The Human Rights and Global Justice Working Group 3rd Annual Film Series on Global Justice: Voces Inocentes (Innocent Voices)
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM EST
Research Hall, 163
The bloody civil war which tore apart El Salvador in the 1980s is seen through the eyes of a
young boy in this drama from director Luis Mandoki. Chava (Carlos Padilla) is 11 years old and
growing up in a small town in El Salvador where the fighting between rebels and government
troops is a daily fact of life. Chava’s father has abandoned the family, leaving him behind as the
man of the house while his mother (Leonor Varela) and sister try to maintain a normal life by
day while dodging bullets by night. Chava’s 12th birthday is coming up, which puts the boy
in a dangerous position -- at 12, he’ll be old enough to join the army and be used as cannon
fodder against the rebels, so he and his classmates try to find out when military recruiters will
be coming to their schools so they can plan to be absent that day. However, as Chava faces both
danger and adventure in his little town, the war edges in closer all the time until it can’t be
avoided any longer.
Featuring discussion led by Mason faculty member Charlotte Rogers (Department of Modern
and Classical Languages) and the Salvadoran Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission Hector Silva.
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This year’s film series is a sequel to the Human Rights and Global Justice Working Group’s two successful previous festivals in 2010 and 2011. The film series offers a variety of cinematic representations of these varying responses to human rights violations and injustice, and each screening will be followed by a discussion period.
Our hope is that the film series will initiate a campus-wide debate within the Mason community about the challenges of global justice not only in far-away places such as El Salvador and Burma, but at home as well.
The key objective of the film series is to promote discussion among Mason students and faculty about diverse ways people and movements around the world respond to atrocity and injustice around the world. The film series showcases cutting-edge feature films as well as documentary films (see list along with screening dates and times below) that explore a wide variety of issues, from the courageous Burmese political prisoners telling their life stories under an oppressive military regime to the impact of drug trafficking on poor rural Mexican communities.
Each screening will be followed by a Q&A session led by an associate faculty member. Additionally, some events will feature filmmakers and/or invited guest speakers sharing their experiences and introducing their work.
The film series is the result of a collaboration among Mason faculty members across a variety of disciplines who have collaborated since 2007 in the Human Rights & Global Justice Working Group (formerly the Transitional and Transnational Working Group at the Center for Global Studies) to study and research different mechanisms of coping with past mass violence and injustice.
Sponsored by Center for Global Studies with support from the Latin American Studies Program.
