co-produced and co-created. My research demonstrates how in the process of training, supporting and mentoring others in how to start an HRFF, veteran festival organizers can be prompted – via friction – to recognize and reevaluate their own assumptions. There will inevitably be moments when workshop leaders become aware their advice is incompatible with participants’ local realities. In those moments of friction lies the opportunity for leaders to make the conscious decision to – even temporarily – step out of the role of teacher and into the role of student. This crucial step of being a willing listener who is not only open to difference but to new ways of seeing can transform the workshop space into one of engaged and reciprocal pedagogical exchange. Exchanges like these have the potential to prompt organizers to recognize the limits of their own frames of understanding, and then to listen for signs of what the roots of those limitations might be. There were moments during Cinema Without Borders when I witnessed a disconnect between participants’ contributions and workshop leaders’ responses; at the time, I read these moments as missed opportunities for a potentially greater understanding of the diversity of experiences and perspectives represented in the room. Yet in the coming years, I observed some productive ways the issues and concerns raised by participants’ questions and statements have been incorporated into the Network’s overall approach to training and support – for instance, in the significant revision of their first how-to handbook. Thus, I propose that friction such as that which I witnessed in the workshop can facilitate greater solidarity and more meaningful collaboration among HRFF organizers, even when the results of that friction are not immediately evident.

Likewise, the kind of support provided via HRFF training workshops can be invaluable for nascent activist organizations and events, especially in geographical and cultural contexts where organizers face greater challenges with fewer resources. Several participants told me that even after Cinema Without Borders ended, they were able to turn to the workshop leaders for ongoing advice as they tried to organize HRFFs without local support and under unstable and harsh regimes. Speaking with some of the participants in the months to follow, I witnessed the extent to which they were able to articulate their plans with greater clarity. Through discussions with workshop leaders and fellow participants, they had gained a new level of confidence and the goals they outlined for their HRFFs had become much more feasible. All of this is in line with how the Network can offer both official member and emerging festivals a coalition of professional peers. One longtime festival organizer shared with me how HRFF organizing can get lonely; it is an ‘extremely specialized field’ and ‘it’s an ideological one – so you need each other’. Another organizer of an established festival told me that from an organizational point of view, the exchange facilitated by the Network can be mutually beneficial even with emerging festivals, noting that while their HRFF can offer help to newcomer festivals abroad, those festivals can often ‘offer us films … local films that … we would never know exist because they don’t travel to other festivals’. I was told that for some HRFFs, being a member of the Network and being able to use its name and logo in promotional materials provides legitimacy for and lends a greater credibility to emerging festivals’ activities. Conversely, I have observed how larger and more established festivals substantiate their own continued relevance via their visible support of new festivals and the continued expansion of the Network.

My findings are grounded in participant-observation I have conducted at HRFF events (including festivals, members’ meetings and training workshops) since 2011. In this article, I focus specifically on my experience as a researcher-observer in the Cinema Without Borders workshop as well as in-depth mediated interviews I conducted with individual HRFF organizers in the months that followed the workshop. I was introduced to the participants as a media scholar writing about the Network and its festivals, and was asked to present some of my early research findings as part of the workshop. I thus inhabited a role that vacillated between researcher and presenter; I was neither a trainee workshop participant nor an expert workshop leader, but rather somewhere in between. I connect my ethnographic evidence to a discursive textual analysis of two editions of the Network’s free online handbook, now in its second revised edition. I focus my analysis of each handbook on topics it addresses and the themes it emphasizes or repeats, underlying assumptions and values, framing of issues via keywords and organizing concepts and the range of included voices and perspectives. I also note changes and consistencies between the two versions of the handbook. Finally, I reflect on how the framing and content of first handbook had (or had not) been mirrored in the workshop’s sessions, especially in terms of what expert advice had been met with friction, and how or whether workshop participants’ incongruent perspectives had been incorporated into the second handbook. My goal is not to identify or claim a causal effect for the changes in the handbook, but rather to contextualize shifts between the handbooks as indicative of a larger shift in the Network’s approach to advice-giving and expertise over time. Based on the evidence gathered, I conclude that the extent of openness to self-reflection, and then to flexibility and change as a result of friction – both in the immediate and spontaneous activism of the workshop and the conscious and sustained approach to activism over time – provides the best indication of the Network’s capacity for collective activism.

Literature review

Both film and media scholars and human rights activists distinguish the form and function of the HRFF from other film festivals. Sonia Tascón (2015) describes HRFFs as ‘places of organized unruliness – subversive spaces of alternative exhibition – where films that were not originally seen as “human rights films” can be constructed as such’ (p. 203). HRFFs give coherence and meaning to an otherwise ‘fragmented set of stories’ (Tascón, 2015: 203). HRFFs then are spaces where films become ‘associated with the discourse of human rights’ and where ‘the spectator’s gaze’ is directed ‘toward themes that convey human failures or struggles for rights’ (Tascón, 2015: 203). Leshu Torchin (2012) highlights these festivals’ tendencies to partner with educational institutions, engage in community outreach and form coalitions with other activist festivals rather than mainstream festivals as a way for member festivals to ‘pool information resources on how to best promote human rights values through film culture’ (p. 9).

However, Tascón (2015) also brings a critical eye to the connection taking place at HRFFs, noting how they can position viewers as ‘looking out’ rather than ‘looking in’, as able to surveil and monitor distant others in the context of human rights (p. 11), in turn differentiating between ‘pity looking’ and ‘solidarity looking’ (p. 56). Tascón notes how HRFFs can unintentionally become more about local or domestic needs rather than the needs of the people in the screened films. In my own work, I compare the experiences of people who organize HRFFs with greater resources with those of HRFF organizers who face stakes and challenges that place them outside the realm of what could be considered a privileged position. By speaking directly with people who organize HRFFs in non-Western, poorer and less developed regions, I am able to offer additional ways of understanding the HRFF beyond it being a space for surveillance and monitoring.

