Festival will be held on the streets of Daehangno to protest gov't censorship
The 12th Seoul Human Rights Film Festival will be held later this month - on the streets. On May 14, the Sarangbang Group for Human Rights, the festival organizer, said it will hold this year's festival on the streets of Daehangno, which is known as a neighborhood for young people, but not as a movie theater. With the theme "We rate their ratings", the festival organizers chose to hold the festival in Daehangno to protest against a series of restrictions on freedom of expression imposed by the government's movie ratings system.
Under the Law on Promotion of Movies and Videos, the South Korean law governing movies and videos, no movie can be shown to the public without being given a rating by the Korea Media Rating Board, a government body, or a recommendation for ratings exemption by the Korean Film Council.
Kim Il-sook, an activist with the Sarangbang Group for Human Rights, said, "Up to now, we've held the film festival at Seoul Art Cinema. Now, we have no choice but to take it to the streets because of the difficulties we've had in renting a venue".
The Human Rights Film Festival has thus far refused to employ the Korea Media Rating Board's ratings system, which is in line with its principle of rejecting systematic film censorship. For decades, the ratings system has been like a set of "shackles" suppressing freedom of expression. For example, in October 2006, the National Police Agency banned the organizer of the Pyeongtaek Film Festival from holding the festival at a site in Seoul that was once used by spies as an interrogation facility. At the time, police said it imposed the ban because one of films at the festival had not been rated by the Korea Media Rating Board. The film, titled "Daechuri's War", was the story of the clashes between riot police and the residents of the village of Daechuri in Pyeongtaek, where the government bulldozed parts of the village to clear the way for the expansion of a U.S. military base.
In a symbolic gesture to protest the country's system of censoring films and videos, Sarangbang formed a separate committee to select films for this month's festival. The name of the committee, the "Committee for Article 19: Freedom of Expression", was inspired by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
This year's Human Rights Film Festival opens on May 30 with the Brazilian documentary "Favela Rising", which follows a social revolutionary who unites his community against drug violence and police corruption.
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