Documentary films about trafficking of women

Wednesday, March 7th at 20.00, Menza pri koritu

NADJA RIDŽIĆ: STRANPUTICE ŽIVOTA (2005, BiH, 40', Bosnian without subtitles)

Nadja Ridžić made this documentary together with her husband – camera man and editor Ahmed Begičević – in December 2005 for the Bosnian Federal Television. They filmed interviews with people who are involved into trafficking in different but complementary ways: prostitutes, pimps, brothel owners, doctors, non-governmental organisation representatives, safe house coordinators, police officials and judges. Also included is the footage of Slovenian diplomats in Bosnia in Herzegovina who were present at a raid in one of the Bosnian brothels!

DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ: COUNTERPOINT FOR HER (2004, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30', Bosnian with English subtitles)

Rather than trying to show the truth, the documentary counterpoint for her follows fragments of different truths in order to be able to present and understand sex trafficking. A Bosnian girl gets trafficked in 1992 and is sold to Italy by her brother's good friend. Her story is a precursor for the strong post-war expansion of sex trafficking in Bosnia and Herzegovina where since 1995 around seven billion U.S. dollars has been made by traffickers while thousands of girls from the neighbouring East-European countries were physically and mentally abused.

Although the film stresses a big difference between prostitution and trafficking, it concludes that sex trafficking is basically poverty trafficking and that the girls involved are marked forever.

GILLIAN CALDWELL: BOUGHT & SOLD (1997, USA, 42', English)

This documentary was produced and directed by current WITNESS Executive Director Gillian Caldwell while she was co-director of the Global Survival Network (GSN). During the course of a two-year undercover investigation, GSN established a dummy company that purportedly specialized in importing women into the United States as escorts/entertainers. Under that guise, GSN gained entry to the shadowy operations of international trafficking and recorded interviews with traffickers, Russian mafia, trafficked women, and groups working to provide services to trafficked women.

Link: http://www.witness.org

BIOGRAPHIES

Nadja Ridžić was born forty-seven years ago in Travnik where she has lived and worked since. She studied Political Science in Sarajevo and has been working as a journalist for both Bosnian Federal Television (RTV BiH) and Associated Press. She is also the vice president of Bosnian Journalists Association. She has collaborated with her husbands Ahmed Begičević, a film director and camera man, on many projects. Documentary Stranputice života was completed in two weeks time.

Danijela Majstorović majored in English literature and language, worked as a translator, and did several theatre jobs. As a student, she independently produced two shorter documentaries: Spinners-A San Francisco Drum and Bass Story and Behind the Tattoo, both of which played at the New York International and Independent Film Festival in September 2002. She lives in Banja Luka and has just defended her PhD dissertation on discourses of new colonialism in Bosnia. In April 2004, she finished her first social documentary on sex trafficking in Bosnia and Herzegovina, counterpoint for her, and in December 2005, she finished a documentary on women in showbiz Dream Job, which premiered at Zagreb Dox in February 2006.

Red Dawns' festival hosts both documentaries. Counterpoint for her is going to be shown on Wednesday, March 7th at 20.00 in Menza pri koritu. The author will be present and available for questions after the Klub Gromka screening.

Gillian Caldwell is the Executive Director of WITNESS. She is also a filmmaker and an attorney. She was formerly Co-Director of the Global Survival Network, where she coordinated a two-year undercover investigation into the trafficking of women. Gillian received a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Georgetown University. She is a recipient of the 2000 Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Award.