Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) is a Jekyll-and-Hyde character who began as a mathematics teacher, and then became the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia, ultimately responsible for the torture and murder of 14,000 people. Comrade Duch: The Bookkeeper of Death recounts his flight, conversion to evangelical Christianity, and how he was finally brought to justice before an international tribunal. Watch the trailer after the jump.

Comrade Duch: The Bookkeeper of Death airs this Sunday, May 20 on WORLD at 10PM EST.

What do you really know about Joseph Kony? On Wednesday we will be hosting a live online screening and discussion of the documentary Peace vs. Justice, going beyond the slick marketing of KONY 2012 and taking an in-depth look at the rebel leaders responsible for the most egregious of human-rights abuses – kidnapping children and forcing them to fight.

Peace vs. Justice examines the International Criminal Court’s investigation of the LRA and takes a critical look at the problems of applying Western ideas of justice and reconciliation to other countries and continents.

Join us for a social screening of Peace vs. Justice with filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns, who will be taking part in the screening to talk about the film and take your questions live.

Participants can join for free by signing in with Facebook or directly on the site, interacting with other viewers and panelists in real-time, while watching the film. Viewers can comment, ask questions, take polls, and even express their feelings about what they’re watching through a variety of tools on the site. This is an entirely new way of experiencing documentary films and it is inherently social.

Peace vs. Justice: May 16, 2012 at 5PM PT/ 8PM ET

Director Sedika Mojadidi

One in seven Afghan women dies in childbirth. Motherland Afghanistan, airing Sunday, May 13 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel (check listings), introduces the women behind these devastating statistics. Afghan American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi examines her father’s work as an OB/GYN as he struggles to make a difference. Beyond the Box spoke with Mojadidi about filming such an intimate story alongside her father.

Both your parents are physicians. How did you get into film?

I was always interested in movies. I gravitated toward them naturally, from a young age. And in school, I studied film for a long time, film theory and film history.  I was never good in science or math so it’s ironic that I’m following my parent’s story because growing up I wasn’t really all that interested in medicine.

Your voiceover guides part of the film, but it’s your father’s voice that serves as the chief narrative. Was this your intention all along?

Dr. Qudrat Mojadidi serves as both a principle charcter in the documentary and as the filmmaker's father

It was always my plan. Actually, I never planned to be in the film but that emerged out of the process of making it for two years. After the first trip, we looked at some of the footage of me translating and other producers felt strongly about keeping me in the picture. I fought against it but eventually surrendered. I felt strongly from the get-go that the film needed to be from my father’s perspective. The film needed to be centered around him, his work, and the patients he looked after.

You immigrated to the U.S. when you were very little in 1972. How much of a culture shock was it for you to return to Afghanistan and shoot this film?

Overall it was a bigger culture shock than I was expecting. That I had been busy setting up to shoot in the hospitals and dealing with the crew and juggling all those responsibilities made the shock worse than I had anticipated. But it really was a shock to see how much the city had changed. To see neighborhoods bombed and such high levels of poverty in what I remembered as a sleepy city. All of it had changed and all the people I knew as a kid were gone.

Your film paints a grim picture of guerrilla medicine in Afghanistan. In one scene, your father (and viewers) wait anxiously for an anesthesiologists to show up as a patient shrieks in pain. How hard was it for you to document these real life scenes up close?

You know when things like that happen, they are not hard to film. It’s afterwards, screening the footage that is difficult to take. When you’re caught in the moment, there is so much adrenaline and you feel like your capturing something authentic. So you’re trying to stay focused and do the moment justice. But once you have a moment to catch your breath and you feel how sad or difficult those scenes really are.

Throughout the film your father operates in such a matter-of-fact state, even under such emotional circumstances like when he discovers the death of a premature baby. How were you at controlling your emotions and composure during these moments?

I was a wreck. We all knew that little baby was not going to make it. The hospital didn’t have life support equipment and had never delivered a premature baby before. So it was a really awful feeling for those two days that the baby was alive because we were all not wanting to think about the outcome.