The HRFF practice has expanded worldwide since the 1990s; training workshops on how to start a human rights–focused film festival have been a contributing factor to that expansion. These training workshops represent a cultural formation that is at once particularly European and undeniably global, as I will explain below. Any Western-rooted cultural practice that seeks to travel and make a global impact on universal ideals is at risk of aligning with entrenched histories of colonialism, imperialism and neoliberalism. Yet, to reject the validity of these HRFF workshops on that basis is to ignore how they can build solidarity and foster the co-production of more ethical activist practices. Such a framing also disavows the agency of non-Western participants who use workshops consciously and strategically to strengthen the activism they are already doing. Non-Western participants are not passive players in these global connections, but rather are capable of strategically assessing and localizing the Network’s advice, and in turn, the HRFF.

Nevertheless, there is consensus among scholars that, despite the current diversity of the film festival as a global practice, its roots are European (De Valck, 2007; Dovey, 2015; Wong, 2011). Marijke De Valck (2007) identifies Europe as ‘the cradle of the film festival phenomenon’ (p. 14). The rise of film festivals in Europe can be largely attributed to a desire among the European avant-garde to articulate their work in opposition to the hegemony of Hollywood (De Valck, 2007; Dovey, 2015). Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong (2011) refers to Venice and Cannes as ‘the two initial film festivals’ (p. 39) and De Valck (2007) asserts that ‘Film festivals were a purely European phenomenon’, with countries following the examples of Venice and Cannes by founding ‘their own festivals’ across Western Europe from Edinburgh to Berlin to Brussels and beyond (p. 49). Thus, there is general agreement among scholars that not only film festivals’ roots but also current structure and circulation are tied into a Western narrative.

The concept of human rights is also understood by many scholars as having roots in the West in general, and Europe in particular. While by no means indicative of a consensus, the European-origin perspective is important to acknowledge. For instance, Micheline R. Ishay (2004) argues that ‘our modern conception of rights, wherever in the world it may be voiced, is predominantly European in origin’ (p. 5, emphasis mine). Critics of ‘Western civilization’ are right to argue that contemporary ‘notions of morality’ should not be credited to European history alone, but rather are ‘indebted to a worldwide spectrum of both secular and religious traditions’ (Ishay, 2004: 6–7). And yet, Ishay (2004) attests that we cannot ignore ‘one of history’s most consequential realities: it has been the influence of the West, including the influence of the Western concept of universal rights, that has prevailed’ (p. 7). Ishay (2004) specifies this influence as European when she adds that ‘for our current understanding of human rights’, it is ‘the legacy of the European Enlightenment’ that ‘supersedes other influences’ (p. 7). For example, the signing of the Universal Declaration was largely in reaction to atrocities carried out in Europe during World War II and in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials, a history that is woven into the document’s text, which was ‘intended to prevent a repetition of atrocities of the kind that the Nazis had committed’ (Freeman, 2002: 35).

As it was told to me, the ‘origin story’ for the Human Rights Film Network is also a European one. The idea for a network of human rights–focused film festivals had been circulated for years before practical steps were taken toward its formation. By the mid-1990s, the HRFF was already a growing phenomenon, with festivals being organized around the world by both international human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and small cinema collectives. In August 2003, the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) included a special themed section on human rights film. Five European HRFF organizers attending the event agreed it would be an important and positive step to form an international network of HRFFs, and less than a year later, the inaugural meeting of the Human Rights Film Network was held in Prague. While as of the completion of this article, there are 43 active member festivals from six continents, the majority of the members are still in Europe. The Network’s European roots continue to inform its organizational practices. Today, the Network’s annual members’ meeting is always held in Amsterdam alongside the International Documentary Film Association (IDFA) festival. One European HRFF organizer told me that while there had been talk of changing the location, IDFA seems to be the one festival that ‘most of the members’ would be likely to ‘attend anyway’, and so it is a logical time and place to meet. Since a majority of the festivals in the Network take place in Europe, it makes sense that those members would prefer to not travel as far for the meeting. However, operating by this majority-rules logic means non-European festival representatives, whose financial means are often more limited than their European counterparts, must invest in costly travel. Furthermore, Movies that Matter (The Hague) provides the much-needed staff who carry out the majority of the logistical duties for the Network. Because Movies that Matter has the financial resources to fund staff year-round, they are better equipped to do this than a smaller festival whose staff members all work on a volunteer basis and have other fulltime jobs. Still, this setup facilitates a European lens for the Network’s internal communications and outreach. During my research, I also learned about other mid-year gatherings among festival organizers in Europe. These regional in-person gatherings are likely inspiring and energizing for the attendees in an age when so much communication is handled online. But while it is easier to collaborate with festivals that are nearer in proximity, it is worthwhile to at least consider whether the Network’s potential for fostering global collaboration and connectedness is at all impacted by such regional alliances.

