“One World” International Human Rights Film Festival

The Third Festival “One World” was held in Prague in April 2001, under the auspices of Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Václav Havel, Pre­si­dent of the Czech Republic. It is in practice that other countries do the re-screening of the best films from the Prague Festival.The Serbian “One World” festival was held under the auspices of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and its director, Prof. Vojin Dimitrijević, as pre­si­dent. Motto of the Festival was ’To expose abuses, encourage dignity, inspire solidarity, and fos­ter mutual understanding.’ The goals were to promote the making of documentary films on human rights by providing a forum for film-makers to reach mass audiences; to raise awareness and knowledge about human rights in their broadest dimensions – political, economic and social – and inspire direct involvement in global challenges and to develop the festival as a leading year-round educational forum for the pre­sen­ta­tion and discussion of human rights issues. The programme of the first Belgrade film festival “One World” included 20 selected films from abroad from the fol­lowing categories: competition section, tolerance and diversity, in­di­ge­nous peoples section, European public television documentaries section, screening of domestic documentary and TV films on human rights, screening of video, debates (with the participation of renown guests domestic and foreign, experts and audiences), etc.

The festival lasted for 6 days in Belgrade and another 17 days in 12 towns in Serbia (Priboj, Užice, Bajina bašta, Novi Pazar, Požarevac, Niš, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Zrenjanin, Ivanjica and Pančevo). Film screening was followed by a public debates moderated by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights staff.