Between 1970 and 2003, about 1600 local women claimed to have been raped by British soldiers stationed in Northern Kenya. Many were beaten and rejected by their husbands as having brought shame on their community.

In 1990, a few such women gathered and created Umoja, a village forbidden to men, which rapidly became a refuge for those in a similar plight. Since then, jealous men have frequently attacked Umoja and created many problems for Rebecca Lolosoli, its founder and matriarch.

In the Israeli Negev desert lies the Bedouin village of El-Sayed. It has the largest percentage of deaf people in the world.

Still, no hearing aids can be seen because in El-Sayed deafness is not a handicap. Through the generations a unique sign language has evolved making it the most popular language in this rare society that accepts deafness as natural as life itself.

The village's tranquility is interrupted by Salim's decision to change his deaf son’s fate and make him a hearing person using the Cochlear Implant Operation.

Tino La Musica are a band based in Cape Town whose members are all refugees from the Congo. They have a regular regular weekly gig at a club and live and rehearse in a rundown block of flats. Suddenly they are evicted, a week before the nationwide xenophobic violence that is to scatter and displace approximately 30 000 refugees around the country. The double impact of these events causes the band to fall apart.

Ironically, the consequence for these particular refugees is to push people previously earning a living from music into the wider job market as a means to survive- where they compete more directly with native South Africans.

The film follows the story of Mohammed, the producer of the band, as he goes in search of the band members, hoping that they can reform and continue building a future together.

In Conakry (capital of Guinea), in the entrance hall of the People’s Palace, is an imposing mural of Fadouba Oularé. He is represented with his Djembe, his rifle, and surrounded by his people. He is the incarnation of the slogan sent out by the Sékou Touré government to mobilize the Guinean population: "The right man at the right place".

Fadouba Oularé’s music is formed by his environment and by the history of his country, and is considered both a vital ritual in all local celebrations and a fundamental element of the Guinean revolution. As complex as his music, Fadouba Oularé is first of all an artist, but also the head of a clan, a soldier, a thief hunter and a medicine man. Through this portrait of Fadouba Oularé’ and traditional Mandingue music, the history of a nation and the struggles encountered by its people are conveyed.

With So Much Wealth In the World, Why Is There So Much Poverty? Poverty is not an accident. 1492 marks the birth of modern times when the conquistadors violently extracted gold and other natural resources. Since then, our economic system has been financed by the poor by forcing them to give up their land and access to natural resources, then through unfair trade, debt repayment and unjust taxes on labour and consumption. This system was carefully built and maintained by the free market policies, resource monopolies and structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and the IMF.

The poor from the barrios of Latin America and the slums of Africa show us the consequences of this system on their lives while leading economists, experts, and politicians explain how 20% of the world’s population consumes more than 80% of the planet’s resources and what to do about it.

Piotr and Marek are two young Poles without work or qualifications who are convinced that leaving for England is the only way they can get rich. They are modest: opening a small bar at Victoria bus station will do for a start. Plans for a classy restaurant in London and a factory producing pharmaceutical packaging in Poland can wait until their first business is a success.

However, after arriving in London, it becomes clear that they have been conned by a labour agent and opportunities for decent work without English are as rare as friends willing to take them in. This zippy film, shot in a direct cinema style, documents the phenomenon of East European labour migration and its pitfalls.

A small kitchen alarm clock sets the time. She has exactly 10 minutes to finish a customer.

Through the reading of a witness declaration, 10 Min. narrates how a young Eastern European woman ends up against her will in the Brussels prostitution network.

"Let us bring to the attention of the presiding judge that we have ruled the working conditions of the prostitutes, investigated by our services throughout this inquiry, deserved to be revealed. They were particularly painful."

The video 10 Min was realized in the framework of the International Day against Traffic in Human Beings.

An insightful portrait of the everyday life of a Chinese border police station. Reinforced units try to fight crime, though the results are often confused or grotesque despite the diligence of the inexperienced young officers. A mentally ill man calls them out over a "corpse" he has found in his bed which turns out to be a crumpled duvet. Another man suspected of robbery cannot be made to answer questions, even under hard interrogation- he is probably dumb. Director Zhao Liang oversees these very human stories with a certain humour, but there is a chilly edge to his wit, as he shows how the social structure is affected by ominipresent police repression.

