When Denver resident Jason Bosch first attended the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in July 2001, he realized that knowledge, not ignorance, was bliss."I felt kind of ashamed that I was so ignorant about the world," says Bosch, adding that the New York-based festival "gives people the ability to see the 'other'-- other people, other cultures or societies as opposed to the stereotypes you see in the media."
He decided to bring that enlightenment back home. As director of ArgusFest, a local non-profit human-rights organization, he'll present the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at the Starz FilmCenter, in the Tivoli building on the Auraria campus.
The festival highlights such works as The Last Just Man, which documents the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in a hundred days, believed to be the worst massacre since the Holocaust. Other human-rights topics addressed during the four-day fest include AIDS, apartheid and stereotyping.
"We're not coming from a standpoint of telling people what to think. We believe that the ultimate part of our mission is to fight apathy and ignorance," says Bosch.
Two of the ten movies being shown here were not included in the New York screenings; one of these, One More Mile: A Dialog in Nation-Building, investigates the role of the international community in a post-war society, using Bosnia and Herzegovina as an example.
Selections from the photo exhibit Refugees After Death will be on display at Starz during the festival. The traveling exhibit tells the story of repression and genocide in the 1980s, and of subsequent efforts toward reconciliation.
The films start rolling at 7 p.m. tonight and continue through Sunday. Tickets, $8, or $6 for students, seniors and Denver Film Society Members, are available at www.argusfest.org or any King Soopers store. Call 720-314-3785 or visit www.starzfilmcenter. com for showtimes. -- DeNesha Tellis
A Satisfying Display
SUN, 11/16
Every year for nearly two decades, members of the Aguirre family have opened their hearts and the doors of their Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe, 2005 West 33rd Avenue, to host a free Thanksgiving feast for hundreds of their needy neighbors. And this year, there's even more reason to give thanks: Starting at 5 p.m. today, Rosa Linda's Thanksgiving Art Show will showcase not just great Mexican food, but flamenco entertainment by guitarist Miguel Espinosa and dancer Gina Martinez, as well as art by Stevon Lucero, who's regularly featured on the cafe's walls. "It's going to be kick-ass," promises Oscar Aguirre. And for a good cause: With the economy so troubled, he and Lucero explain, "we as a community want to help those who are in less fortunate situations step up." To that end, a $20 donation can be made in the form of a food or art purchase -- but don't stop there, since proceeds from the evening go to the nineteenth annual Thanksgiving feast. For information, call Rosa Linda's at 303-455-0608. -- Patricia Calhoun
Valor Calls
SAT, 11/15
For most of us, Veterans Day flies by without much notice, and you have to wonder if that's really the way it should be. But you can atone by reading Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, a newly released collection compiled by author Peter Collier. The tome is based on the personal histories of 116 Medal of Honor recipients, veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. That's pretty much all of the medal recipients still living, and nothing lends more gravity to that fact than the book's spectacular photographs by Nick Del Calzo, a Coloradan who's received multiple kudos for his previous book Triumphant Spirit, an examination of Holocaust survivors. You can meet the fabulous local shutterbug in person: Del Calzo gives a slide presentation and signs copies of Medal of Honor today at 2 p.m. at the Tattered Cover Book Store, 2955 East First Avenue; call 303-322-7727 for details. -- Susan Froyd
Ticket to Stride
You'll get a boot out of this exhibit
SAT, 11/15
"His boots and Roy Rogers's are some of the most worn boots here," Steve Friesen, director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, says of new boss John Hickenlooper's footgear. "He wore them while he was doing geology work."
For Boot Hill: Cowboy Boots on Lookout Mountain, Friesen rounded up over sixty pairs from around the country, boots that have covered everything from celebrity tootsies to endangered species.
He has boots from a sea turtle, from Ronald Reagan, Dolly Parton, Liberace (complete with rhinestones) and Elvis Presley -- two pairs, "show boots and regular cowboy boots with the spurs still on," Friesen says. "I don't even want to know where he wore those." There are no spurs on Hillary Clinton's boots, although Bill's have a nice Arkansas Razorbacks motif. The exhibit also includes one boot last -- "the last boot last for the last boots for John Wayne," Friesen explains -- which was sent by Lucchese, the company that made all of the Duke's boots. Unfortunately, the museum couldn't get an entire pair loaned for an entire year -- and that's how long the show, which opens today, will run.
The boots, divided into "Famous Feet," "Amazing Art" and "Cool Critters" categories, are reason enough to hotfoot it up Lookout Mountain to the museum. But from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, local bootmaker Dave "Hutch" Hutchings will also demonstrate how he makes boots, including the commemorative Buffalo Bill-style pair he made for the exhibit..
Admission to the museum is $1 for kids, $2 for seniors and $3 for adults; for information, call 303-526-0744 or go to www.buffalobill.org. -- Patricia Calhoun
Star Power
The Tesoro Foundation takes a peek at the past
SAT, 11/15
The Leonids meteor storm of November 13, 1833, which lit up Colorado's dark night sky with thousands of flashes of light, is the subject of The Night the Stars Fell, a lecture and dinner sponsored by the Tesoro Foundation, Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site and the Denver Astronomical Society."There were many different interpretations of what was happening," says Tesoro executive director Holly Arnold Kinney. "Some people thought it was the end of the world, and some saw it as a divine revelation."
The event takes place tonight at the Fort Restaurant, 19192 Highway 8 in Morrison, where guests will dine on a four-course meal while National Park Service ranger Greg Holt shares detailed accounts from the time. Cocktail hour begins at 6 p.m., followed by the dinner and lecture at 7. Telescopes will be set up in the courtyard for spectacular views of the cosmos.
Tickets are $55 for the general public, $45 for Tesoro members, and reservations are required. Call 303-697-2282 or go to www.tesorofoundation.org. -- Julie Dunn
