Human Rights Film & Digital Media

Mission

The Human Rights Film & Digital Media Initiative is a collaboration between the Department of Digital Media & Design, Dodd Impact Programs, and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. By supporting innovative projects, providing hands-on learning experiences, and hosting dynamic, engaging events, the initiative seeks to foster the creation of and engagement with the next generation of human rights and social justice advocates and analysts through digital media.

A collection of stills from films presented in the 2023 Northeast Human Rights Film Festival.

Research

Armenian Memory Project

Under the guidance of filmmaker Catherine Masud, students enrolled in DMD 2200 Motion Graphics 1 (spring 2019) created an animated motion graphics video based on archival photographs from Dr. Armen T. Marsoobian’s Dildilian Photography Collection depicting early 20th Century Armenian life in Turkey, prior to the genocide that erased the Armenian community. Students from DMD 3998/5998 Visual Representation of Armenian Memory (fall 2019) created a second video called The Dildilians: A Story of Photography and Survival. Watch a panel discussion with Catherine Masud, Dr. Armen T. Marsoobian, and some of the student producers on YouTube. Learn more about the project via the Norian Armenian Project.

Courtroom 600: Virtual Reality Encounter with Evidence of the Holocaust, Greenhouse Studios

This 3D interactive virtual reality (VR) experience explores histories of the Holocaust through archival materials. Read more about the project through Greenhouse Studios and on UConn Today.

Bosnian Community Oral History and Digital Archiving Project

Spearheaded through the Human Rights Archives 1 & 2 course sequence, this project brings together students and members of Connecticut’s Bosnian Community in the documentation of community members’ family stories, supplemented with digital artifacts from their personal collections. These materials are then used by students to create web-based exhibits and short documentary films which are shared with Community members and other interested organizations for educational purposes. Some of these projects have also gone on to win awards in competitions and film festivals.

The Making of Gabriel

“The Making of Gabriel” is a creatively visualized short documentary film (~40 minutes) that brings to life the earliest surviving autobiographical account (1595) of an enslaved Ethiopian in the early modern Indian Ocean world. This innovative short film, co-directed by University of Connecticut faculty members Dr. Janie Cole and Catherine Masud, and produced by Music Beyond Borders, recreates for the first time the astonishing and profoundly moving 16th-century rare life history of Gabriel, a Beta Israel Jewish child who was kidnapped from the Ethiopian highlands and sold into slavery in the Arab world, and his transitions through interconnected African, Arab, Indian and European worlds as a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian to his final encounters with the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa.

Education

Select Course Highlights

Documenting & Curating Community Memory and Human Rights Archives 2: Visual Storytelling Practices

HRTS/DMD 3640 & HRTS/DMD 3641: The Human Rights Archives 1 & 2 course sequence introduces students to oral history interviewing, digital archive curation, and visual storytelling, working with survivors of genocide and their descendants.

Human Rights Through Film

HRTS 3149/3149W: A 3-credit undergraduate course exploring cinematic representations of human rights issues. The course analyzes both the substantive content and technical aspects of films via lectures, screenings, and discussions.

Public Engagement

The Human Rights Film+ Series

The Human Rights Film+ Series presents new and classic works of documentary, feature, and journalistic film, as well as video games and other digital media, that address key human rights issues and themes. A cornerstone of the Human Rights Film & Digital Media Initiative, it is presented by the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, and the School of Fine Art’s Department of Digital Media & Design.

The Human Rights Film+ Series was initiated in 2005 and has foregrounded critical human rights issues spanning local to global levels through the medium of film. The Series has featured experienced and emerging filmmakers in conversations about their films, engaging students, faculty, staff and community members through post-show discussions. The Series organizers have partnered with varied units on campus to address themes such as civil rights as human rights, economic and social rights, and art and activism. In 2020, we expanded the Series to “Film+” to include other forms of digital media, including games and animation.