U.N. Film Festival Opens New Eyes

Designed to screen documentaries seldom available to the public, “Changing Faces: Tragedy and Triumph” marks the second year the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) has come to Harvard University. Showcasing films that deal with issues ranging from AIDS to hunger, UNAFF has garnered critical acclaim over its six-year existence for its efforts to publicize topics of global importance

“It’s a non-profit grassroots organization which supports U. N. causes,” UNAFF Founder and Stanford lecturer in Continuing Studies Jasmina Bojic said of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), the organization from which her festival developed. She added that 176 chapters exist around the United States.

“It’s become a really big festival in that documentaries from all around the world are submitted,” she said, mentioning that just 30 films from a pool of 300 have been selected for screening each year that the festival has been held. This year’s festival, which took place Dec. 5 and 6 at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), screened a total of nine films screened during its two-day run.

The festival managed to secure filmmakers John Ankele, Anne Macksoud and Gayle Ferraro—all of whom had documentaries featured—as guest speakers.

The festival left members of the audience stunned, with powerful works including Anonymously Yours, an exploration of the sex-trafficking business in southeast Asia, and The Global Banquet: Politics of Food, a look at the growing threat that corporate globalization represents for small farmers.

A Boston University student in attendance remarked that one of her courses championed free trade as an almost flawless mechanism for increasing prosperity—a far cry from its portrayal in the festival as a source of escalating global hunger.

Tufts graduate student Greg Scarborough described the films as “shocking,” pointing to Bombies, an hour-long examination of the enduring ramifications of the secret war in Laos, as especially effective. In noting that the United States dropped over 2 million bombs in the area—or two tons of bombs for every Laotian man, woman and child—and that many of these “bombies” have not yet detonated, the film manages to convey the enormous consequences of the war. The documentary notes that the United States still uses these weapons, dropping them in places like Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Another provocative film, Nisha, briefly delves into the life of the titular 11-year-old girl in India who, unbeknownst to her, is afflicted with AIDS. The filmmakers follow her as her mother breaks the news that she has the disease that killed her father, and that eventually she will die of it as well. The film relies on pregnant pauses to punctuate the gravity of Nisha’s situation, exacerbated by the great social stigma attached to AIDS. Her mother looks on while Nisha is dancing or playing with her peers, with a desperation that haunts.

The United Nations Association of Greater Boston (UNA-GB), along with the KSG’s New England Alumni Association, decided to host the festival, UNA-GB staff member Erica D. Sanger said, “because it was a new and interesting way to inform people about international issues through the eyes of documentary filmmakers.”