Dos Americas at the USF Human Rights Film Festival

Dos Americas, director David Zlutnicks’ fourth film, touches on the topic of migrant workers in New Orleans and their aid in reconstructing the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The film focuses on the way that Latino migrant workers have been abused by those who contract them and have become easy targets for violence. These issues cannot be brought forward to the police because of fear of deportation and the fact that many of these crimes are being committed by the police officers themselves. Throughout the film, you see interviews with many of the migrant workers that have left their country to follow the American dream, and have been met with horrible living conditions, meager wages and all kinds of abuses. To change these conditions, we learn about a group of migrant workers who have come together to help the victims of this abuse and give a voice to this hardworking group of people. The films interviews with the migrant workers, gave us a first hand account of the tough lives they must lead in order to make little money, to support themselves and their family. The film opens our eyes to issues that are not brought up my the mainstream media. The creation of such a film has given a voice to the voiceless latino migrant workers of New Orleans and those around the country.

The Q & A that followed after the film was very interesting and added a lot to the film. The director David Zlutnick, Jorge Aquino and Ron Sundstrom really informed the audience about the background information of New Orleans and some of the issues that are going on there at this present moment. The director gave some more background information about the film and the audience seemed to have really enjoyed the film and the subject and opened their eyes to a situation that has never really been touched upon in mainstream media.

Here you'll be able to find more information about the films that showed at University of San Francisco's Human Rights Film Festival

"Taxi to the Dark Side" at USF's Human Rights Film Festival

Last night, I attended the final night of The Human Rights Film Festival here at USF. I watched the Academy Award Winning documentary directed by Alex Gibney, Taxi to the Darkside. The film dealt with the murder of Dilwar, a young Afghan Taxi drive accused of helping to plan an attack on the U.S base. He is put into the prison in Bagram and is tortured with variety of torturing “methods” that will make him talk. Eventually, Dilwar dies within his prison cell. Throughout the film, we hear testimony from the men who tortured Dilwar and government officials who knew of the torture that was occurring in Bagram. The film did a great job of shedding light on the subject of torture. Though this wasn’t the first to die from the extreme torturing methods used and approved by the U.S. government. It did a great job shedding the light on such horrible acts. The testimonies of the soldiers that torutured Dilwar, made it that much more powerful. One of the surprising scenes in this film is the press tour of Guantanamo Bay. The soldiers made it seem as though Guantanamo Bay was a summer camp. The guide at one point says, that on Sunday they get ice cream and they even have half a basketball court.

The film definitely shed some light for on how serious the torturing of these prisoners (who may have nothing to do with any terrorist) really is and how Bush’s administration wiped their hands clean of any blood that was shed because of them. There was a large audience at the presentation of the film and audience was horrified by some of the scenes that were presented to them in the film. This film definitely had the audience and I very emotionally involved. This film definitely made me think about the torturing of ETA prisoners in Spain. Spain has denied that they have tortured anyone and that those that have been captured have lied about being tortured or inflicted the injuries themselves.

If you are interested about one of the most recent cases of torture in Spain here is a a link to an amnesty international article.