In 2008, to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Nick Higgins of the University of Edinburgh and Noe Mendelle of the Edinburgh College of Art, gathered together some of the most talented filmmakers and visual artists in Scotland to create a unique multi-director feature length documentary. The resulting film, The New Ten Commandments, broke new ground by seeking to explore Scottish life and culture through the prism of Human Rights. Dr. Nick Higgins will talk through the genesis of this project and, using of clips from the film, will explain the role such a documentary can play in the creation of a human rights culture.

Sanctuary: Inside Stories is an educational DVD resource produced as part of the Sanctuary project, which aims to improve health and well-being in new communities in Scotland. The resource gives insight into and raised awareness of the impact of asylum on mental health.

The Sanctuary project is delivered by Positive Mental Attitudes , Mental Health Foundation, Scottish Refugee Council, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Equality and Diversity Team, NHS Health Scotland, Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture and Compass, the specialist NHS mental health team working with asylum seekers and refugees.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with participants from the film and Sanctuary project partners.

They are Afghans, Iraqis, Kurds, Palestinians, Eritreans, Somalis, Sudanese... They fled war, massacres, insecurity, or extreme poverty. Six years after the closure of Sangatte, there are still just as many trying to reach Great Britain.

Unprotected from the elements, harassed by the police, deprived of everything- including their own identities, the signs of which they erase even from their bodies- they wander the streets of Calais surviving thanks only to the generosity of local volunteers who feed them.

Every year, some 30,000 people come to Canada to apply for refugee status. About 40-45% of those are eventually accepted. Seeking Refuge takes us into the lives of five claimants and their support networks.

Though Esly and her common-law husband managed to evade violent gangs in Honduras, they were stopped at the US-Canadian border. Since they could not prove they had been living together for more than a year, he was deported and eventually killed by the men who were threatening them in Honduras. Najia is a human rights activist from Kabul whose parents begged her to flee after two of her colleagues were assassinated. When the death threats spilled over to her father, she came to Canada. Leyla escaped serial rape and other violence at the hands of soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo but cannot produce the exact documents demanded by refugee board members. Fouad is a Palestinian from Lebanon who is running through his limited legal options after his claim is rejected, due in part to bad luck as his brother’s nearly identical claim had been accepted by a different board member. On the other end of the process is Kader, a blind man from Algeria who has been living under asylum at his Montreal church for over three years.

Together their stories provide a provocative look into this lengthy, frustratingly bureaucratic process, fraught with political landmines. For the government it has become, to an extent, a numbers game. For the people who come to Canada seeking refugee status, it is usually a matter of life and death.

From the outside, the Sighthill Estate in North Glasgow is better known for crime, drugs and poverty than for its sense of community. It is also one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Scotland due to the Government’s asylum seeker dispersal policy, which has seen more than 50 nationalities housed within the area.

Over its 40 year lifespan, the Sighthill Estate has battled high levels of unemployment, addiction and poverty but continued to give solace and home to its residents. Despite the estate slowly falling into disrepair, a recent study (The GoWell 10 year Health Study, March 2007) found that 70% of the community was happy with the area and only 4% actively supported plans to demolish the towerblocks...

Filmed over one year for Channel 4’s 3 Minute Wonders strand, THE ESTATE

presents an intimate and insightful portrait of this truly unique neighbourhood as it

prepares for, and witnesses, the demolition of towerblocks that thousands once called home. Dealing with issues of community, family, identity and diversity, THE ESTATE reveals extraordinary stories about the very meaning of ‘home’ from deep within the heart of a fated community...

Drumchapel: The Frustration Game’ is a damning indictment of local authority enterprise schemes which are contrived to look as if they are there to help the disenfranchised but in fact serve the purpose of greater social control. ###Made by De-Classed Elements in the late eighties, a video group who were based in Drumchapel, Glasgow, it is as relevant today as it was then.

The Film focuses on the so called ‘social cleansing’ in Colombia - the illegal murder of the homeless and prostitutes.

A DVD drama project on the issues of racism and multiculturalism, featuring the young people from Barnados, Future Visions Youth Action Group, Govanhill Youth Project and Castlemilk Youth Complex.

This programme is in collaboration with Gara who will lead a Q&A after the film.

When Provanhall Housing Association needed to communicate their annual report to their members, they got in touch with their local youth group to help out. Now, there are annual reports and there are annual reports....

A little girl tries to understand why her autistic brother is not like other children.

