The third edition of the Festival on Human Rights – VIVISECTfest

Topic: Terrorism, No, Thank You

The third edition of the Festival on Human Rights – VIVISECTfest dedicated to the topic of  "Terrorism, No, Thank You" is aimed at indicating the terrorism as a dangerous social phenomenon in verious forms in the history of human society.
Festival programme of the third issue of VIVISECTfest is a single entity dealing with current topic of the terrorism at  world level through the medium of documentary and photography.
This approach ensures to, in one place, show various views of authors regarding the concern of the terrorism in the world.

The programme of the third edition of the VIVISECTfest

- Film programme: Yulie Cohen Gerstel – My Terrorist; Liam Dalzell – Punjabi Cab; Pirjo Honkasalo- The 3 Rooms Melancholia; John Sullivan – Home of the Brave – Land of the Free; Marianna Yarovskaya, Olesya Bondareva – Holy Warriors; Beate Arnestad – My Daughter the Terrorist; Eric Foss, Greg Kelly – Beyond Words: Photographers of War; Danny Schechter – Weapons of Mass Deception; Christian Frei – The Giant Buddhas; Christian Frei – War Photographer; Line Halvorsen – USA vs Al-Arian; Martin Maraček – The Source.

- The exhibition WAR: USA, Afghanistan, Iraq  www.viiphoto.com
The photograph authors are multiple awarded war photojournalists, gathered at Agency VII: Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, John Stanmeyer, Lauren Greenfield.  

Since September 11th, 2001, most Americans have seen the War on Terror unfold on television, receiving a broadcasted view of the war quite different from the ongoing ground wars as experienced by U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WAR: USA, Afghanistan, Iraq offers a detailed view of what America has faced since the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, prying into the three major crises of the 21st century from a social, political, and militaristic standpoint.

The photographs span from the destruction at Ground Zero on the morning of  September 11th to the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and the air strikes and US occupation of Iraq. They inspire a powerful vista of what international turmoil has extracted from the hearts of many human beings in the three different locations.

About VII Photo Agency
VII derives its name from the number of founding photo-journalists who, in September 2001, formed this collectively owned agency (www.viiphoto.com). Designed from the outset to be an efficient, technologically enabled distribution hub for some of the world's finest photojournalism, VII has been responsible for creating and relaying to the world many of the images that define the turbulent opening years of the 21st century.

Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey and John Stanmeyer were joined in 2002 by Lauren Greenfield and in 2004 by Joachim Ladefoged. Eugene Richards joined in April 2006. Together they document conflict - environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent - to produce an unflinching record of the injustices created and experienced by people caught up in the events they describe.

On September 9th 2001, VII announced its formation. On the following night, covering for the missed return flight of a colleague, James Nachtwey arrived at his Manhattan apartment close to the World Trade Center. The next morning, he photographed some of the most haunting pictures of the collapse of the towers, at the same time eloquently conveying the destruction of a way of life.

While the stark realities of the battlefield loom large, VII turns its gaze with equal intensity to more subtle forms of conflict and documenting the changes and development of society and culture worldwide. The work of Lauren Greenfield, particularly in her social documentary of youth culture and gender identity, adds a further perspective and depth to the work of the agency

But this is not merely artfully captured, neutral observation; nor is it the doctrinaire elaboration of a political or social position. Each photographer is inspired by an array of often very different motivations, and it is from this breadth of reference that the agency draws its originality and strength. What unites VII's work is a sense that, in the act of communication at the very least, all is not lost; the seeds of hope and resolution inform even the darkest records of inhumanity; reparation is always possible; despair is never absolute.

- Debate to the Topic of  "Terrorism: Causes and Effects"
The intention of this debate is that the public needs to acquire knowledge of the basic facts on the terrorism as a dangerous social phenomenon, present in various forms, through the history of human society. Also, with this debate, we want to indicate the method in which particular variants of political extremism or religious fanaticism become the ideology of the terrorism.

All programmes organised within the festival in Novi Sad are free of charge.

This programme will also be offered to other communities through travelling festivals to the topic of  "Terrorism, No, Thank You".

Context

Terrorism is one of the major problems of modern society. It has become a phenomenon, an idea and a term which entered everyday lives of ordinary people. Along with the development of technology, culture and material production, terrorism also developed, but at a faster rate. The causes and motives of the emergence of terrorist organisations and their brutal terrorist actions are various. Numerous authors search for the causes, forms and the essence of terrorism, and also the "profile" of a modern terrorist.

Terrorism still remains an abstract term, because the international community has not managed to define it. Since the member countries have not reached agreement by 1937, the League of Nations did not adopt a convention on the prevention of terrorism and punishment of its doers. Because of that very reason, the United Nations, in spite of many discussions held during its sixty years of existence, were not able to define the nature of terrorism. Recently when it was formed in 1998, International Penal Court was forced to exclude terrorism from its competence, although it is authorised to process a whole range of crimes, including genocide.

The third edition of the Human Rights Festival – VIVISECTfest, dedicated to the topic "Terrorism, No, Thank You," offers a programme which highlights the issue of identity as one of the main causes of terrorism. Search for identity and its defence create various problems and hardships for individuals and groups. We are talking about a unilateral, distorted, "fatal" and "saving" identity for whose defence one scarified everything, even life itself (often one's own, but most often someone else's). Terrorism is, thus, regarded as the only way of defending such identity. Although it is rooted in the ancient past, terrorism is the product of modern era, in particular of the second half of the 20th century. Its causes and motives are numerous. The aim of terrorism is to draw public's attention to the state, position and problems of some social group and to put them above all the remaining problems in the state, region, and even world, and to send a message (most often the political one) about the group's aspirations and intentions. If you take a more careful approach, you will see that in the core of every terrorist motive there is to obtain, maintain and defend individual and/or collective identity.

Terrorism threatens all important resources of the modern society: economy, democracy, freedom and human rights. The first year of the new century, and millennium, started with such indications. What happened on September 11, 2001 in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., and the number of victims and level of destruction they involved, warn us that the power and diversity of modern terrorism is unbelievable. If you add to it the fact that, according to FBI, there are 3,000 terrorist groups and organisations in the world, with membership of 200,000 terrorists, the modern world looks even grimmer.