Having greater numbers of opportunities for European festival organizers to be in decision-making roles and to meet in person could risk emphasizing the experiences of European festivals, rather than the perspectives of the global Network as a whole. The Europeanness of the Network’s roots and the lineage of its organizing concepts prompt the need to think critically about the HRFF as a global cinema practice. Indeed, ‘human rights’ itself – the defining concept uniting these festivals – has been contested by those who read it as not only Western in origin but ‘imperialist in intent’ (Grassilli, 2012: 34). Human rights have become ‘a hegemonic political discourse’ (Donnelly, 2003: 39) despite the fact that the values underlying the Universal Declaration have Western biases (Freeman, 2002: 36). In order to fully understand the Network’s contributions to global human rights discourse and practice, it is important to acknowledge the cultural and historical baggage, complex power relations, and in turn, the ethical stakes that come with actively spreading the HRFF practice.

The power relations embedded in the history of human rights pose a challenge for activists seeking to center the term in their global collective activism, including organizers of HRFF training workshops. If (even unconscious) assumptions of Western superiority are not challenged, there is the risk that activist aims can be undermined. A one-way flow of knowledge and experiences would run counter to the collective ideals of the Network and the activist aims of the workshops. Thus, I try to bring a critical eye to moments when newcomer organizers are encouraged to ascribe to typically Western values and practices such as rationality, decorum and commercialization. Attempts at global collective activism can inadvertently manifest in requiring those coming from the ‘margins’ to be conversant in dominant discourses that have historically excluded their perspectives, or assuming value in a teleological progression where non-Western organizers learn to be more Western in order to be understood as deserving of support. The ‘pity looking’ that Tascón (2015: 56) identifies as being characteristic of some HRFFs fits with larger patterns of Western ‘savior activism’ that have been critiqued by transnational feminists. Indeed, an articulated goal of the Network, and of the HRFF training workshops, is to create a context in which coalitions can be forged through partnership and collaboration rather than falling back on a ‘rhetoric of salvation’ that would construct non-Western people as ‘in need of saving’ (Abu-Lughod, 2002: 492). Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003) proposes a method for Western scholars to work against unequal and oppressive global exchange: a ‘solidarity model’ in which ‘we can put into practice the idea of “common differences” as the basis for deeper solidarity across differences and unequal power relations’ (p. 238). This framework uses a ‘comparative focus and analysis of the directionality of power no matter what the subject is’ and emphasizes ‘relations of mutuality’, ‘co-responsibility’ and ‘common interests’ (Mohanty, 2003: 242). Mohanty’s solidarity model for scholarship can be engaged in collective media activism as well. This model encourages workshop leaders to cultivate a purposeful self-consciousness about power relations among HRFF organizers and participants so they can avoid replicating historical patterns of oppression and savior activism. It highlights the importance of framing and enacting collective activist spaces, like the workshop proceedings, as mutual and collaborative while also recognizing them as unequal.

While scholars do raise concerns regarding a European model of human rights and activist practice, it is important to recognize the potential of these organizers to build media activism based on solidarity and the recognition of different experiences and expertise. Tsing’s articulation of friction does not ignore the problematic history of universals like human rights but instead refocuses on their duality. In this vein, I consider the transformative potential of organizers’ global interactions about what HRFFs can and should be, keeping in mind the European roots of both human rights and film festivals. This analytical framework is very much in keeping with the aspirational quality of human rights itself. As Donnelly (2003) notes, ‘Human rights are less about the way people “are” than about what they might become’ (p. 15). When Tascón reflects on the ways in which HRFFs take up human rights, she asserts that they can be ‘remade as others take them up and perform them differently’ (p. 17). So too, I would add, can the training workshops. Arturo Escobar (2012) calls for in-depth local ethnographies to understand how ‘concepts of development and modernity are resisted, hybridized with local forms, transformed, or what have you’ – what he refers to as their ‘cultural productivity’ (p. 51). Following Escobar’s argument, my ethnography of the Cinema Without Borders workshop identifies how participants resist, hybridize and transform the concept of human rights and considers what the outcomes of those exchanges might say about how human rights media activism can circulate productively in global contexts.

Ethnography: the Cinema Without Borders workshop

My analysis of the Cinema Without Borders workshop is centered on participants’ resistance to the lessons presented and the nature of the workshop leaders’ responses to those moments of friction. I present several notable examples that highlight important opportunities workshop leaders had to productively build on moments of friction. These moments were a chance to stop and purposefully listen to the perspectives and experiences being shared by the participants, in turn recognizing both the value of participants’ collaboration and the limits of workshop leaders’ own frames for understanding human rights activism on a global scale. Whether and how those opportunities were embraced in real time provided insight into the ways in which the Network’s global collaboration and mentoring practices could be further strengthened.

Four of the six workshop leaders were affiliated with established HRFFs in developed regions of Europe where filmgoing is a part of the local culture: Movies that Matter (The Hague, The Netherlands), One World (Prague, Czech Republic) and the Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival (Germany). The final two workshop leaders were from what was at the time a new member festival in the Network – Karama (Dignity, Amman, Jordan). Representatives from Movies that Matter were introduced as host organizers of the workshop, while the representatives from One World, Nuremberg and Karama were referred to in written materials and aloud as ‘coaches’. However, both the Dutch workshop organizers and the international coaches gave presentations and/or led group discussions during workshop sessions, and as such, I have chosen to refer to them collectively here as the ‘workshop leaders’. Workshop participants had been accepted on the basis of a human rights film event they hoped to organize in their home countries of Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Serbia, Colombia, Cameroon, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines, Kosovo, South Africa, Libya and Sri Lanka. Each day of the workshop was divided into several morning and afternoon ‘sessions’ focused on specific aspects of festival organization, ranging from programming to production to publicity. The order and content of the workshop’s schedule seemed to be designed primarily by the Dutch host festival’s organizing staff with each of the workshop coaches assigned to tackle individual presentations on designated topics and provide feedback on participants’ project ideas. Each day, the scheduled sessions ended early so that we could all attend screenings and parallel events at Movies that Matter, which was presented in a sense as being a model of a successful and professionally run festival. The workshop participants would spend their days discussing how to start and run an HRFF, and their evenings experiencing an already established and thriving festival in action.

