IntroductionThis volume presents articles that discuss the use of films, theaterand other forms of communication in order to convey human rights
messages. There are also articles that present the state of humanrights education in the formal education system – in terms of curriculum
and teaching/learning methodology.
These articles constitute an important set of varied experiences thatpoint to the reality that human rights education initiatives exist in different
countries though they may not be explicitly named as such.
Telling the Truth
Oprah Winfrey’s speech in accepting the Cecil B DeMille Award in the 2018
Golden Globe Awards ceremonies in January 2018 drew much praise fordirectly speaking about the burning issues of the day in the United Statesof America: discrimination, sexual abuse and violence against women. Her
speech dealt with the impact of telling stories; real, truthful stories. She said 1
What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the mostpowerful tool we all have. And I’m especially proud and inspiredby all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered
enough to speak up and share their personal stories.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (hfpa), a non-profit organization that established the annual Golden Globe Awards in 1944, has donated more than “29 million [US dollars] in the past twenty years to entertainment-related charities, as well as funding scholarships and other programs
for future film and television professionals.”2 Hfpa provides financial, fellowship and institutional grants to promote “cultural exchange and understanding through support for major programs and exhibitions that utilize
film to ignite critical dialogue and promote global understanding,” among
several goals.3The Golden Globe Awards, similar to many other film awards aroundthe world, are meant for commercial films. Very few film awards cater tonon-commercial or “independent” (also “indie”) movies that deal with truths
that may at times be difficult to retell (such as tragedies and human rights
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violations). Such “indie” movies may present the truth in its brutal form andmay inspire rage or thinking or inspiration, or relive feelings of loss of loved
ones and also feeling of powerlessness.
Commercial movies that are based on true stories likewise have thepower to evoke inspiration, thinking and resolve to take action.
Oprah also spoke of the power of hope despite tragic experience in the
television and film productions4 she appeared in:5
I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who have withstoodsome of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for abrighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all
the girls watching here now to know that a new day is on thehorizon.
Documentaries
Documentaries show realities that constitute challenges to human rights
education. In using such documentaries as human rights education materials, there can be questions to ponder on regarding specific situations: How
do you discuss human rights with people who do not see the need to address
situations that violate laws and the international human rights norms? How
do you tell workers that their labor rights are not respected? How do you
relate to workers who refused to stage strike for the past twenty years?
These questions arise from the 2015 documentary entitled Dollar City.
According to Amudhan R.P., the filmmaker, the documentary is about
Tirupur6
a small town in south India [that] is well known for its thousandsof export oriented garment hosiery units and millions of migrant
workers from both within and outside the state of Tamilnadu.
Once a small village now a city, Tirupur provides a development
model where the state machinery, exporters, small and big entrepreneurs, commission agents, trade unionists and workers
converge at a point where export, and welfare of the industry are
the priority by sidelining, marginalizing and eventually breaking
the laws that protect environment and workers’ rights.

Introduction

11

The documentary raises another significant question: Should the pointof convergence mentioned by Amudhan between industry and workforce
be challenged or be seen as an opportunity for dialogue on issues that disadvantage the workers?
The documentary apparently invites the audience to think of the answer
to this question.
Another documentary provides insights of the members of a discriminated group in Japan on the use of performing arts to address discrimination.
This is the documentary entitled Angry Drummers: A Taiko Group fromNaniwa, Osaka, Japan made by Yoshitaka Terada of the National Museumof Ethnology in Japan. The documentary presents the role of the “performing arts in the identity reconstruction of a minority group” 7 in presenting
the story of Ikari, a traditional drum (taiko) ensemble in a place in Osakathat is known as Burakumin (discriminated Japanese) area. Ikari, a Japaneseword, means anger, and thus Ikari as the name of the taiko ensemble means
angry drummers. The anger springs from the long history of discrimination
against the Buraku people, which continues till the present. Ikari aims to“eradicate the persistent discrimination against Buraku communities and toeducate people on human rights issues through drumming.”8
A review of the documentary cites its significance in highlighting thehistory of taiko and the discrimination related to it:9
In taiko history, there is a conscious disassociation of theproduction of the taiko, where handling of leather is considered‘spiritually impure’, from the performance, which is often associated with ‘purifying’ religious rituals. Ikari’s performances exposed this broken history. Ikari’s use of music and performance
is not supposed to be an ‘authentic’ cultural practice. Rather,
Ikari mimic the Japanese taiko in order to politicise it. When
playing, they draw the audience’s attention to antiBurakumin
discrimination, which was previously ignored. In this way, anonBurakumin, Japanese instrument is reappropriated, transformed and shared with the public. Concepts such as identity,
nation and culture can be locally rewritten to empower both the
Burakumin community and the nonBurakumin Japanese.
Terada explains that “performing arts (such as taiko) can play a significant role in areas where other means (laws, economic advancement,anti-discrimination slogans) tend to fail in the struggle against discrimina-

