"Through our media campaigns, we build
awareness on issues of violence against women, HIV AIDS and sexuality. Our
messaging is further strengthened by education at the ground level where we
urge Community members and youth to become catalysts of change."
While speaking the objectives of film
festival, she has said that Tricontinental is an arts and cultural
initiative that seeks to use the medium of cinema to high light human rights
norms and practices.
Through the films, Breakthrough hopes to highlight human rights concerns
from around the world and encourage public discourse on preventing
violations and abuse. The cinematic experience encounters and explores the
narratives of violence, exploitation, destitution, apathy as well as
internal turmoil’s of real people who are not at the core of these films.
The films discussed the Post-liberation
democracies to gender empowerment, from discrimination and violence against
women to HIV/AIDS, from Socio-economic justice to general cultural
differences and practices within different contexts.
Breakthrough has a different, creative
angle to discuss human right issues. It uses an integrated strategy
combining film screenings with seminars, panel discussions and workshops to
encourage a larger public discourse on the human rights themes explored in
the films. The Tri Continental 2009 Films were screened at universities,
cultural institutions and citizens groups as part of Breakthrough's
Traveling Screen initiative.
She said the films went out to packed
audiences at each venue – around 9500 people attended in Delhi, Bangalore,
Mumbai and Calcutta. Students congregated to watch the films at their
Universities in large numbers as well.
After its inauguration in Argentina in
September 2002, the festival traveled to South Africa for the first time in
2003 and is marking its second anniversary in that country this year. It has
become the primary platform for human rights cinema for the three continents
that form part of the global South. In India, the Tri Continental began in
2004.
Specifically, the outreach leg of the
festival - the Traveling Screen – is a unique program which contextualizes
the notions of rights in its specificities as opposed to an abstract
discourse on rights. Films provide an experiential context for young minds
to interpret and develop their own notions of rights, wrongs, and justice.
"This form of exposure and subsequent
engagement with the audience is very important to democratize a plural
society like ours especially where minorities, women, dalit and tribal are
at the receiving end of the powerful." – Alika points out.
The Bangalore Film Society and Konangal
Film Society in Coimbatore, NGOs like Yuva in Dharavi, WISCOMP (Women
in Security, Conflict Management and Peace in
Srinagar), the North East Network and over 60 colleges across the country
have urged Breakthrough to discuss year long outreach programs to get the
films of each Tri Continental Film Festival to them. Most importantly, she
said the commitment and numbers of partners on the ground has increased.
The latest multimedia campaign 'Bell Bajao’
Bring Domestic Violence to a halt (2008) by "breakthrough" has been a
significant move against all kinds of domestic abuse. “Bell Bajao “is an
awareness and intervention campaign against domestic abuse.
It seeks to engage men as direct partners
ready to 'ring the bell', and intervene in situations of abuse - a new
venture within the Indian context. “Bell Bajao”, campaign launched on August
20, 2008. It was released in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and
Child Development. Breakthrough had produced a music album for awareness,”
Mann Ke Manjeree" in 2000, two multi media campaigns “What Kind of a Man are
You?" in 2004, a program, encouraging dialogue on HIV/AIDS among married
couples and "Is this Justice?" in 2007, to brought the public attention, the
growing incidence of stigma and discrimination faced by Women Living with
HIV/AIDS (WLHA)
Some of the films screened in 2009 films
were:
The Infinite Border, Brides of Allah,
There Was a Queen, Still Human Still Here: Destitution of the Refused Asylum
Seekers
, Behind Forgotten Eyes,
Is it Just a Game? Flying Inside My
Body, The American, Under Construction, War Made Easy, Undercover in Tibet,
Morality TV and The Loving Jihad - A Thrilling Tale.
