GREETING SPEECH BY FESTIVAL DIRECTOR

TOLEKAN ISMAILOVA

On September 27, 2011 International Festival of Documentary Films on Human Rights “Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan” will start in Kyrgyzstan (at Manas cinema hall)

This year the Festival is celebrating its fifth anniversary and unites more than 30 thousand fans of documentary films on human rights and activists from our country and other post-Soviet countries as well as friends from all over the world. There are school students, college students, teachers and university professors, intelligentsia, young film directors, established and world-renown film figures, artists, journalists, human rights activists, pensioners and migrants.

The Festival serves as a platform for independent and free citizens, friends and like-minded people sharing universal and fundamental values and human rights.

The Festival will feature highly professional documentaries reflecting critical world outlook and authors’ stance on how to improve it; participating films demonstrate the reality of human rights in a given country and the world in general. They highlight different abuses done to democracy.

The featuring films reinstate human dignity and supremacy of the law, tolerance and mutual understanding among cultures. This is important not only for Kyrgyzstan that has witnessed two revolutions, but also for post-conflict Kyrgyzstan, healing the wounds of 2010 tragedy.

Films are an excellent tool to raise awareness and solve hidden and little known social, humanitarian and ecological problems. Documentaries allow the viewer to perceive what is going on with people using specific examples. It is through such films that many of us learn the postulates of UN Declaration on Human Rights – right to life, liberty from slavery and torture, expressing own opinion and life without discrimination and violence. The viewer takes home an idea that such rights are to be fought for, but without violating rights of others, with dignity and rule of law. Festival platform gives each participant a chance to express his own ideas, discuss them with others, come across new ones, and strengthen his or her civic position. The festival features 30 documentaries on human rights, shortlisted by Festival Organizing Committee. There are three competitions (international with 17 documentaries, national with 13 and youth competition with 12 documentaries). Festival feature program will take place in Dom Kino.

Three jury commissions are organized for each segment of the festival (international, national and youth).

Kyrgyz documentaries were shot by directors of different generations: from the one side, by world-known artist Marat Sarulu, from the other – by student of B.Beishenalieva Kyrgyz State Art Institute Nika Zholdosheva.

In the documentaries of international segment the dominant theme is women’s issues, in Kyrgyz documentaries – issues and rights of men. It is with pleasure that we highlight that more than half of documentaries are submitted by female directors.

Other highlighted issues include rights of children, adolescents and vulnerable groups. Let’s be merciful and responsible for them.

Please join the festival and participate in screenings and discussions. Find like-minded friends. Get inspired by positive examples of successful people. Support each other, change your own life, the life of your community and your society towards the better. The Festival is waiting for You!

Festival 2011 is a festival for each and every one!

Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan Festival Director Tolekan Ismailova