Cinema Human Rights and Advocacy
Deadline for scholarship applicants:
30 April 2024
Deadline for self-funded applicants:
30 May 2024
Allowance opportunities for environmental rights advocates available!
Lecturers and Experts
Often different disciplines work separately although they have similar motivations and strong connections. The Summer School in Cinema Human Rights and Advocacy brings together experts and participants from all over the world to analyse the connections between human rights, films, digital media and advocacy, to foster participatory and critical thinking on urgent human rights issues, debate with filmmakers during the Venice International Film Festival and learn how to use films as a tool for social and cultural change.
Programme's Tutors
chra Director
Nick Danziger
Nick Danziger’s taste for travels and adventures began when he left home alone to Paris in 1971 aged 13. Subsequent journeys took Nick further afield; to South and Central America, the Middle and Far East, as well as Africa.
Nick's initial ambition was to be an artist. He graduated with an MA and taught art school and was represented by the Robert Fraser gallery. But his desire to travel remained, becoming more and more interested in people’s daily lives, often living and working side by side with people living in the margins of society be it in Afghanistan, Colombia, Mongolia, Kosovo, Ethiopia and Great Britain.
He has worked in over 100 countries amongst traumatized populations living in war zones and in neighbourhoods undermined by social conflicts. For Danziger photography, writing and documentary filmmaking are all means for capturing and recording what he sees. His first documentary film, War, Lives and Videotape, based on children abandoned in the Marstoon mental asylum on the outskirts of Kabul won the Prix Italia for best television documentary film and he is a winner of a World Press Award in the single best portrait category for his ‘mirror image’ of Tony Blair and George Bush as they went to war in Iraq in April 2003.
Email: danziger@monaco.mc
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chra Director
Claudia Modonesi
Claudia is a human rights expert and media trainer with a background in film studies and an MA in human rights. For the last 15 years, Claudia has combined her two great passions - film and human rights - by running projects in Europe, Asia and Africa and supporting aspiring filmmakers and activists to expose abuses and injustices in their films.
After years of experience in the human rights sector serving international organisations in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna and the not for profit sector in the UK, in 2019 Claudia became the CEO of Picture People, a UK educational charity using visual media and mobile technology to advocate for change, where she manages the organisational strategy and operations whilst she continues to facilitate trainings in the field.
Email: cmodonesi@hotmail.com
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Lecturers
Rovira I Virgili University-URV, Spain
Susana Borràs Pentinat
Dr. Susana Borràs Pentinat is Associate Professor of International Environmental Law and EU Law at the Faculty of Law of the Rovira I Virgili University-URV (Tarragona-Spain). Director of the Master’s Degree in Environmental Law at URV.
Master in Environmental Law (2004) and European Doctorate in Law (2007), with Extraordinary Prize to the Doctoral Thesis. Member of the Research Group on Environmental Law, Citizenship and Sustainability of the Centre for Environmental Law Studies of Tarragona (CEDAT) of the URV, associated with the Centre de Recherche en Droit Public of the Université de Montréal (Canada) and the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. In 2022, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the CLIMOVE Project (Climate Migration from a Gender Perspective), (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020) no. 101031252.
Legal expert on climate change and refugees for the United Nations Network on Migration, the South American Network on Environmental Migration, the Catalan Commission for Refugee Aid, the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, and Expert Member of the United Nations Harmony with Nature Platform. Academic Director of the Spanish Platform on Climate Displacement and Migration and member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL). Her main fields of research are climate migration, rights of nature, climate justice, ecofeminism, human rights and environmental defenders.
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Dartmouth Films
Christopher Hird
Christopher Hird is the founder and managing director of Dartmouth Films, who specialise in the production and distribution of documentaries which aim to have an impact.
One of Dartmouth’s first productions – The End of the Line (2009) - pioneered this genre of filmmaking. Recent films have included Josh Appignanesi’s My Extinction (2023), Edinburgh Film Festival selected Women Behind the Wheel (2022) and Bank Job (2021), which premiered at Hot Docs. Last year Dartmouth won the Big Screen Award for best documentary campaign of the year.