My father has worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan for 20 – 25 years, so he’s been through this before. He understands that he must keep his distance or he can’t really do his work. He’s a pretty straightforward guy anyways, very no-nonsense, but for me it was really hard. It was very difficult and emotional. Again, I tried to behave professionally during filming to make sure we captured all the elements of the story. But that was heartbreaking because she really bonded with her baby and it was hard for her to see that happen.

And for me that moment really is the story. It really personalizes what it means when you say 20% of infants in Afghanistan will not see their first birthday. You have babies dying at such a rapid rate, so big you can’t even grasp what that really means. But then you see what it means for somebody to lose a child and what an emotional and devastating toll that is to take. I hope that moment resonates for people so they see that losing a child is difficult anywhere in the world.

Following your father and mother on night calls in Afghanistan. How close did you become with your parents over the course of making this film? And did you learn anything about them you didn’t already know?

I think the film itself, the process, made us closer. I developed even more respect for my dad and his commitment and his sense of mission in Afghanistan. I grew up knowing he worked there but it was something else to see him navigate through those conditions. I started to see the reality of what his work was and developed a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think he also learned a little bit about what I do and so we definitely grew closer.

It was a difficult experience for both of us because my father never really wanted to be filmed. He wasn’t interested in being filmed and so it took a while for him to get used to the camera and me following him. But now, when we look at film, we have a document of this one particular moment in our lives. We have a document of it, and that makes him really happy.

What do you tell filmmakers who come to you for advice?

Make sure you really have something to say that no one else is saying.

This interview was originally published on July 9, 2010.

Filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns

Peace vs. Justice director Klaartje Quirijns and producer Stacy Sullivan discuss Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 video, the ICC, and the importance of continued discussion around international justice. Global Voices premieres on Sunday, May 6, with Peace vs. Justice on the World Channel. An online social screening and chat will be held on May 16 with the filmmakers and experts to discuss issues raised in the film. That event will take place here.

By now, anybody who has access to the internet has probably heard of Joseph Kony, thanks to the unprecedented success of Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 video. Kony’s rise from obscure Ugandan warlord to a household name is nothing short of remarkable and Invisible Children deserves accolades for raising awareness about Kony’s crimes.

But Kony wasn’t really such an obscure figure before the release of Invisible Children’s video. He was, after all, the very first person to have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) – an institution that was created to go after those responsible for the worst crimes in the world. The Lord’s Resistance Army’s murderous rampage through Northern Uganda with an army of abducted children had already turned Kony into one of the world’s greatest villains.

If Kony had not already been indicted by the ICC, the Stop Kony 2012 video might have been a call for that to happen. The ICC, after all, was supposed to be the institution that would put a stop to impunity – make sure that future Pinochets, Milosevics, and Pol Pots of the world would be held accountable. If Kony had not already been indicted, calling for his indictment would have been a worthy advocacy goal.

But the ICC did indict Kony. Seven years ago. Following the indictment, the Ugandan military, with help from Sudanese and Congolese forces, and  even 100 military advisors from the United States, set out to arrest him. Essentially, all of the mechanisms in existence to hold men like Kony accountable for his crimes were activated. And yet, Kony remains at large, killing people to this day.

So what can the Invisible Children video really accomplish by raising awareness about Kony’s crimes? It’s hard to imagine that Stop Kony 2012 video will result in the United States sending special forces into the jungle to arrest an African warlord that has never posed a threat to US national interests. But maybe it can force the world to take a good, hard look at what went wrong in the Kony case and how the ICC might be more effective.

When the ICC issued its indictment of Kony in 2005, the LRA was actively engaged in peace talks with the Ugandan government, Once Kony and his henchmen were officially indicted, their incentive to make peace evaporated because Kony knew that if he negotiated, he would be arrested and sent to The Hague. So rather than negotiate, the LRA retrenched and continued its bloody war, establishing bases in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo where it continues to abduct children and commit atrocities.

