Students organize film festival

Tulane University students and Professor Dana Zartner hosted a Human Rights Film Festival from Tuesday to Thursday.

Students in Zartner’s International Human Rights course worked with the Center for Public Service to organize two film screenings and a panel to raise awareness of the local and international aspects of human trafficking.

Zartner said that the inspiration for creating the film festival came from the course’s service-learning requirement.

“I wanted the course to have a service learning component from the start,” Zartner said. “Unfortunately, there really wasn’t an organization in the community that was dealing with the issues that we discussed in class. The festival was just a product of the brainstorming process.”

Senior Emily Orler said that hosting a film festival on campus allowed students to have a hands-on role in activism. 

“The film festival concept was developed by Professor Zartner to support the New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, which is organized by Patois,” Orler said. “Rather than simply volunteering with Patois, the students in the course had the opportunity to develop their own festival and not only provide a public service, but also experience the difficulties that advocacy groups face when attempting to put on similar awareness-raising events. We also hope that it will encourage students to attend Patois’ festival which will be held from today to March 21.”

During the week of the film festival, the class screened “Demand” and “Not for Sale” for the public. Both films focus on the current state of human trafficking.

A group of students in the class selected the films. They decided to emphasize the different approaches to human trafficking and the problems the international community now faces, Zartner said.

“The students in the film group [of the class] saw some films from a list I gave them and did their own research,” Zartner said. “The group wanted a sub-theme of the solutions to human trafficking rather than focusing solely on the horrors. They wanted to find films that dealt with how we can combat this problem.”

In addition to presenting the films, the class attempted to open dialogue and increase awareness by hosting a panel on trafficking in Louisiana. 

“We are particularly excited about the panel because the featured participants represent three different professional perspectives on trafficking in the local context,” Orler said. “By including advocates in the non-profit sector, along with lawyers and a representative from the sheriff’s office, we are hoping to not only demonstrate the many ways which an individual can be involved in combating trafficking and defending human rights, but are also anticipating an interesting debate among the panelists regarding the best methods of doing so.”

One goal of the film festival is to enlighten students about the existence of the problem in our local community. 

“The goal is to show that this is a huge international issue, but where you can really have an effect is on the ground in your own area,” Zartner said. “I just saw that Baton Rouge is one of the centers of trafficking in the country. It is a problem internationally, but the reality is that it happens here too.”

Freshman Casey Boersma said that she thought most students are aware of human trafficking as an international issue but not as a local one.

“We have a lot more knowledge that trafficking is going on in other places around the world,” Boersma said. “Learning about what happens nationally is really important though.”

Zartner said that she hopes the film festival will help foster campus activism against trafficking.

“So much of the movement is the grassroots advocacy effort,” Zartner said. “For the Tulane community, we need to highlight trafficking as a major issue that is relevant to this country too. You can make people aware through small events like this, so tackling it at a smaller level is a first step.”