Renaissance for The Witness
Festival Premieres and Awards Mark the
Debut of the Film in Eastern Europe

    In the movie business, a film is said to have "legs" if it keeps growing in popularity over time. If that's the case, The Witness seems to have a great set of legs. Seven years into its release, it has a new three-year contract to be broadcast nationally on LinkTV. Meanwhile with over 18,000 copies in circulation it is still being screened regularly at community organized events. And now, The Witness is working its way around the globe to countries we never even dreamed of reaching when we first set out to make the film. What follows is an inspiring story of the power of individuals working together, donating their time and talents to a common cause, reaching across language barriers to bring a universally appealing message of compassion into new cultures.

    In the Fall of 2006, Jan Cejka, a long time activist in Michigan, joined with Jaroslav Benc, an activist in Prague, to translate The Witness into the Czech language. Jaroslav oversaw the initial translation, and then Jan worked back and forth with Tribe of Heart on several versions of the DVD subtitling, making sure that each phrase was artfully and accurately expressed. Jan has written a number of articles and published several books about animal issues in the Czech Republic, but this was his first movie project. In the spring of 2007, Jan took Svedek (The Witness in Czech) to Prague’s "Open Your Eyes" film festival (organized by Jaroslav Benc, Jan Stastny and a small group of animal activists) for the film’s Czech language premiere. Svedek was well received by the audience, winning the award for best documentary, which Jan accepted on behalf of Tribe of Heart. The film made such an impact, we were told, that Czech activists built their own version of Eddie Lama’s Faunavision van.

    In the middle of the summer, Valerie Mizuhara, an experienced community educator and activist in California, mentioned that if we ever wanted to do a Russian version of The Witness, she had a friend who would be willing to help. Less then a week later, an email came in from Igor Parfenov, director of the “Steps” International Rights Film Festival in Kiev. Because Jan and Jaroslav had translated the film into Czech, Igor saw the film at the "Open Your Eyes" festival in Prague, and now wanted to bring it to the Ukraine. However, he wondered if we had a Russian language version?

    We called Valerie, who contacted her friend Lidia Belknap. Lydia was very interested in helping, but thought that her friend Tanya Gelfand would be an even better match. So we contacted Tanya, and though the festival was just a few weeks off, she agreed to shoulder the considerable challenge of subtitling The Witness in perfect idiomatic Russian. And Tanya did just that, spending days translating the phrases, carefully checking with us to make sure the meaning was precise. As the festival’s October date approached, we learned that Tanya was in fact a native of Kiev, and had long planned a trip there in a timeframe that coincided with the festival. And so Tanya agreed to present the film and represent Tribe of Heart at the festival.

    And then Tanya was injured in a bicycle accident, and was not even sure she could travel. But she got on the plane anyway. In spite of being in considerable pain, she attended the film festival, made many contacts for the film project, and like Jan, was there to accept in person the film festival’s “Free Thinker” award which her hard work helped win. Because The Witness won the award, it has become a part of the “Echo” festival, a traveling version of the Steps festival which will bring the winning films to several cities in the Ukraine and Russia. The first stop of this tour was in Kharkov, Ukraine, on December 7th.

    But our story doesn’t end there.

    One of the people Tanya connected with at the festival was Ilona, a vegan artist from Riga, Latvia, who plans to hold a screening in her city (where, incidentally, Director Jenny Stein’s maternal ancestors came from). And another person Tanya met was Irina Novozhilova of Moscow’s VITA, an active animal rights organization. On December 8th, The Witness premiered in Moscow at the House of Sculptors as part of a groundbreaking event hosted by VITA honoring some of the pioneers of Russian animal activism.

    And the story won’t end there. It will keep on going and going. This is the way that caring, committed people can and will change the world. It is all about doing the hard work needed to build bridges and solve practical problems, about giving our care and good faith to a cause that is so much larger than ourselves. Altruism is real, and its power is so often underestimated. True transformational change comes when a large number of caring people are empowered to do the right thing for its own sake. Compassion and respect for others is not a commodity, not a product to be sold, but a gift, and the only way we can repay our own receipt of this gift is to pass it on to others, one person at a time, one community at a time.

    Right now, we are working with teams of volunteer translators to bring The Witness into several more languages. Coming in the next international edition of The Witness in PAL (European) format are several new languages: Polish, courtesy of Czarek Wyszyński and his team at Viva! Poland, Finnish, courtesy of Minna Hjort and her team of translation students, Italian, courtesy of Diletta Donati and Tribe of Heart board member Alice Baker, and Chinese, courtesy of Paul Henderick, Liu Chen Sun, Dawn Huang, and Robert Lin.

    Activists all over the world are in need of effective education and outreach tools. Please consider donating to Tribe of Heart to help us carry forward our international program, which is regularly creating far more opportunities than we now have the resources to support.

The Witness won a Free Thinker Award at the Steps International Rights Film Festival in Kiev

 


A Translator's Commitment

"When I agreed to translate The Witness, I felt a lot of responsibility, not just for being accurate but also for using the power of words and nuances adequately. We all know how some words being completely accurate in meaning might have common associations or uses which almost make someone feel the opposite from what the words are used for. This is why I re-read the text numerous times, imagining myself being as far from animal rights issues as one can be. I really wanted anyone to be touched by the deep sincerity and genuineness of The Witness, by its powerful spirit.

"If one can use the word 'enjoy' about watching this film many times, I really enjoyed each time the clarity and completeness of the film. Given the positive comments and interest in the film at the festival, I believe that the audience experienced the same."

--Tanya Gelfand

Translator Tanya Gelfand
accepts award for The Witness.

 
Comments from festival viewers in Kiev:

"Your film gives hope... we will try to show it widely. With love from people and animals of Latvia."

"The Witness is just an excellent film... The main thing is that it offers a practical way to deliver these ideas to the levels of population who might not be interested in this topic. I liked the episode with the chicken's leg (drumstick). I liked that the film shows an ordinary working man and that he could change."

"Especially I liked the end of the film, where it shows the reaction of people watching the video, where it shows the person's face, and how people are crying. I liked very much that the film has actions which one can take for the animals -- a van with the screen [FaunaVision], flyers."

Lena and Igor Parfenov (left) of the STEPS International Rights Film Festival with translator Tanya Gelfand

 
  
Press Conference for the STEPS International Rights Film Festival

Finnish Translation Team
From Left: Minna Hjort, Maria Lohi, Päivi Kangas and Maria Wirén-Malo