Recent news
Fatal Promises coming home to Austria
Leading up to it's European Premiere Fatal Promises has caused quiet a stir in Kat's home town Vienna. The film will be opening this year's Human Rights Film Festival "This Human World" on December 3rd at the Burg Kino, one of Vienna's prime locations and most traditional theaters. Days after the tickets went on sale for opening night and therefore the premiere of Fatal Promises the theater was almost sold out.
The Press in Vienna has also expressed great interest in Fatal Promises early on ever since Johannes Wegenstein, the founder, announced that the film will be opening this years festival. Kat and her mother and co-producer Anneliese have been interviewed by several magazines and newspapers and will be on Austrian Radio Oe3 this weekend.
When asked how Kat feels about showing her film at home she says:" I am very honored that our film is opening the festival and I have to say that it is very fitting for a Human Rights Film Festival, because after all I believe that the exploitation, the abuse and the lack of freedom victims of Human Trafficking experience are three very basic violations of our human rights."
Kat also mentioned that she is very happy that a festival like this exists here in Vienna and she hopes that a lot of people will come out and also see as many films as possible during the festival. "Some of these documentaries will never get a chance to reach the mainstream audience via TV or DVD, so this is a wonderful opportunity for both the audience and the film to see and be seen."
For more information on the festival and were to get tickets please visit: www.thishumanworld.com
by GreenKat Productions
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The Journey in NYC
A week and a half ago The Journey, the interactive art installation in part curated by Academy-Award Winner Emma Thompson, has left New York City and is now well on it's way to Madrid, Spain.
The Journey's visit was a hugh success. Every day an average of 1400 people walked through the exhibit no matter what the weather was like. They would stand in line, take their time walking through and exit on the other end a changed person. As some of the Fatal Promises team volunteered we all had a chance to listed to the reactions of people who had just come out. Most of the viewers were shell shocked at first, saddened next, angry and then felt the passion and the willingness to do something. This energy that is set free after the Journey is the energy that needs to be channeled. This will to action is what we need to help move this cause forward and to put pressure on the one's that are in charge. This is why The Journey is so powerful.
For all those who came to the Journey and want to start or continue their work on Human Trafficking please visit our website: www.fatalpromises.com for useful links and ways to help.
We wish The Journey safe travels to Madrid and hope it will do there what it has done here in New York and what it does best and that is move people into action. To find out more about The Journey please visit: www.helenbamber.org
by GreenKat Productions
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Political News - "Getting everyone involved"
For the first time the pre-condition for success in the fight against human trafficking has been defined. Luis C deBaca, the director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in the US-State Department has put it on the record in an interview: „I think at the end of the day what stopps this is not government enforcement efforts, it’s the cultural shift where people start saying, that woman is not just a prostitute, she is somebody’s daughter. That shirt is not just something to be worn, it is something I need to know how it was made and who made it. In other words, that notion of getting everyone involved in the cultural change. At that point, I think we end modern day slavery“.
However, deBaca stressed the importance of bringing traffickers to justice. Success for him is an increase in cases before the court: „When we get more cases it looks as if the trafficking problem is getting worse. What it actually means, we are actually responding better to it (human trafficking).“
To him traffickers are not dealing in misery, they are selling hope: „They pervert it. What they are selling is not misery. What they are selling is a better life. Which then ends in misery."
One way to alert the public to slavery is the list of 122 items produced by forced labour or child labour in 58 countries, released recently by the Labor Department in Washington – from peanuts in Bolivia to jade in Burma. The public needs to know what it is buying.
In the interview deBaca was also asked what drives him: he wants to see the victims break the power of their traffickers. „It is not seeing them when they are handcuffed to a radiator or when they are suffering and bleeding. It is seeing them five years later when they are working with other victims. When they are opening their own little business. It is seeing the person who is terrified and afraid of their own shadow, totally dependent upon the agent or nonprofit lawyer who is helping. You see her a few years later and you are like: Wow!“
But first the public must realize that the cotton of the shirt could come from forced labour, the electronics from China or the tobacco from Kazakhstan too. In the meantime the number of victims is exploding globally because of the current recession.
by GreenKat Productions
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