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To honor the rights and freedoms of all

Zero Tolerance by Tunisia-born Mishka Saal. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CANADIAN TRADE OFFICE IN TAIPEI

In 1948, the General Assembly of the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which called for the universal recognition of fundamental rights and freedoms of all human beings.

In the following 60 years, Israel, Palestine, the minefields of Cambodia, New York City and war-torn Afghanistan have been the "ground zeros" of the world, producing stories of destruction and survival that both dishearten and inspire.

Some of these stories will be revisited at the Canada Taiwan Human Rights Film Festival, which starts tonight at SPOT Taipei Film House (台北之家:光點電影院) and will also show in Hsinchu City and Kaohsiung County through June.

The event was organized by the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei with curatorial assistance from the National Film Board of Canada, Taiwan Indigenous TV (台灣原住民族電視台) and the Public Television Service (公視). It will highlight the accomplishments and follies of humanity with a lineup of one fictional film and 13 documentaries from Canada and Taiwan. The movies will be grouped under themes ranging from Aboriginal movements and new immigrants to environmentalism and multiculturalism.

Aboriginal Rights Events in Taiwan (原運二、三事) and When Tribes Meet the Nation (當部落遇到國家) document Taiwan's Aboriginal rights movement. In a similar vein, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance is a powerful account of what has come to be known as the Oka Crisis. In the summer of 1990, the people from the Mohawk tribe stood up against the Quebec police and Canadian army to fight for their right to live on land that belonged to them and their ancestors.

Scared Sacred by activist filmmaker Velcrow Ripper PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CANADIAN TRADE OFFICE IN TAIPEI

Immigrants' rights are tackled in The Voyage to Happiness (幸福的地圖), which features interviews with female immigrant spouses in 14 Asian cities, including Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City. The movie records their struggles to overcome cultural prejudice and earn basic rights.

Just how deeply our prejudices are seated is revealed in Zero Tolerance, in which the lives of minority teenagers in the city of Montreal are portrayed as more difficult than their majority counterparts.

Film festival notes What: Canada Taiwan Human Rights Film Festival (加台人權影展) When and where: Tonight to March 21 at SPOT Taipei Film House (台北之家:光點電影院) at 18, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市中山北路二段18號); March 26 to April 4 at Hsinchu Municipal Image Museum (新竹影像博物館) at 65 Chungcheng Rd, Hsinchu City (新竹市中正路65號); June 10 to June 20 at Kaohsiung Municipal Film Archive (高雄電影圖書館) at 10 Hesi Rd, Yencheng District, Kaohsiung County (高雄縣鹽埕區河西路10號) Admission: Free On the Net: www.twfilm.org/canadafilms

In There and Back, a teenage girl living in Canada learns to accept her double identity as a burden and a treasure after a two-month visit with her Iraqi father in Jordan. Director Paul Emile d'Entremont will hold a question-and-answer sessions after the screenings this weekend at SPOT.

The raging war between humans and nature is eloquently illustrated in Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary on Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky, who is known for photographing landscapes altered by factories, dams and scrap heaps. Following a trip by Burtynsky to China, the film reveals the rarely seen effects of the huge nation's industrial revolution, from the Three Gorges Dam to Shanghai's urban renewal plan. The Refugees of the Blue Planet takes a look at the little-known plight of environmental refugees who are displaced and forced to leave their traditional ways of life due to the degradation of the environment.

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