Forgotten Voices, Thoughts, Ideas and Feelings, produced by the Fostering Network is a unique collaborative production from original material produced by young people between the ages of 8 and 24. The group of young people – representing children and young people in foster care, and the sons and daughters of foster carers, came together to share their experiences. The young people met and wanted to make others aware of the many complex and challenging issues they faced. They expressed themselves through writing stories, prose and poetry. Following the production of a booklet, they wanted to make a DVD. Due to legal restrictions preventing the use of any identifying photos or films of young people in foster care, the young people decided to use creative imagery instead. Working in a creative collaborative approach, with the Big Step Partnership and the Babygrand Production Company, this powerful DVD was produced. It has been used extensively throughout Scotland to train foster carers and social workers and to encourage young people to talk about their own experiences.

Document 7 will screen the following excerpts: Going Into Foster Care, Overnights, Bin Liners, Jessica’s Story, I Never Saw Her Again and Education.

Destination – A short animated film giving an insight into how unaccompanied asylum seeking children perceive Scotland and the good and bad experiences that they have. The DVD was called ‘Destination’ because Scotland was the destination where the young people found safety, but also to highlight that for some young people with negative asylum decisions, they do not know if this will be their final destination or whether they will need to return to their country of origin.

The animation was made by the ‘Young Survivors Steps to the Future’ group with the BBC L.A.B., involving young people from 9 different countries. The group celebrates it’s 5 birthday in October 2009. and is supported by the big step, Children’s Rights Service & Residential Services at Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Refugee Council.

Tall Storeys is a video project for young people under 21 years of age and presented as part of artist Lindsay Perth’s residency with multi-story, Street Level’s collaborative arts programme based in the Red Road housing estate, North Glasgow. These films premiering at Document 7 are the first productions from collaborations over Summer 2009 and part funded by The Red Road Project.

Double Trouble 5min
My Lessons With Super Zero, 4min
Olio, 2.30min
Room With A View, 2min
Teen Spirit, 8min
When I Close My Eyes, 3min

www.multi-story.org
www.redroadflats.org.uk
www.streetlevelphotoworks.org

Diversity Films present the latest crop of films from their brand new filmmaking programme which offers free filmmaking training, mentoring and access to filmmaking equipment in new and existing communities in Glasgow. The programme is a diverse mix of documentaries, short drama and music video made by new filmmakers aged 10 – 60+ and will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmakers themselves.

Films + panel discussion

From Kingsnorth in Kent, to Mainshill in Lanarkshire and now Hunterston in North Ayrshire, recent moves towards "new coal" are uniting environmental campaigners and local residents in a wave of community activism...

FILMS

(1) Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars (2007, 34 mins)

Narrated by Robert Redford and produced by the Redford Center and Alpheus Media, The film introduces the unlikely partners — mayors, ranchers, CEOs, community groups, legislators, lawyers, faith groups, and citizens — that have come together to oppose the construction of 19 conventional coal-fired power plants that were slated to be built in Eastern and Central Texas and that were being fast-tracked by the Governor.

(2) Kingsnorth : a local issue going global (15 mins)

Narrated by Robert Newman and documenting the fight against the building of a coal-fired power sation in Kent.

+ (3) Mystery Shorts

PANEL DISCUSSION

Including members of CONCH : Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston who will explain how Glasgow is just 30 miles down-wind of a possible new £2bn coal power station and give details of the growing community campaign that is mobilising to stop the coal station from being built.

www.camcorderguerillas.net

www.conchcampaign.org

In 1969 the video portapak arrived in Europe, and for the next 10 years, Hoppy Hopkins and Sue Hall used video, mostly black and white, in a variety of situations – on the street, as art and as television, at a time when non-broadcast video was a new, undeveloped creative medium. In 1979, through their company Fantasy Factory, they established the first independent U-matic edit suite for cheap access.

This informative talk by Hoppy Hopkins and Sue Hall will show excerpts of their early work demonstrating the social uses of video for community action and development.

Sean McAllister’s Hull’s Angel saw him return to his home city to examine the impact of an influx of 1,500 asylum seekers.

When he arrived in Hull, the asylum seekers told him about a local lady who was helping them- so McAllister found Tina, a 48-year-old former housewife who was in a relationship with a 24-year-old Iraqi.

A young Sri Lankan woman struggles to gain independence,

while holding her troublesome family together in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.

Mayomi lost her husband to the Tamil Tigers, and her mother and home to the Tsunami. She is now the only female member left in her family, and single-handedly cares forher disabled father, her alcoholic brother and his abandoned six-year old son.

