Human Rights Film Series

Movies with the Director is a new documentary film initiative at MSFS that began in Fall 2007. Hosted and moderated by MSFS Director John Kline, the series supplements the intellectual rigors of the MSFS program by appealing to students’ emotions and concerns about international human rights issues. The films serve to remind students, on a visceral level, why they are studying global affairs, why it is worth it and how their education can be applied to foster meaningful change.

Periodically during the semester, Dr. Kline leads students in screening and subsequently discussing independent documentary films highlighting critical international human rights issues of our day. Supported by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation to promote international social entrepreneurship, each film of the Fall 2007 semester was selected for its significance in inspiring creative responses from international social entrepreneurs.

Those films are:

  • Invisible Children: Rough Cut (2006): Three American students expose a shocking phenomenon in Northern Uganda: children forced to flee their homes each night or risk being abducted by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army and trained as soldiers. In this wrenching tale, the innocent are not merely exposed to the ravages of war, they become a part of them.
  • Favela Rising (2005): A drug-trafficker-turned-social-revolutionary seeks ways to provide hope for youth in Rio de Janeiro’s slums (favelas).  A non-violent cultural movement based on Afro-reggae music and dance offers an alternative path to the cycle of local drug gang violence and corresponding police brutality.
  • Born Into Brothels (2004): While in Calcutta’s red light district, a documentary photographer befriends the children of prostitutes and gives them cameras to capture the montage of their daily lives.  The children’s photography work is used in the film, alongside video footage of their struggle to escape the red light district’s desperate conditions.

The film series also serves as a venue for interaction between current students and Washington-area MSFS alumni who attend the screenings.  Alumni – working in a diversity of fields, from development to consulting – can meet current students during a pre-film reception and contribute from their own experiences to a post-film discussion.