All of the workshop proceedings took place in English and no one present had a translator. Fluency in English was a requirement for participation, as delineated in the application, though from what I observed, one or more of the participants could have benefited from translation, had it been available. This was in keeping with the fact that most of the HRFFs I visited used English as the generally accepted language to communicate with international guests, no matter the local language(s). Abé Mark Nornes (2007) calls language a ‘bottleneck in the traffic of the international film festival circuit’, noting that the expense, time and labor necessary for translation forces many festivals to ‘adopt a number of compromising strategies to cope with language difference’ (p. 61). The need for such compromise is also evident when considering that both the original and translated versions of the Network’s handbook are the result of HRFF organizers giving their time and knowledge to the project without compensation. When the handbook was first published in 2009 by One World, it was written in English, as was the revised 2015 edition. A Spanish translation of the handbook was released in 2016 (combining the first and second editions), with an Arabic translation of the second edition published at the end of 2017. Likewise, multiple challenges surfaced in scheduled discussions of translation and subtitling during Cinema Without Borders. Though most HRFFs – and certainly those that the participants would organize – function on a very limited budget and through volunteer labor, participants were encouraged to produce a bilingual catalog (the local language and English), and to screen films in their original language but subtitle them in an ‘international language’. While one workshop leader recommended that dubbing be avoided due to its association as a colonialist practice, several participants raised the complication of their audiences not being literate, and thus unable to read subtitles. When it came to language and translation, there were no easy answers.

In all workshop sessions, there was a clear demarcation between leaders and participants, experts and non-experts, although the participants were themselves extremely accomplished individuals with much knowledge and experience in activism and advocacy. They were founders and directors of NGOs focused on human rights and/or media, journalists, filmmakers and artists, and some of them had already been organizing film events in their home countries. An additional component shaping power relations was that in order to be eligible to participate, applicants were required to be from a country on the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list of countries eligible to receive Official Development Assistance (ODA). This stipulation that the participants come from countries on the DAC/ODA list replicates problematic assumptions about poorer countries having greater needs for human rights education and linked the workshop’s purpose from the start with that of global development projects. Likewise, if participants wanted to apply for project funding from Movies that Matter’s International Support Programme, the deadline for applications was set just one week after the workshop’s end, implicitly situating the workshop as preparation for filling out a successful application for funding (though only two of the participants ultimately received that financial support from Movies that Matter – the Tripoli Human Rights Film Festival in Libya and the Rolling Film Festival in Kosovo). In this way, the pedagogical formation was also, on some level, drawn along the lines of (undecided) benefactor and (hopeful) beneficiary, in keeping with a sort of development-model logic that has been common in human rights activism since the end of the 1990s (Uvin, 2007: 597). Even with its inclusion of one non-Western festival among the workshop’s leaders, Cinema Without Borders thus began with a pedagogical formation that implied a Western-centered lens and purpose. The most poignant opportunities for workshop leaders to counter this lens emerged in moments of friction.

During workshop sessions, I observed numerous instances of friction when participants pushed back at workshop leaders’ advice in illustrative ways. When participants questioned or resisted the logic or usefulness of a certain piece of advice, it drew my attention to how assumptions and discourses that, though being presented as common sense, did not fit participants’ own cultural lens. What became most clear in these moments was that workshop leaders and participants often had vastly different purposes for organizing an HRFF and faced very different stakes in doing so. The fact that participants felt comfortable to voice that resistance in the workshop space speaks well of the workshop leaders’ open and approachable nature. Sometimes, these frictive moments were met by the leaders with varying degrees of humor, curiosity, confusion and awkwardness. Other times, they were brushed aside without really being addressed, or seemed to go entirely unnoticed. From my view, these reactions were understandable given that the workshop takes place in such a short time, and the workshop leaders are tasked with managing not only a tight schedule, but the diverse needs and desires of the participants. Still, these responses were not all equal in their activist potential. Had workshop leaders been more prepared to respond in real time, and had more room been left in the schedule for their responses, they could have addressed the crucial disconnects that impelled moments of friction more substantively and with potentially more immediate productive outcomes. As I show in my analysis of the Network’s handbooks, points of friction that were not resolved during the workshop were ultimately addressed more directly when the handbook was revised.

Most lessons presented by the workshop leaders focused, in one way or another, on how to make sure each participant’s HRFF was a success. Notions of success, however, are culturally situated and can speak to underlying values and assumptions. For instance, a number of friction-inciting interactions centered on assumptions about what it means to run a successful and professional film event. Professionalism can be read as a coded way of displaying (or performing) wealth – monetary wealth or Bourdieusian cultural capital that privileges class-based forms of knowledge and acumen. This conflation of wealth with professionalism, and that version of professionalism with success, simply does not hold when considering the wide range of challenges faced by HRFFs around the world, nor does it fairly value the achievements of HRFFs working in very different contexts. Nevertheless, workshop participants were encouraged to strive toward the professionalism demonstrated by established European HRFFs.