12H U M A N R I G H T S E D U C AT I O N I N A S I A - PA C I F I Ction, as demonstrated by Ikari’s performances, which have resulted in tangible changes in the lives of both Buraku and non-Buraku people.”10 AngryDrummers: A Taiko Group from Naniwa, Osaka, Japan is a must-see documentary for people who use art in human rights education.
Film Festivals
Considering the power of movies to affect people, a number of film festivals
in Asia are designed to make specific impact on the viewing public.
In India, a “one-minute film contest titled ‘National Freedom Film
Festival’ to commemorate India’s 70 years of Independence” was held inChennai in 2017 “to explore the challenges overcome by women or challenges that remain in front of them.” Twenty short films were submitted in
the competition mostly by the youth especially college students from six
Indian states (Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu andTelangana).11 This film festival is unique for showing one-minute films ona very specific theme. The film festival organizer (Human Rights Advocacyand Research Foundation [hrf]) plans to hold this kind of film festival every
year on different themes.
Hrf sees the need to reach out to the millennials who have the12passion, energy, opportunity and tools for social change as
never before. They use social media with audacity, brevity andcreativity.
The film festival is meant therefore to provide a venue for the millennials to express their views on what they see as the situation in India seventy
years after independence.
The International Children’s Film Festival Bangladesh, an annual film
festival that started in 2008, showcases full-length features, shorts, experimental films made for and by children, including fiction animations anddocumentaries, from around the world. It is the biggest and also the onlyinternational film festival for children and young adults in Bangladesh.
This film festival aims to open13
a new world of movies to the children of Bangladesh andexpos[e] them to a diversity of cultures and traditions from various nations through cinema. One of the primary missions of thefestival is to provide the youth with a platform to showcase theirIntroduction

13

talent in media and to understand its role in bringing attention
to various social issues and in learning through entertainment.
The Children’s Film Society Bangladesh (cfs), a youth-led organization
working for children on the issue of film, organizes the annual film festival indifferent venues in the country. It considered film the “most powerful mediaof art of the present time [that] was not being [properly] used … as a strong
tool of learning and entertainment [for children].” It thus aims to make an“impact on the entire film industry of Bangladesh by inspiring the upcoming
generation of filmmakers, and offering them bigger platform to exercise andexhibit their talent.”14
Cfs organizes the Teen Film Workshop 2.0 during the film festival,
which is an “intensive and advanced training program for the aspiring filmmakers aged between 15 and 19” and designed to “equip the teen filmmakerswith relevant filmmaking skills and techniques.” The workshop was started
in August 2017 and produced five short films, one of them (Amenar Golpo)
focused on gender discrimination.15
Contents of the Current Volume
Volume eight presents three articles on film festival as means to raise awareness and action on human rights. Each of the film festivals has unique character, but there is a common ground in terms of objectives and involvementof the audience in discussing the social significance of movies and filmmaking. The articles from India, Malaysia and the Philippines provide examplesof “socially-engaged film festival.”
There are articles that highlight participatory methodologies in engaging the participants in the educational activities. They can be in the form oftheater, field trip, community field work and competition, among others.
The articles on peace and human rights education from Japan, on training
for journalists and journalism students from Mongolia and India and themodel Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations competition fromSouth Korea provide examples of such participatory methodologies.
Finally, there are research reports on human rights education programsin the school system and on education against cyberspace bullying that provide important suggestions on content as well as method of teaching andlearning human rights.
Indeed, these articles point to the variety of initiatives and experienceson human rights education in the Asia-Pacific region.
Jefferson R. Plantilla

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EditorEndnotes
1 Oprah Winfrey’s full Golden Globes speech, ABC NEWS, 8 January 2018,
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/oprah-winfreys-full-golden-globes-speech/
story?id=52209577 (accessed on 10 January 2018).
2 Hollywood Foreign Press Association www.goldenglobes.com/hfpa (accessed on 6 March 2018).
3 This grant prioritizes activities and events in the Los Angeles area, inCalifornia, www.goldenglobes.com/grant-applications (accessed on 6 March 2018).
4 Oprah Winfrey’s full Golden Globes speech, op. cit.
5 Oprah Winfrey acted and also produced movies that deal with racism in theU.S.A. such as the Color Purple (1985), The Butler (2013), Selma (2014) and Wrinklein
Time (2018).
6 Amudhan R.P., http://amudhanrp.blogspot.jp/2015/04/amudhan-rp-filmmograhpy.html (accessed on 12 December 2017).
7 Yoshitaka Terada, “Angry Drummers and Buraku Identity: The Ikari TaikoGroup in Osaka, Japan,” in Rosemary Statelova, Angela Rodel, Lozanka Peycheva,
Ivanka Vlaeva and Ventsislav Dimov, editors, The Human World and MusicalDiversity, Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2008, page 309.
8 Terada, ibid.
9 Andrew Small, “Drumming out resistance in Japan: writing back Burakumin
identity through music”, London School of Economics and Political Science, 4 March
2015, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/80258/1/Drumming%20out%20resistance%20in%20
Japan_%20writing%20back%20Burakumin%20identity%20through%20music%20_%20LSE%20Human%20Rights.pdf (accessed 20 October 2017).
10 Terada, op. cit., page 314.
11 One Minute Films on Women and Freedom, http://hrf.net.in/fff2017/ (accessed on 8 August 2017).
12 Call for film entries by the Human Rights Advocacy and Research Foundation(HRF) on 1 May 2017, http://hrf.net.in/2158-2/.
13 International Children’s Film Festival Bangladesh, www.cfsbangladesh.org/
festivals (accessed on 8 August 2017).
14 International Children’s Film Festival Bangladesh, www.cfsbangladesh.org/about.
15 See a video of the film festival on Facebook: www.facebook.com/cfsbangladesh/videos/10155331721259021/ (accessed on 8 August 2017).