Christopher Hird is a former chair of the Sheffield DocFest, was the founding chair of Doc Society and served for six years as a trustee of the Grierson Trust. He is currently the chair of the Ethical Journalism Network and Picture People and is a trustee of the Wincott Foundation.
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Our Children’s Trust
Kelly Matheson
Kelly has been working with Our Children’s Trust since its inception, joining the staff in 2022 to deepen the impact of its global programme. A key goal of the global work is to ensure that courts around the world use the best available science in making decisions about the future of humanity.
In addition to filing numerous briefs with regional and international courts to advance the dual analysis of law and science, Kelly is curating a 10-part series with Open Global Rights, “Overturning 1.5°C: Calling for the Science Turn in Rights-Based Climate Litigation” in collaboration with climate experts, litigators, scholars, and leaders around the globe. Recently, she co-authored an editorial, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen, Carême, and Duarte Agostinho: How Science Can Save Humanity in Strasbourg Observers and “Securing the Legal Right to a Healthy Atmosphere and Stable Climate for the Benefit of All Present and Future Generations” to be published in Legal Actions for Future Generations.
Previously, Kelly worked at WITNESS, an international human rights organization, where she developed a strategic communication plan which included co-directing, producing, and distributing a series of ten short films written by Our Children Trust’s youth plaintiffs titled, Stories of TRUST: Calling for Climate Recovery. Following this campaign Kelly served on Our Children’s Trust Board from 2015-2021.
Some of her other publications include “The Case for Climate Visuals in the Courtroom” in Litigating the Climate Emergency: How Human Rights, Courts, and Legal Mobilization Can Bolster Climate Action in Cambridge Press (2023) and ”The Role of Mobile Technology in Documenting International Crimes: The Affaire Castro et Kizito in the Democratic Republic of Congo” in the Journal of International Criminal Justice (2021). She also authored two ground-breaking practical guides: the Video as Evidence Field Guide and Video as Evidence: Environmental Defense Guide for WITNESS (2015 and 2023).
Kelly serves on the Advisory Board at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. She received her JD from the University of Oregon School of Law, MFA in Science and Natural History Filmmaking from Montana State University, and BS from Drake University.
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Global Campus of Human Rights Academic Director
George Ulrich
Prof. George Ulrich has worked for the Global Campus in a variety of capacities. He served as GC Europe / EMA Programme Director from 2016-2019, as Secretary General of EIUC (the predecessor of the Global Campus) from 2003-2009, and as Academic Coordinator / Programme Director of EMA from 2001- 2004.
In between these appointments, he held the position of Rector and Professor of Human Rights at the Riga Graduate School of Law from 2009-2016. George obtained his Ph.D. as well as an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, Canada, and holds the degree of Cand. Mag. in Social Anthropology and History of Ideas from Aarhus University, Denmark.
Among his main research interests are issues related to the history and philosophy of human rights, human rights diplomacy, human rights and development cooperation, health and human rights, international medical ethics, and ethics for human rights professionals. He is one of the joint editors of a Global Campus publication on music and human rights. A key focus of his teaching is to equip students to effectively engage with expressions of human rights scepticism.
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EngageMedia
Egbert Wits
Egbert has been active in the field of international development for nearly 20 years. Specializing in impact oriented working practices, training design and facilitation, community empowerment, and strengthening the capacities of local organizations.
At EngageMedia, a non-profit focused on digital rights, open tech and video for change in the Asia-Pacific, Egbert managed and co-edited the Video for Change Impact Toolkit, a guide for practitioners and activist to design and evaluate impact and create strategic outreach campaigns for their films.
After nearly two decades in Indonesia and Australia, where he was an anthropology lecturer and PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle, he recently moved back to Amsterdam. Here, Egbert currently works as an ethnographic researcher at the Free University, investigating the potential of hope-driven social interventions in times of radical uncertainty and climate change.
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