For example, friction arose when workshop leaders gave recommendations that privileged their own notions of professionalism regarding film programming and educating the audience. Some participants were hesitant about the advice to program feature-length films, expressing concerns that their audiences would only want to watch short films or would be bored by full-length ones. The leaders assured them that audiences can be trained to watch longer films, yet, when giving their final presentation of their projects, several participants stuck to their instincts and said they would only program short films. In moments like this, the first reaction by the leaders tended to be to gently discourage, and to pull the participants’ visions for the HRFF back closer to their own practice. The workshop leaders’ reluctance seemed to be a matter of their not understanding certain aspects of the participants’ context and of wanting to save the participant the hassle of trying to do something that could not be done, rather than a staunch desire to reign in participants’ creativity and ensure they emerged with festivals that mirrored their more established HRFFs. Nevertheless, it was not a productive response in this moment of friction.

I do not highlight this disagreement about film length to prove workshop leaders should simply have taken a participant’s word that no one in their home country could sit through a 2-hour film, but, rather, to assert the importance of taking steps to recognize the productive potential of this disagreement. Participants’ experiences with their own audiences should not be discarded because they do not know as much as the workshop leaders’ about setting up an HRFF. Had this point been pursued further precisely because it caused disagreement, we might have all learned something valuable about the local cultures in question. The refusals were (I think) read as the participants’ underestimating their local audience, as a lack of understanding that an audience could be taught to appreciate full-length films. This would itself be problematic in that it suggests grooming the audience toward a more Western mode of viewing. But in addition, the friction itself highlights what was not achieved through the workshop leaders’ responses: for instance, no one asked what the value might be in showing short films only. What else could that make possible? Longer discussions? Interesting pairings of related films? Or, perhaps, the leaders could have instead asked what is particular, special, about this local audience (rather than lacking or inferior), and whether or how that same potentially desirable characteristic could be fostered in Western audiences too.

A related friction occurred during the presentation on how to organize post-screening ‘debates’ (one workshop leader’s word for the discussion between invited guests and the audience immediately following the film). In this session, the workshop leader recommended selecting a moderator who was engaging above all else, and to call potential moderators in advance in order to make sure they were not ‘too dull’. The workshop leader then advised striking a balance during discussion so the audience would not ‘overload on misery’. This advice revealed friction when a participant expressed uncertainty about how to handle a post-screening discussion if the film had been particularly traumatic for the audience; ‘What do you do with that audience trauma during the discussions?’ he asked. Rather than fully acknowledge the complexity of this question, the workshop leader insisted that the organizers could guide their audience’s reaction to films by approaching those controversial screenings more intellectually than emotionally. Another participant then asked what to do when (not if) an audience has gotten ‘out of control’. The workshop leader seemed a bit surprised at this suggestion, and could only say that she had not encountered these issues, characterizing audience debates at their European festival as quite civil.

These questions fell outside the workshop leaders’ own experience. While they prepared advice on how to prevent discussions from being too boring, they simply had not considered an audience overcome with emotion, volatile. For the European organizers, in particular, the assumed affect of the film festival audience is based in culturally situated iterations of decorum, politeness, and indeed, rationality. Even the categorization of a post-screening discussion as a ‘debate’ carries a Western connotation; the art of debate is widely thought to have emerged in ancient Greece and to have been honed during the European Enlightenment. Friction thus emerged when non-Western participants predicted their audiences’ raw emotion and visceral connection with the images screened. As a point of comparison, a number of the Q & A’s I attended at the Ciné Droit Libre festival in Ouagadougou did have such a visceral quality, and felt much like activist rallying cries or motivational speeches, while those in New York, Prague or the Hague were marked by both spoken and implied expectations of dispassionate intellectual debate, with formality privileged over emotional displays. During the workshop, these concerns were largely unresolved and the discussion closed as we were directed to move on and watch a short film.

Another example of an interaction that prompted friction was when the workshop leaders made the recommendation that participants program locally produced films to take advantage of lower costs and fewer hurdles regarding screening rights, and to make the program more relatable for local audiences. When workshop leaders discussed the kinds of films participants should show at their festivals, they noted that ‘having local filmmakers really broadens the appeal of the festival’, and that giving local filmmakers a special program might also be a good idea, because they are ‘allies’. This wisdom would certainly make financial and logistical sense for many contexts; approaching local filmmakers can be a way for festivals with a limited budget to secure screening rights and even guests to accompany those screenings. Yet, as the workshop participants made clear in their response to this advice, many of them find it impossible to program local films precisely because they have to pretend that human rights violations are not a local issue. A participant told the group,

You cannot show films showing human rights violations in [my country] at all. Otherwise it will be next year [rubs hand together as though smashing a bug] no event! … It [has to be] like [my country] is paradise, everywhere else is horrible …

However, he emphasized, ‘people are not stupid’, making clear his awareness that even if a film about AIDS in Russia, or homelessness in New York is shown, people can connect what they see to their own local conditions. Several workshop leaders seemed genuinely interested in this strategy although it was, admittedly, not something they had ever needed to do in their own festivals. One workshop leader later described her initial response to me as confusion: seeking out films that represented specific issues in order to mirror local problems was not something she had ever considered prior to the workshop. Programming, for her, was more a matter of making selections on the basis of aesthetics and narrative, but by mentoring organizers of emerging HRFFs she had come to understand that different local circumstances demand ‘very different strategies’.

This strategy of screening films that work on the level of metaphor for local problems (as a way to get around local censorship) is, I came to find, extremely important for organizers who want to program an HRFF in areas where the phrase ‘human rights’ cannot be uttered, or where democratic revolutions have recently occurred (or are still happening). When I started my research on HRFFs, I anticipated being critical of festivals that only showed films about distant places and foreign problems. My concern was that only looking at images of poor, suffering ‘others’ could allow audiences to distance themselves from the issues represented, rather than encouraging them to critically reflect on human rights violations in and by their own countries. However, what this perspective elides is locational privilege: there are many places where it remains unwise, dangerous even, to frame human rights violations as a local problem. The workshop interactions showed that my prior idealization of a self- or locally directed gaze at the HRFF was indicative of my own privileged lens.