She is also still homeless and knows that, in a country crippled by bureaucracy and corruption, this is unlikely to change. As Mayomi struggles to overcome these obstacles, her optimism and courage drive her forward in this moving and tender film.

Sable Island is a protected area 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax that people cannot visit without special permission from the Canadian Coast Guard. Roberto Dutesco has travelled to the island five times.

The Romanian-born photographer has worked for years as a fashion photographer in New York City for magazines such as Vogue, Maxim, GQ and Vanity Fair. But he also has another passion — the wild horses of Sable Island.

Halifax filmmaker Matt Trecartin chronicles Dutesco’s obsession in the short film Chasing Wild Horses.

In 1942, hundreds of Czech Jews are deported to Riga in Latvia. In an eerily empty, dilapidated, fenced-off and snowed-in part of town, they find pots on stoves, clothes on the floor, as if everyone left in a hurry. Then stones wrapped in paper are thrown over the wire by young men held in a cordoned-off section of the ghetto. The notes say: "You will all be killed, like our families. We are the last survivors."

Yet life continues. Some people are sent to the Salaspils camp, where only ruthless selfishness offers a slim chance of survival, but others cling together, steadfastly maintaining "normality" amidst the atrocities. Children go to school past bodies hanging from the gallows. Boys play football on the ghetto square/execution ground. Teenagers fall in love at clandestine parties, almost literally "dancing on graves"...

Edited from 270 hours of interviews shot in 20 countries over 10 years, the film dispels our notions of a "Holocaust documentary". Employing no commentary or contemporary footage, only a minimalist montage of interviews and never-seen materials drawn from a vast array of sources, these entirely personal points of view combine in a life-affirming picture of survival through luck, wisdom, ingenuity and sheer will, to form a depiction of the Holocaust "as we don’t know it".

In northern Albania, lives are defined by the vendetta. Fearful of revenge attacks, thousands of people dare not leave their homes. Death awaits them the moment they cross the threshold of their door.

Christian knows every crack and every bump on the wall in front of him. For twelve years, he has not left this room because his father murdered someone. His last hope is the German nun, Sister Christina Färber.

As a mediator, she is trying to achieve the near impossible- to get the two families, sworn enemies, to abandon their vendetta and seek reconciliation. "I have seen too many people lying on the ground with a bullet in their head," she says.

This is a film about families immersed in the culture of the vendetta, living - and dying – by the laws of honor. Only Sister Christina is struggling to overcome this violent ritual and the Kanun.

Today, more than 200,000 men, women and children are locked up in North Korea’s concentration camps. Systematic torture, starvation and murder is what faces the inmates. Few survive many years in the camps, but the population is kept stable by a steady influx of new individuals considered to be ‘class enemies’.

A few people have managed to flee the camps to a new life in South Korea. Some of them get together and decide to make an extraordinary and controversial musical about their experiences in the Yodok camp.

Despite death threats and many obstacles, the musical becomes a tour de force for this ensemble of refugees, and for them a possibility opens to talk about their experiences and inspire others to protest the existence of the camps.

Shangri-La to hell in ten years: How did Nepal, a peaceful landlocked country, become home to the most dramatic Maoist insurgency in modern history? Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal’s Maoist Army tells the personal story of Nepali boys and girls as they attempt to rebuild their lives after fighting in the Maoist People’s Liberation Army during the eleven-year civil war between the insurgents and the Hindu monarch of Nepal.

With the major conflict ended and the Maoists in control of the government, these children are now discarded by the Maoist leadership and forced to return home to communities and families that want nothing to do with them. For many of the them, the return home can be even more painful than the experience of war.

Through the voices of former child soldiers, the film examines why these children joined the Maoists and explores the prevention of future recruitment.

I In some of the poorest parts of Nigeria- where evangelical religious fervour is combined with a belief in sorcery and black magic- many thousands of children are being blamed for catastrophes, death and famine, and branded witches. Denounced as Satan made flesh by powerful pastors and prophetesses, these children are abandoned, tortured, starved and murdered- all in the name of Jesus Christ.

This Dispatches special follows the work of one Englishman, 29-year-old Gary Foxcroft, who has devoted his life to helping these desperate and vulnerable children. Gary’s charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, raises funds to help Sam Itauma who, five years ago, rescued four children accused of witchcraft. He now struggles to care for over 150 in a makeshift shelter and school in the Niger Delta region called CRARN (Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network). Gary and Sam introduce Dispatches to some of the rescued children who have been through unimaginable horrors.