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.

More than 60 % of the vegetables grown in the Kathmandu valley are supplied by the Nagadeshi people, who spend their lives working the soil. Only a very few of them employ contemporary technology and practices.

This is the story of one such Nepali farmer from the indigenous Newar community as he struggles to retain his traditional lifestyle amidst the challenges of modernity.

Living just 10 km from the Nepali capital Kathmandu, he is threatened by the growing encroachment of housing companies into fertile watershed land.

Mrs Molky, a 73 year old Iranian woman, has been a widow for 14 years now. She lives alone in a humble house in the small town of Baragun. One day, Mrs Molky decides to travel to Isfahan to visit relatives she has not seen in over 20 years...

As part of Amnesty’s new Demand Dignity campaign, launched this year, they commissioned the film Poverty of Justice. The screening will be introduced by Graeme McGregor (Amnesty International) and will be followed by a panel discussion.

Film: Poverty of Justice

Around the world, people living in poverty are increasingly fighting for recognition of their rights, challenging abuses of power and demanding a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. In the film Poverty of Justice, people from three different communities in Peru, Canada and Kenya, tell their own stories of this struggle for dignity and rights. Amnesty International has made a long-term commitment to working with these communities and this film has been produced as the first step in campaigning with them and as an educational resource for our members and activists.

Panel will include: Graeme McGregor (Scotland Campaigner Amnesty International), Elaine Webster (Centre for Human Rights Law, University of Strathclyde) and Jemma Neville (Scottish Human Rights Commission).

Though the majority of crimes brought before the judiciary in Bogotá are the kind of misdemeanors that follow from abject poverty, government officials have cracked down hard.

To sell pirated CDs, to steal a cellphone, or to simply sleep on the streets may garner a particular individual a multi-year prison sentence.

BAGATELA provides a portrait of Justice against the backdrop of petty crimes that occur on a daily basis in Bogotá... a city accustomed to both violence and inequality.

Garry Kasparov became famous as a world chess champion noted for an inventive style marked by sophisticated combinations. As an opposition democratic politician in the group Other Russia he takes the same approach. For that reason he is a thorn in the side of the governing powers headed by Vladimir Putin. This documentary by Masha Novikova captures campaigning and demonstrations before elections to the Duma in 2007. Kasparov and his team made up of young democrats and experienced dissidents visit 30 regions in order to hold discussions with local people and put across their demand for change in the country’s government.

The film reveals how the Kremlin systematically sabotages the activities of Kasparov and his party, The Other Russia. The daily routine is tough: they have little access to the media, they are beaten up during demonstrations, they are put in prison. The Putin Youth follow them everywhere and do no let an opportunity go by to accuse them of treason to the homeland. Or occasionally the Kremlin tries to bribe them.

How does the life of an opposition member feel in Russia? The people do not trust you, the regime persecutes you, your fellow politicians betray you. Nobody needs your so called revolution. Why would you burn in her holy fire?

Recently there have been massive, unprecedented rises across world markets in the value of Jade. It is now 40 times more valuable than gold.

This part observational, part impressionistic study of a day in the life of a Muslim Uighur community, illustrates their hopeful efforts to discover Jade in the harsh conditions of a dried-up river bed near a remote town on the old Silk Road in Western China.

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is feared in the West, but loved by many in Iran. On his frequent visits to the countryside he is greeted like a rock star, and literally millions of people write to him: he has received 9 million such letters in his years in office.

The letters are typically requests for loans, jobs or money, and they are often desperate. The diversity of opnions expressed reveal a clear rural-urban divide- not just in differing views of the president himself, but also on the issues that matter most to these two groups of people.

Filmmaker Peter Lom followed President Ahmedinejad on three of his trips to the provinces.

It is our home that greatly shapes our identities and is the backdrop of our most intimate memories.

Lower Left is a portrait of an old woman who lives in a little apartment on a housing estate in the Ruhr area of Germany. The estate was built in the 1960’s to provide workers in the coal and steel industry with adequate housing. Forty years later she is one of the oldest inhabitants left, everyone else having either died or moved away. Together with her two sons, she tells a story that dives deep into the socio-cultural history of post-war Germany.

A film about the relationship between urban architecture, memory and the experience of intimate places- what French philosopher Gaston Bachelard described as "the poetics of space". A colourful journey through a forgotten landscape...

East Germany- the Deutsche Demokratische Republik- was a country of more than 16 million people. Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall came down, and a year later the DDR disappeared forever. Yet it lives on in "Ostalgie" (East-algia), tourist souvenirs and the memories of those who lived there or visited.

My DDR T-Shirt takes a look at life in East Germany and asks people from East and West: What was the DDR really like? What do the old communist symbls mean now, and how does it feel to see them sold as souvenirs? Was the fall of the Berlin Wall as good as it looked on TV, and was anything lost when the DDR was consigned to the history books?

Document 7 in collaboration with Glasgow School of Art Kortney Ryan Ziegler is an experimental filmmaker and Ph.D. Candidate of African American studies at Northwestern University, whose research examines representations of kink and BDSM in queer performance and cinema. Ziegler’s work has screened in film festivals in the United States as well as England, Canada, Spain and The Netherlands. The lecture will present Zeigler’s journey as a filmmaker personally, professionally, and academically and discuss the process that leads up to the production of the artistic vision.

The Friday Event lecture series has been running since the early 1990s and is The Glasgow School of Art’s flagship public lecture programme. Comprising a series of approximately twelve lectures over the academic year, the lectures are given by major international figures within the contemporary art world. The speakers are internationally significant artists, historians, cultural theorists and others contributing to the discourse around contemporary art and culture.

Free, but tickets are limited, and can’t be booked: so get there early!