Sonia M. Tascón, Human Rights Film Festivals: Activism in Context.

Abstract

Human rights film festivals have grown significantly in number in recent years, and alongside this trend the definition of human rights is continually negotiated and adapted to current situations. As a practitioner in both human rights and film festivals, the academic Sonia Tascón has made an insightful and provocative contribution to the debates and scholarship concerning their practices and discourses. In this monograph, human rights film festivals take centre stage as Tascón conceptualizes a framework that links films, film festivals and human rights. Integrating analysis of the discourse around these disciplines presents the challenge of navigating an underresearched area in film festival scholarship. Developments in this field have generated a growing body of work that acknowledges the evolving role of festivals as exhibitors, distributors and producers of cinema globally, and one that is increasingly focused on its transnational and industry-level functions.1 At the same time, specialized festivals continue to proliferate and to demand more academic enquiry. While Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin’s book Film Festivals and Activism2 addresses a range of film festivals, from the human rights-oriented to the indigenous or queer, Tascón’s monograph is the first published volume with a specific focus on the human rights film festival and its political and cultural implications. Her work is enriched by a very detailed study of two festivals: Festival Internacional de Cine de Derechos Humanos in Buenos Aires and Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.