Patrons
Isabel Lucas
As young Australians, we have the opportunity and responsibility to inform ourselves, reflect upon and comment on the human rights and environmental conditions that affect our fellow human beings in this country and abroad.
There are so many ways to raise awareness about these issues, but watching thought-provoking and artful films that influence and move us is a most effective medium.
It is what the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival is about and I strongly encourage you to support it.
Geoffrey Robertson QC
A picture is worth a thousand words – the cinema can literally open our eyes to the anguish of the violated and the inhumanity of the violators. Not merely by documentaries and new footage: dramatic imagination is necessary to depict the atrocities that take place in the privacy of the prison cell and in the darkness that death squads inhabit – even in the sanctity of the confession box. There is nothing very festive, you may think, about human rights - but at least we can celebrate the human resolve to fight back.
The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG
I applaud this Festival. Media and popular culture play a huge role in raising human rights consciousness. They make other people’s injustices our own. When I was young, the TV soapie Number 96 did much more to advance understanding of gay rights than any court case or learned speech.
Despite the progress made in recent decades, there is much work still to be done to promote and protect human rights within Australia and around the world. I hope the Festival is a great success – like Matthew Mitcham’s diving, Ross Watson’s painting and Kerryn Phelps’ leadership on health: impressive, inspiring and a source of pride for all.
Margaret Pomeranz
I am so pleased to see the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival entering its fifth year. It’s a tribute to Australian audiences that there is such concern about Human Rights that the Festival has been supported to such an extent. It gladdens my heart. Film and the arts have so much power to influence the way we see the world, to heighten our awareness of the plight of of those in our community and in the world community whose rights as human beings are being neglected and to prick our conscience about every individual’s responsibility towards our fellow men and women. My belief in film and the arts generally as a medium to share the human condition, to move us to action about issues that go to the heart of our identity as compassionate and decent people has been validated. I supported the concept of this Festival from its early beginnings and I continue to do so. It is significant that this Festival has had such an impact over the years, it speaks volumes about us as a community that it has flourished.
Warwick Thornton
Not all of us enjoy basic human rights, those of us who do have the responsibility to yell and scream and fight for those who don’t!
A film festival like this reminds us of the imbalance within our own country and around the world, furthermore it is in some strange way, a celebration of the power of film to propel change for the better.
