In April 2016, the goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film saw the launch of the human rights oriented project OPPOSE OTHERING!
Five young international directorial duo teams from Germany and Central and Eastern Europe are currently in the process of completing films that confront the phenomenon of focused misanthropy directed at groups – also known as “othering”. The project website is now online to document the film projects as they develop and to create and host an active network with further content related to the issues in question. The FilmFestival Cottbus is one of the project partners.
OPPOSE OTHERING! confronts a wide range of forms of othering using the means of cinema – with the aim of shedding light on the marginalisation of individuals of different social, religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds and/or sexual orientations and gender identities. In doing so, the films should above all show positive examples of solidarity and civil courage, featuring individuals and/or projects that are passionately committed to opposing discrimination against their fellow humans who have been branded as “different”. Among other stories featured in the films, a German-Russian directorial duo accompanied transgender vocal training courses in Berlin and Moscow for instance, while a Romanian-German tandem team chose to take a critical look at touristic images of the other and psychological projections at work in a so-called Roma ethno-village in Romania. The project website will be successively filled with trailers for the tandem films, information on the directorial teams and their films and finally with the completed films themselves. Moreover, the site is intended to become a platform where like-minded amateurs, human rights activists, professional filmmakers and individuals from all layers of society, young and old alike, can contribute their own short films, clips and web videos.
For more information, please visit www.oppose-othering.de