First Annual Human Trafficking Film Festival and Academic Conference

BITAHR board member Kate Nace Day and executive director Alicia Foley Winn have begun to explore the use of film as an effective way to raise awareness and trigger action in combating commercial sexual exploitation of girls and women.

Sex trafficking involves a particularly perverse dimension: the use of the victim in perpetrating a fiction necessary to avoid police detection and legal sanctions. The victim becomes a coerced accomplice because she is proffered to the general public, johns, and law enforcement, as a prostitute.

Film and documentary offer an otherwise unavailable view into the process of trafficking, the accompanying torture, and the mindset of the victim.

Together, Day and Winn are organizing a Human Rights Film Festival and Academic Conference currently entitled "Sex Trafficking, Human Rights and Film: Critical Inquiries."

Preliminary research indicates that this conference will be the first of its kind, merging filmmakers and academics in order to understand the phenomenon on all levels, from theory to practical solutions and law.

It will consider the role of film in advancing women's human rights and the many governmental and non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") efforts to combat sex trafficking.

This model speaks to the need for public and academic awareness of sex trafficking and recognizes the power of film in effectuating a movement to combat modern-day slavery and commercial sexual exploitation.

Day and Winn will document the process of: researching academic course offerings related to sex trafficking; selecting film and documentary productions for use as teaching tools; and planning a curriculum around such film in order to empower students to engage in effective activism.