Screening – Amnesty! When They Are All Free
Amnesty! When They Are All Free takes an unprecedented look into the world of Amnesty International as it approaches its fiftieth anniversary.
From its beginnings as a letter writing campaign to help stop international violations of human rights, Amnesty International has become one of the most powerful NGOs in the world. With many famous supporters, and some huge successes in highlighting abuses and imprisonments of some of the worlds most heroic icons, Amnesty International continues to battle for people around the world.
Following the new Secretary General, Salil Shetty, the film exposes the daily struggles within the organisation to help as many people worldwide as possible.
The staff at Amnesty have to tackle such disparate needs as homophobia in Uganda to the revolution in Egypt. Combining these present day issues with interviews and archive footage, Amnesty! When They Are Free gives the wider picture on how the organisation has changed the world for the better while leaving the lingering question: to what extent can organisations like Amnesty be effective in tackling human rights abuses?
Directed by James Rogan
67 minutes
James Rogan – Director, Amnesty! When They Are All Free
James Rogan is an award-winning writer/director who has worked in fiction, documentary and commercials on both sides of the Atlantic. The feature documentary Amnesty! When They Are All Free is his third for BBC Storyville. Previous pieces for the documentary strand are The Trouble with Pirates – investigating the rise of Somali piracy and Blog Wars – revealing the power and influence of bloggers on American politics. His other work includes The Madman and the Cathedral for Britdoc/Channel 4, following a former monk who has spent the last fifty years single-handedly building a cathedral and Warship, a six-part documentary series charting the three month deployment of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious to the Middle East.
Patricia Feeney – former Amnesty researcher for Argentina
Patricia Feeney is the Executive Director of the NGO Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), which was first established in 1997. RAID has carried out research into corporate accountability, human rights and development. A key focus of its research has been conflict and corruption related to the exploitation of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was recently appointed Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Transparency at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Previously, she worked as a researcher on Latin America for Amnesty International and as the Senior Policy Advisor on trade, investment and human rights for Oxfam. She has been a consultant for the UN and a visiting academic at the Department for International Development, University of Oxford. She is the author of a numerous articles and publications.
Dr Stephen Hopgood – Amnesty Biographer
Dr Stephen Hopgood is Reader in International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and co-Director of the Centre for the International Politics of Conflict, Rights and Justice (CCRJ) at SOAS. His publications includeKeepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (Cornell University Press, 2006), ‘Moral authority, modernity and the politics of the sacred,’ European Journal of International Relations, 15/2, 2009: 229-255, and ‘Dignity and Ennui: Amnesty International Report 2009,’ in Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2/1, 2010: 151-165. He is currently the holder of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship from 2009-2012 under the title ‘Empire of the International’.
Claudio Cordone – Senior Director of Research and Regional Programs for Amnesty International.
Claudio is responsible for research standards and country work across five regional departments. He has a wealth of experience in international affairs, having worked previously for Amnesty International in International Law and Organizations, our main policy unit and in our Middle East and North Africa research team. He also spent a year with the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in charge of conducting human rights investigations as part of the UN’s programme of police reform in the country.
From January to June 2010, Claudio was interim Secretary General for Amnesty International.