There were certainly moments when a participant’s idea for their own event was met with confusion from the workshop leaders. But what was wonderful was when these moments of tension were productively handled by leaders simply asking further questions about the participant’s potential strategy. What this required, though, was that the participant break down something that had previously seemed so obvious as to not require explanation – such as when a participant proposed a festival centered on experiences of both religious and also sexual minorities. The leaders expressed skepticism as to why the festival should try to cover the experiences of both groups rather than only one, but the participant then explained that in his country, both groups are severely limited by the constitution and both communities experience similar hate crimes. Both the initial confusion and the clarifying discussion that followed were examples of how the HRFF workshop really can facilitate creative connections and deepen understanding across geographic and cultural difference, so long as Western institutions and individuals are willing to ask more questions before assuming that their way is the ‘right’ way. In too many transnational activist collaborations, though, the burden falls on non-Western organizers to make those connections explicit and legible when pitching their plans to international funding and support organizations. This is a weighty task considering that, in order to make themselves understood, they must already have an understanding of precisely how their pitch does not fit a Western frame.

In these moments of friction, it became evident that even very experienced organizers can learn more about putting together an HRFF, even from individuals who had never done so before. These moments are also a clear reminder of the unequal power relations in global interactions across difference. A pedagogical configuration that assumes leaders are experts/benefactors, while participants are non-experts/beneficiaries risks implicitly encouraging participants to change their creative voices and critical vocabularies to fit a historically Western framework. It is perhaps difficult, but still critical, to imagine a model for exchange among activists that is able to attend to the uneven power relations and unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity so often inherent in global collective activism. It would need to be a model that, like Mohanty’s (2003), foregrounds the mutuality of exchange even while recognizing the inequalities among those involved. To achieve such a ‘radical democratic politics’, Judith Butler (2009) calls for activist movements to embrace ‘ongoing antagonisms among its participants, valuing such persistent and animating differences’ (p. 32). When activists approach global exchange interactions fully expecting they will not be able to immediately grasp collaborators’ experiences or their perspectives, they will be better positioned from the start to recognize the limitations of their own frames of understanding, and in turn, better able to really, meaningfully listen (Chun, 1999; Snyder and Mitchell, 2008).

Analysis: the handbooks on setting up an HRFF

Even seemingly unproductive friction from training workshops is not evidence that established HRFF organizers are not listening to, or influenced by, emerging HRFFs. Rather, I argue in this section, the revision of the Network’s handbook on setting up an HRFF seems to be, in large part, a reflection of the additional perspectives that Network organizers gained through their interactions with festival organizers coming from different contexts. The second edition of the handbook is a testament to what media activists productively gain when they acknowledge the value of differences in how they carry out activism in the name of human rights.

The first handbook, Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival: A Handbook for Festival Organizers Including Case Studies of Prominent Human Rights Events was published in 2009 and edited by One World. The second, Setting up a Human Rights Film Festival, Vol. 2: An Inspiring Guide for Film Festival Organizers From All Over the World was published in 2015 and edited by several festivals in the Network. My assertion is that the differences between the two handbooks point to what happened in the 6-year interim: HRFF organizers who were interested in growing the Network via mentorship and support for emerging festivals around the world encountered situations wherein the advice of the first handbook simply did not fit. The kind of friction I witnessed during Cinema Without Borders likely played a role in this, by virtue of the issues it raised for the organizers, even (or, perhaps, especially) when they were left unsatisfactorily resolved. While I do not argue that any one interaction, workshop or festival was the direct cause of the changes between the handbooks, I do believe they are indicative of a cumulative process of global interactions and adjustments that characterize the transformative potential of friction over time.

The first handbook on setting up an HRFF primarily foregrounds the voices and experiences of organizers from One World in Prague, with the festival’s name occupying the author’s place on the front cover and title page. The staff at One World wrote the book’s foreword as well as body chapters on how to get started, programming, fundraising, production and technical support, guest services and educational outreach. These opening chapters imply an attempt to address the concerns of hopeful HRFF organizers in a range of locales, but ultimately the knowledge in those chapters comes out of the experiences and perspectives of One World. The first body chapters read as the ‘advice’ portion of the handbook, with the later chapters – focused on specific HRFF case studies – being more reflective and site specific. The chapters do not speak to one another, and festivals other than One World are not positioned in the same way as models for how to set up a festival.

The result is that some of the first handbook’s advice seems not only unnecessary but unsuitable for readers working within controlling regimes or conflict zones. For instance, one of the challenges highlighted across several chapters is that human rights are not ‘sexy’, which the European organizers say poses a problem for marketing the festival and attracting donors (One World Human Rights Documentary Festival, 2009: 16, 56, and 133). Heidi Lobato from Amnesty International says that ‘Of course human rights are not sexy’ but notes that ‘marketing-wise you need to add something to it to attract your audience’, (p. 133); likewise Igor Blaževič gives advice to avoid the words ‘human rights’ in the title of the festival and ‘to select a more “sexy” name’ (p. 16). This mirrors advice I heard workshop leaders give during Cinema Without Borders for participants to try to come up with a ‘cool’ or ‘sexy’ name and image for their festival. This made sense for contemporary European contexts where, as one workshop leader elaborated to me, human rights then tended to seen by (especially younger) audiences as boring. However, for organizers coming from contexts where audiences may not even be familiar with the term human rights, and others where they are not allowed to utter the words human rights, the need is very different.

