Around the world in 114 documentaries
Hip hop seniors from New Zealand, Korea’s keyboard-wielding e-Sports stars and the fabulist who “legitimised” the Iraq war. These were just some of the huge range of subjects explored at the colourful One World international festival of human rights documentaries, which came to a close in Prague on Wednesday night.
Mr. Mesdaghi was at the ceremony to receive One World’s Right to Know award, selected by the Václav Havel Jury.
“It’s a great honour for me to be here in Prague and especially to win the Václav Havel award. I was in prison when Czechoslovakia became free and now I’m here in Prague.
“As I was saying during the ceremony, in 1984 I was in a box which they called ‘the grave’ and I was blindfolded for days, weeks and months.
“One day a jailer came to me and said – he was joking at me – the Prague Spring is coming. And now I’m here in Prague and it’s spring.
“Of course it has a special meaning for me. I’m very happy to be here and to have this festival’s award.”
While One World is focused on human rights, the festival often interprets that term broadly. Indeed it sometimes feels like a festival of human documentaries.
Take for instance State of Play, which explores South Korea’s e-Sports – competitive video gaming that can turn top players into national stars with big earnings.
The slick and compelling film follows three Starcraft players (pro, semi-pro and amateur) as it maps a fascinating world that has a huge amount in common with real world sport. State of Play was made by Belgian director Steven Dhoedt.
“I’ve always been a gamer myself so I’ve always been very interested in video games and let’s say the whole art and industry around it.
“Especially with the phenomenon of e-Sports in Korea. Usually they would go in there and shoot for a few days, they would film the gamers in their team house, and then when the report came out they would basically talk about how many hours they play and how much money they make.
“They would never really look for the background of why this phenomenon existed in Korea and why it’s so important for these kids.”
Did you have to convince the protagonists and their parents that you had different intentions than the mainstream media?
“Yes, and that was of course the big challenge with this type of film. When you follow someone for two to three years, in the beginning especially it takes a lot of energy to convince them of your good intentions.
“From the beginning we always made clear that we were not going to glamorise it, but neither were we going to criticise it for no reason.
“So yes I think even with our main character it took one year before he finally trusted us and realised what we were there to do.”
Are these e-Sports, in which gamers play computer games and become like sports stars, specific to South Korea?
“They were for a very long time. When I started in 2009 you had a very small scene in the United States and Europe, but it was not an industry as much as it was over there.
“That has a lot to do with the fact that South Korea invested a lot of money in IT and high speed broadband internet in the ‘90s.
“But now it’s all over the world. You’ve got big tournaments in the States, you’ve got big tournaments in Europe. Sweden is a very big country now. That has definitely changed in the last three or four years.”
I was fascinated by the fact that their tool or their instrument is a keyboard. They carry their keyboard with them in a sports bag.
“Yes, that’s one of those things that you notice, especially in the beginning. It gives you a bit of a laugh because they have the typical bags that a tennis player would have and they put their keyboard and their mouse in it.
“But in the end it makes sense, no? It’s the most important thing you need to play the game so they make sure there’s definitely not going to be any problems with it, that the keys all function properly.”
Gaming is a huge industry, you often hear today that it’s bigger than Hollywood. Does that mean that you have an automatic huge potential audience for your film?
“There’s definitely a huge potential online audience. We’ve noticed that in our strategy of distributing the film – we’ve always focused very much on getting the film on online platforms.
“Simply because, you know, when you’re a gamer you also like to see movies about people gaming and about the stars that you admire. “And most of these people are in front of the computer. They’re not the regular festival-goer that you see here at One World, people interested in documentaries and social themes.
“Their way of consuming media is on the computer. That’s definitely a big audience for us, yes.”
Al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball, later achieved international ignominy when his identity was revealed in 2007. War of Lies’ German director Matthias Bittner explains how the US fell for his fabrications.
“They were looking for a long period for evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction. The UN and UNMOVIC and UNSCOM were looking for evidence that there were still facilities that were producing agents.
“And now they had a guy who was from the inner circle…”
Or claimed to be.
“He really was from the inner circle. He wasn’t a high ranking guy. He had been a bad student. But he was from actually from that circle. That was why he was so interesting.”
What was his motivation in speaking to you?
“After his picture and his name was published and he was the scapegoat for all this war, that he was the only one who was responsible, I think he started to fight back by portraying himself as, I was the one who helped to topple the regime.
“I think he made a mistake in not calculating the power of the media. They made him the bad guy.
“With us it was different, because we weren’t journalists. This was my graduation project and at that time I was a student.
“I think he had just had the feeling that there was some different interest in his story.
“And I think it’s important to hear his point of view, whether he’s right or wrong, whether he’s telling the truth or not – it’s more important to learn something about the character, the man himself, the human being who has to cope with the consequences of a lie that helped to destroy a country and to kill people – his own people.”
His codename was Curveball. Did he throw you any curveballs as a protagonist?
“Yes. I had the feeling sometimes that he was playing the same game, or behaving and acting sometimes in the same way as he did with the intelligence.
“Sometimes I really had the feeling that this was all a game of right and wrong information, bits and pieces that you have to put together like in a puzzle. He was quite a character. He was not easy to handle.
“On the other hand, you have to see it in a different way. Because none of us has really had the experience of living under a regime for 30 years.
“You don’t know what it’s really like to live like that. We are living in the Western world, enjoying a beautiful lifestyle. And he was living under brutality.
“Then he came out of Iraq and found himself in another prison for 10 years, when he was surrounded by intelligence agencies. So this guy might have lost some trust… not might have, surely lost some trust in people, in life itself.”
One of the biggest crowd pleasers at this year’s One World was Hip Hop-eration. It follows two dozen vibrant seniors from New Zealand, average age 80, who form a hip hop dance group named Hip Hop-eration Crew ( as so many have had hip replacements).
“Probably the key issue for them to overcome was that they hadn’t ever had a camera around them.
“I think after about two or three days they were coming up to me and asking, When can I see this on the news? When can I tell me family?
“It was quite hard to overcome that issue of, Look, we’re going to be following for 12 months. It may not be in theatres for two years.
“That’s quite a difficult concept for anyone who isn’t used to having cameras around.”
Also I expect for anyone who’s so old they may not live to see the premiere of the film.
“That’s entirely true. One of the wonderful things was when we had the screening for the Crew and everyone was there to experience it.
“Thankfully even to this day, so many years on since we started, all of those key characters are still with us and they’re still dancing and the group is still performing.
“Editing takes a long time – we were sort of six months working through the story – and one of the things in the back of your mind is you don’t want anyone not to see this film. It became so important.”
I know the film has been successful in New Zealand and you’ve won awards. How has it gone down with the public?
“The film was made for audiences. I come from a strong human rights background and this story is very different from the normal issue-based story that I’d be attracted to.
“So one of my main goals when we started out was to make a human rights story that connected to a general audience – that is our job as film makers.
“It has been extraordinarily successful with audiences. We’ve been to several festivals in the States and European audiences have really gravitated towards it as well. So I couldn’t be happier.”
“Yes, of course. You can’t help but cheer. It’s a feel good film.
“The lovely thing about it is that it’s a story about this incredible group of individuals that come together. We’re not telling a story about them, they’re telling us their story.
“So I do think audiences do get caught up in their journey and they cheer and they cry. For me it’s incredibly rewarding.”
This year’s One World featured 114 documentaries from five dozen countries around the world. After coming to an end in Prague – where there were over 250 screenings – the 17th One World festival of human rights documentaries is now moving on in reduced form to more than 30 other Czech cities and towns.
