Human rights, current issues topics of film festival

Intermountain Catholic

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Juan Diego Catholic High School is helping Solace International build a school in Kenya. Time for School: Kenya and Romania will be shown at the Human Rights International Club Film Festival to inform students and community members about the need for the project.

Teenagers illegally crossing into the United States, life in war-torn Iraq, children who struggle for an education in developing countries and life in a Nazi concentration camp are all topics of films that will be shown during the film festival presented by the Juan Diego Human Rights International Club (HRI).

The club, with about 80 members, is the school’s largest. "HRI is important because it is a window to the world outside of our community," said club officer Paul Stratford in an email interview. "This club allows people to see what really goes on across our globe, and yet it also makes us more knowledgeable to the situations going on that need attention."

Each year, the HRI members try to choose films that address specific current issues, or highlight past events that seem to be repeating today, such as the similarities between the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and current events in Darfur, said Molly Dumas, the club’s advisor.

Club members screened trailers of a number of films before choosing the films for this year’s festival. Three of the four films that will be shown are documentaries about "things that are going on in our world that are affecting us as a club," said Elana Jadallah, one of the club’s four officers.

Posada: A Night to Cross All Borders is a documentary about three teenagers who separately tried to cross from Central America to the United States and were detained by immigration officials for months. Immigration is "a large issue, so I thought that would be good to inform our public about what’s going on." Jadallah said.

Iraq in Fragments, which was nominated in 2006 for a Best Documentary Academy Award, is a multi-ethnic look at the country. It was chosen for the film festival because "we’re always trying to keep up on current things that are going on in our world," Jadallah said. "It’s kind of nice to see something from a different perspective. It’s from the children rather than from our government here in America."

The Juan Diego community is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and as part of that celebration is working with Solace International to build a school in Kenya. Therefore, with the film Time for School: Kenya and Romania, the club members hope to inform other students as well as the community why they’ve adopted the Solace International project, Jadallah said.

This is the first year that the festival will include a feature film with the traditional documentaries. Boy in the Striped Pajamas, about a young boy in 1940s Nazi Germany who lives next to a concentration camp, "was kind of a different thing that we’ve never done it before, so I thought that was appealing," Jadallah said.

While the festival’s primary audience is students, community members are welcome. Dee Rowland, director of the Peace & Justice Commission, said in an email interview that she has suggested commission members attend for three reasons: "One, because the films cover topics related to issues that we’re working on; two, good films can expose us to different cultures and frame issues in a new light; and three, it’s a great opportunity to support peace-making efforts of high school students."