Human rights are undoubtedly an important act that gives fundamental rights that all humans must benefit from, irrelevant their ethnicity, race, religion, and other factors. Although these rights may seem to be obvious things, they are things that people had to fight for in the past.
Moving to the film industry, one of the most important articles is article 9, which sets up what we know as the Freedom of Expression. This article protects the right of people to have opinions and speak them out freely without any government, or anyone getting in the way to stop them. As one may imagine, this right is important especially for journalists and public opinionists. In the film, this right can be seen used quite a lot of times.
One film which got me inspired and reminds me of this right is The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006), which is a documentary film about John Lennon and the conflicts that he had with the U.S authorities on a number of things. Clearly, such a documentary could not have been possible should Article 9 of the Human Rights was not in place.
First of all, the film in itself gives this biased attitude in favour of John Lennon, by portraying him as the hero in all he worked for. In the same way, it portrayed Lennon's opponents (mainly the American authorities) as the crazy ones. Although today, most people may agree with this perspective, including myself, this sense of bias is felt throughout the whole documentary film. Had the freedom of expression not existed, there was no right for the creators to give all this opinion against the authorities. For sure, they would have been stopped by the same authorities.
Furthermore, I relate this film even more to the freedom of expression due to Lennon himself. For those who watched the film, or know some of Lennon's history, it is a fact that this person was one of the pioneers when it comes to fighting for freedom of expression. He made various statements, which also were quoted in the film against the politicians that were leading the country, such as "Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives". Furthermore, music such as "Power to the People" was for sure provocative for these leaders. In fact, Lennon has gone through persecution due to certain statements of his. Should article 9 had existed at those times, what he said was absolutely fine since he was expressing his own opinions, and authorities would have no right in shutting him up.
Obviously, the Freedom of Expression act does not give us absolute liberty to say what we want. There is a degree of caution that we should take care of and be responsible in what we say. However, this right is handy to be used to keep authorities and other high-class organisations in check, without being shut up by the same authorities.
Comments