Entering its 18th year, the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival features documentary and fiction films that concern familiar issues in the realm of human rights, as well as emerging issues in the field. The films in the festival put issues ranging from corporate responsibility to governments' abuse of power to the plight of refugees into sharp relief. The fiction works in this year's festival address, each in their own way, histories of violence: a look at capital punishment through the true-life story of Britain’s last hangman; the massacre of thousands of Sikhs in 1984 following the assassination of Prime Minister Gandhi; and a fictionalized account of the treatment of non-combatants in the most recent history of the war on terror. This year's documentaries deal with the ongoing conflict in Iraq, the issue of fair trade, and several countries where the abuse of the environment and the abuse of individual citizens overlaps. Join us for two weeks of films that will inspire, provoke, and perhaps most of all, help us see that whether through the dynamics of globalization, the structures of international law, or the patterns of migration that now dominate our world — we are all connected.

From June 10 - 11 and from June 17 - 18 the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival presents an installation of Media That Matters in the Furman Gallery adjacent to the Walter Reade Theater's lobby. Watch films, get the DVD, take action. 16 shorts by youth and independent filmmakers stream online at the The Media That Matters Film Festival as well as screening at community venues around the country and being distributed on DVD. The Media That Matters Film Festival is a project of Arts Engine.

Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale: What Future? Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo on exhibit June 8 - 22 at the Furman Gallery.