The body chapters of the first handbook also mostly assume money is not a big concern, with Blaževič noting it is ‘really much better to pay a certain amount for renting a space that is a popular gathering place for filmgoers, than to finish … in an empty hall’ due to selecting a space that people do not know about – ‘Even if they are free’ (p. 19). This aligns with a piece of advice shared by one of the Cinema Without Borders workshop leaders: that donors do not want to see a ‘sad, little, event’. Although the first handbook’s fundraising chapter does include a section on fundraising in ‘non-democratic environments’ (p. 53), it only accounts for three quarters of a page in a 21-page chapter. Likewise, the advice is not so much about how to obtain funds in these contexts but instead offers broad takeaways such as to keep the HRFF small or to make your festival an offshoot of an existing festival abroad rather than creating something new. This lack of concrete advice for fundraising in non-Western contexts was also evident in the workshop when, on the day dedicated to a session on fundraising, it was announced that instead of workshop leaders offering advice via a formal presentation or bringing in an outside expert as had been done in previous sessions, participants would instead ‘teach each other’.

While the body chapters written by the One World team do not address many of the concerns that came across as friction in the workshop, some case study chapters do. There are even instances when the authors write about the strategy of screening international films as a proxy for discussing local human rights issues when doing so would be problematic (One World Human Rights Documentary Festival, 2009: 28 and 157). As noted, this strategy was also raised in the workshop as a way to get around censors and to discuss human rights issues safely without directly critiquing the local regime. Although different reasons are given for this programming strategy in the first handbook, it still would have been useful to incorporate these ideas into the workshop’s sessions. Yet, even though those experiences were reflected in a formal text circulated by Network members to emerging HRFFs, not all the workshop leaders seemed to have fully internalized the insights from those working in particularly volatile regions or conflict zones. This begs the question of what the relationship between the handbook and the training workshops is or might be. It also makes clear that, for the second edition of the handbook to have an impact on the workshop training model, its lessons must be engaged purposefully and critically.

The revised handbook productively addresses tensions that emerged when workshop organizers’ advice for how to set up an HRFF did not fit festival organizers’ needs. The Network’s website describes the revised handbook as focused ‘on the needs and challenges of festivals that are sprouting up all over the developing world and those in countries where democratic systems are still emergent or non-existent’ (https://www.humanrightsfilmnetwork.org/content/setting-human-rights-film-festival-vol-2). The resulting differences between the first and second handbooks are remarkable. In the revised handbook, non-Western HRFF organizers’ perspectives are woven throughout the chapters instead of relegated to case studies at the back. Drafts of almost all chapters written by a European author were reviewed by non-Western contributors, including organizers from Open Yu Yi (Sierra Leone) and the Tripoli Human Rights Film Festival (Libya), both of whom had previously participated in HRFF training workshops. There is greater space and weight given to issues facing non-Western festivals such as censorship, safety and lack of resources. Beyond this, even when authors are not specifically quoting a non-Western person or discussing a non-Western festival, issues are more nuanced, framed from multiple perspectives. The advice in this version of the handbook aligns closely with the interactions – and friction – I witnessed during the workshop. Although I have no confirmed proof, it is not out of the realm of speculation that the workshop leaders did acknowledge the value of participants’ resistance to their advice, and that that experience, and others like it, would have influenced their approach to revising the handbook. What is clear is that the Network’s authors reflected on how the previous advice in the first handbook, though never intended to be ‘one size fits all’, had been especially ill-fitting for festivals in poorer, less developed regions, controlling regimes or conflict zones.

This is not to say that the guiding voice of the revised handbook is in no way Western. I would argue the ‘us’ and ‘we’ being articulated in the revised introduction are still closely aligned with established European festivals like One World and Movies that Matter. Take for instance, the second handbook authors’ statement recognizing what was missing in the first edition:

We came to understand that we took many things for granted. Organising a festival in a relatively wealthy democratic country is one story. If we ever considered setting up and running a film festival to be tough, the stories of how our friends who are trying to stand up and create a festival against all odds were a wake up call for all of us. (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 13)

The ‘we’ who took things for granted, who has not had it as tough as their friends, speaks from a collective-but-Western voice. The speaker reflects on their position as a colleague ‘of fellow festival organizers who face discriminatory authorities’ and ‘struggle to finance their event’ – not as someone who experiences those things themselves (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 13). They note how the ‘human rights violations we observed on the screen suddenly became pressing matters for us’ through collaborating with HRFF organizers who faced difficulties they did not (p. 13). In this regard, they make their perspective transparent and reveal that their privileged position had enabled them to address their own challenges but not others. The introduction alludes to the mentorship and support that more established and privileged festivals in the Network have given to other HRFF organizers around the world. They write that ‘Although we try to give ongoing assistance, we realised it was high time for a second edition of the handbook to address the needs of people’ working in ‘developing, transitional, or post-conflict countries’. While the handbook in some ways still speaks from a Western subject–position, it no longer frames that position as adequate or superior for advice giving.

