2nd edition of ACT Human Rights Film Festival set for April 14-21 at CSU
Note to Reporters: High-resolution images are available at http://col.st/c8AmW.
The second edition of the ACT Human Rights Film Festival opens Friday, April 14, at Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center Theater.
The weeklong festival features the most critically acclaimed and recently released international documentary films that explore a range of human rights themes, including art as resistance, women’s rights, war and genocide, immigration and exile, LGBTQ rights, and race and class in America. The festival closes Friday, April 21, with the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, followed by a community reception in the Lory Student Center’s West Ballroom.
Films will screen throughout opening weekend and the following weekdays at either the Lory Student Center Theater or the Lincoln Center’s Magnolia Theatre. Screening times and locations will be available on the festival’s website, www.actfilmfest.org, beginning March 16, when tickets go on sale. The majority of film titles, synopses and trailers have already been announced. Check the festival website daily for special announcements and new content.
Five Colorado premieres
The curated festival’s lineup represents the most relevant and acclaimed films produced within the last two years, and they are not yet available in wide release. Five of the selected films are Colorado premieres. There will be a special advanced screening of The Apology, which follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
Directors and film subjects from around the world will appear in person for the majority of post-screening talk-back sessions, including Razia Jan, founder of one of the first Afghanistan schools for girls; Rory O’Neill, whose alter ego Panti Bliss became the spokesperson for marriage equality in Ireland; and director Johanna Schwartz, whose film They Will Have to Kill Us First follows musicians in Mali in the wake of a jihadist takeover and subsequent banning of music.
New in 2017
The festival has some new offerings this year:
• Odell Brewing Co. hosts the ACT Human Rights Film Festival Kickoff and Release Party at its taproom (800 E. Lincoln Ave., Fort Collins) on Tuesday, March 28, from 7 to 9 p.m. Taste the 2017 Screening Session IPA, brewed exclusively for ACT, win festival tickets and T-shirts, and meet some of this year’s Call to ACT nonprofit partners. Free food, live music, a VR demo and announcement of a closing-night special guest round out the evening.
• Simplified ticketing: Non-student festival patron tickets are $10 each or $30 for four. Student tickets are $5 each, or $15 for four. Group discounts are also available.
• On Saturday, April 15, the film What Tomorrow Brings, sponsored by RamEvents, is free to CSU students with a valid ID.
• Winners from the first-ever student short film competition will be screened throughout the week.
ACT is produced by the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University and is the Intermountain West’s only film festival dedicated to human rights. ACT curates the most relevant, recent and acclaimed documentary and narrative fiction human rights cinema produced around the world. Learn more at www.actfilmfest.org. The Department of Communication Studies is in CSU’s College of Liberal Arts.
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