Loyola
Documentary Film Festival 2014
Launch
Ceremony, December 11, 2013
Impeccable
Banquet Hall
Georgetown,
Guyana
Honourable
Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, Head of the
Roman Catholic Church in Guyana, Bishop Francis Alleyne, OSB, Father
Justin Prabhu, SJ, other members of the Roman Catholic Diocese,
special invitees, members of the media, ladies and gentlemen, good
morning to you all. I am indeed honoured to speak with you today on
this occasion of the launch of the Loyola Documentary Film Festival,
organised by CatholicTV. First, I would like to congratulate the
Catholic Church in Guyana on this ground-breaking initiative. Our
fledgling film-making industry needs these kinds of initiatives to
encourage its development.
Documentary
film-making is an important genre of film-making as it provides an
avenue to share real-life stories through the powerful medium of
film. But not only is the contribution of documentaries to
film-making good for the art form, it is also an instrumental tool
in our work on addressing social, economic and cultural issues in
Guyana. I was particularly pleased to see that the objectives of the
Loyola Festival include documenting livelihood issues of the rural
and urban poor, exposing situations that affect survival and human
rights, and advocating with policy makers for changes in policies,
and with social leaders for changes in practices. In this regard,
documentaries are a invaluable medium in public education to reach
people with visual narratives to which they can relate.
Documentaries also contribute to the evidence base which
decision-makers often need to build the case for policy changes.
In
my own experience, documentaries are effective at highlighting issues
of the poor and vulnerable who are often forgotten. At the Society
Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), we started using
video as a form of documentation for human rights violations when the
Guyana Police arrested 7 male-to-female transgender persons for
cross-dressing over a 48-hour period in February 2009. With a small
camcorder, SASOD was able to respond quickly to record the
testimonies of these transgender victims who suffered a range of
human rights abuses at the hands of the Guyana Police, including
denial of their rights to be informed of the reasons for being
arrested, not being allowed to phone calls or contact lawyers –
these are all basic rights under the Guyana Constitution. Beyond
that, they were kept imprisoned over the 72-hour constitutional
limit, and mocked and abused by the police who held them in custody.
When they were brought before the court, then acting Chief Magistrate
– now Judge – Melissa Robertson, told them that they were men –
not women – and that they need to “go to church and give their
lives to Christ.” This video documentation contributed to SASOD's
first documentary, produced 2 years later in May 2011 by local
journalist Neil Marks, aptly titled “My Wardrobe, My Right” -
which is a 20-minute feature which highlights the life stories of
Peaches and Gulliver, 2 of the transgender women who were arrested
during the police crackdown. A preview of “My Wardrobe, My Right”
is available on the SASOD YouTube channel. Since then, SASOD has
produced several other short video documentaries where lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Guyanese share their experiences of
social stigma, economic disadvantage and exclusion, which make them
even more vulnerable to human rights abuses. The fact that same-sex
intimacy and cross-dressing are criminalised also makes it difficult
for LGBT Guyanese to access equal protection of the law, which is
also a protected right in the Guyana constitution. SASOD is also
currently working with Neil Marks and Mark Murray to produce another
20-minute feature on the “Double Stigma” faced by sexual and
gender minorities living with HIV in Guyana. It is slated for
release in January 2014, and hopefully we will be able to submit it
to the inaugural Loyola Documentary Film Festival for your
consideration. :)
Documentaries
allow us to put real names and faces to our work to end poverty and
discrimination in Guyana. In addition to the videos on LGBT human rights
issues on the SASOD YouTube channel, I want to encourage everyone
here to look at another local documentary on YouTube called “Tin City Voices” which boldly depicts the issues affecting the urban
poor in the Georgetown's ghettos. The poor and the marginalised can
no longer be ignored or made invisible to the general public and our
policy makers, as documentary film-making provides us with a powerful
tool to reach millions with personal experiences and visual evidence.
And with the undeterminable reach of the internet, our audiences need
not be confined to local film festivals or national television. If
international 'naming and shaming' is what it will take to effect
change, then, as social advocates, we also need to embrace these
methods to bring about real change for the poor and the powerless who
are depending on us to represent them.
Once
again, I want to congratulate CathoicTV and the Catholic Church of
Guyana for this innovative venture. If I'm not mistaken, I believe
this is the first, local documentary film festival in Guyana, so
hats off to the Catholic community for blazing a new trail in the
local film industry. I also want to encourage the private sector to
come on board, and support the industry. Resources are also needed to
make good films.
Thank
you, and best wishes for a successful festival. I look forward to
attending and seeing the new local documentaries on these issues.
Zenita
Nicholson
Secretary,
SASOD Board of Trustees
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