The revised handbook also attempts to be more inclusive by bringing in additional experiences and diverse voices. In this newer handbook, being professional and being ‘successful’ are no longer framed as top priorities or achievements. Instead, this edition is focused on celebrating difference, innovation and perseverance in the face of challenges. One place where this is apparent is in a list of issues flagged as potentially ‘sensitive or controversial’ in many communities. Many or even most of these topics would be taken for granted as acceptable for discussion and debate in a Western public setting, including ‘women’s and children’s rights’, ‘use of natural resources’, ‘civil society and freedom of speech’ and ‘minority and marginalized populations’ rights’ (Kulhánková et al., 2015: p. 31). Advice for non-Western contexts is not only present in this version but is also concrete and useful. For example, in a discussion of how to have a screening without access to or the funds for a dedicated screening space, the authors write, ‘You do not need a perfect silver screen for a good projection. A plain white wall, a well-stretched white bedsheet on a wall or even the side of a large truck may suffice’ (p. 88). Specific examples are then given, including a festival in Sierra Leone that, due to a lack of materials for screen construction, has ‘always worked with local carpenters to construct a screen and then used white flex banner (the material they use to print on large banners)’. Measurements are provided to show the size of screens used to accommodate growing audiences for outdoor screenings in Burkina Faso (p. 88). None of this is presented as inferior to a screening in a movie palace or a government embassy, a far cry from the first handbook’s insistence that it would be ‘far better’ to rent a place that moviegoers frequent than to hold your screening somewhere else.

There are other elements of the second handbook that speak to points of friction during Cinema Without Borders. There is now an entire chapter on censorship and security that elaborates on a wide range of reasons why ‘some festivals need to operate with great caution to ensure the safety of their teams and visitors’ (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 22). The title of this chapter, ‘Film Festivals With Guts’ valorizes the courage of festival organizers working in oppressive or difficult contexts. The chapter details numerous challenges HRFF organizers might face (p. 52–53). In this chapter, under the heading of self-censorship, the authors highlight the strategy of using an international film as a proxy to discuss local human rights issues, framing it as useful. They write,

Often, this can be achieved by selecting a film where the local audience is able to find parallels with their own experience. It is advisable to include films in your program that deal with the same problematic [that cannot be discussed] … but take place in other geographical or cultural contexts. These films can then be used as a basis for discussion on local issues. (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 36)

As in the first handbook, this chapter also discusses festivals that choose to avoid using the term ‘human rights’ in their name. But here, it is not presented as a matter of opting for a ‘sexier’ title. Instead, this strategy is noted as being a matter of safety or because of ‘the resistance it would otherwise arouse from authorities’ (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 57). The authors are clear in their support of such festivals, asserting that ‘a festival does not need to include the words human rights in its name to express its dedication to human rights and social justice’ (p. 57). The take-away (you do not need to say ‘human rights’ in your festival name to be an HRFF) remains the same between the two handbooks, but the tone of the advice is productively transformed.

The second handbook is also different from the first because it allows room for complexity and contradiction. Just as in the workshop there were issues that could not be resolved because local contexts were so different, the handbook unapologetically places contradictory advice side by side. In a discussion about inviting international guests to a festival where there are security and safety issues, two opposing strategies are given. While ‘A few festivals, like the Tripoli Human Rights Film Festival in Libya, deliberately chose not to invite foreign guests because they cannot guarantee their security or do not want to attract unwanted attention’, there are also festivals such as the Side by Side festival that ‘choose to invite a renowned international guest, in the hope that the attention will improve safety’ (Kulhánková et al., 2015: 57). It might not be comfortable to see disagreement on how to deal with such a high-stakes problem. Yet, that is the reality of collective global activism. In both handbooks, authors acknowledge that their advice will not apply to every context; it is only in the second handbook, though, that they approach demonstrating that complexity in their advice and through the examples they provide. In this regard, the activist wisdom being circulated via the second handbook is better, stronger and more equitable – it is a testament to the potential of global interactions across difference, and of actively engaging universals like human rights for global collaboration.

Conclusion

In this article, I proposed that friction – the tension that defines global interactions across difference – is useful for thinking through the power relations of global collective media activism. Lena Khor (2013) argues that there are powerful reasons why people around the world take up the concept of human rights, and in the process, shape it to their own needs. As in Khor’s (2013) model, workshop participants, and other media activists who take up the HRFF frame ‘mold [the HRFF] to conform to their own concerns and purposes’ (p. 25) and in the process they change it to fit what they and their audiences need most. And yet, Khor (2013) reminds us that ‘since some people who tap into [human rights] networks are more powerful than others, the grounds for negotiation is always lopsided from the start’ (p. 27). As demonstrated by HRFF workshop interactions and the productive handbook revision, such changes can take longer than is ideal for activist collaborators dealing with pressing human rights issues and volatile contexts. These changes come out of cumulative interactions and adjustments over time. Still, that is the nature of this kind of activism across difference. To see the biggest, most impactful changes often requires a long view.

Human rights is a widely legible universal with the benefit of being recognizable across borders. As scholars have demonstrated, it is far from a perfect organizing concept, with historical ties to patterns of imperialism and colonialism. And yet, if these histories are carefully and mindfully acknowledged, collective activism in the name of human rights can have the potential to assist in forging new, more equitable kinds of cultural exchange. As I have shown here, using this concept to facilitate global exchange among media activists can foster important spaces of friction: spaces where global connection is possible, where people can speak to each other across difference and where unequal or awkward interactions can lead to powerful recognition and positive change. It is through this friction that the HRFF, a particularly European practice grounded in a particularly European ideology, has continued to spread, and yet, also changed in the process, as evidenced by both the workshop and the handbook revision. The interactions I witnessed demonstrate the existence of vastly different stakes among HRFFs and the accompanying need for divergent activist strategies. They are a reminder that approaches used by non-Western festivals, those not working at some imagined epicenter of human rights knowledge and practice, should not be considered undeveloped in the way they conceptualize or carry out activism. They are a reminder of the flexibility of human rights, and of the need for activist pedagogy to mirror that flexibility.