Still from Peace vs. Justice

Perhaps if the ICC had not announced Kony’s indictment (which it did with great fanfare at a press conference), but rather kept it quiet, Kony would not have gone into hiding and Ugandan forces would have had a better chance of arresting him. The practice of issuing so-called “secret indictments” proved extremely effective to the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, whose suspects kept going into hiding every time an indictment was announced. But after the court  began quietly issuing indictments, Bosnian and NATO forces were able to apprehend dozens of war crimes suspects.

The people of northern Uganda initially had high hopes that the ICC’s indictment would put an end to the nightmare they had been living. But when they heard the ICC didn’t have a force that could come in and arrest Kony, they were quickly disillusioned. In order to arrest Kony and his top commanders, the ICC would have to work through national armies and the Ugandan army – even with outside help – proved to be no match for a devious and clever fighter with intimate knowledge of the jungle.

As a result, many, if not most, people in Northern Uganda have lost faith in the ICC and view it as a Western colonial operation interfering with their affairs. They rightly view it as a paper tiger and want to administer their own forms of justice, consistent with their culture, that are rooted in reconciliation, not punishment.

Still from Peace vs. Justice

But this could change if Kony were actually arrested and sent to the Hague for trial.  Perhaps if the ICC could, say, call on a special UN force to arrest its suspects, it would have a better chance of success. That may be a pipe dream, but if we accept the premise of an international court, even an imperfect one, we must discuss how arrest warrants should be enforced.

We hope the Invisible Children video results in Kony’s arrest. But we also hope it provokes a more nuanced and complex discussion about international justice, a discussion that can eclipse the hype and feel-goodism of viral videos and truly help the people that are directly involved in the Kony case as well as future victims of despots yet unknown.

ITVS has announced the lineup for the fifth season of Global Voices, the international documentary television series airing on the WORLD channel, with select episodes available online on PBS Video. Showcasing documentaries from Uganda, Indonesia, Russia, Chile, and Pakistan, this season of Global Voices presents the U.S. broadcast premieres of 13 documentaries funded by ITVS International, and encore presentations of acclaimed programs previously broadcast on Independent Lens, POV, and on Link TV.

The series premieres on Sunday, May 6 at 10 PM with Peace vs Justice, which reveals the role of the International Criminal Court in the trial against rebel leader Joseph Kony, whose Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has spread death and destruction in Uganda for more than 20 years, and who was the subject of the recent viral video KONY 2012.

Harleen Walia (center), assistant director of Sanlaap, a rescue and rehab center for young girls in Calcutta. The Day My God Died premieres this season on Global Voices.

New this season for Global Voices is the inclusion of six documentaries from ITVS’s Women and Girls Lead catalog, a campaign that celebrates, educates, and activates women, girls, and their allies across the globe to address the challenges of the 21st century. Notable documentaries include Afghan American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi’s Motherland Afghanistan (May 13), in which she follows her father to his native Afghanistan, where he brings desperately needed medical attention and expertise to the women most susceptible to maternal mortality; The Day My God Died (June 24), Andrew Levine’s unforgettable examination of the growing plague of sex trafficking of Nepali children in India; Pickles, Inc. (August 12), by Nitza Gonen and Dalit Kimor, following eight widows that challenge social conventions and establish the Azka Pickle Cooperative, seeking financial independence for themselves and their children; and Samia Chala’s Chahinaz: What Rights for Women? (September 30). Through her curiosity and self-discovery, Chahinaz, a 20-year-old Algerian student, begins to wonder what life is like for women in other Muslim countries and around the world and why things are slow to change in Algeria.

Additional season highlights include Katherine Huang’s Tales of the Waria (June 3), following four transgender individuals in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, in search of love and acceptance with unexpected results; Town of Runners (June 17), Jerry Rothwell’s documentary following three young runners from Ethiopia as they move from high school track to national and Olympic competitions; The Collaborator and His Family (August 5), Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz’s cinema-verité look at a Palestinian family torn apart by its patriarch’s collaboration with Israel;  Nima Sarvestani’s award winning I Was Worth 50 Sheep (September 2), a look at an Afghani 10-year-old bride fight for her freedom six years later; and The Boy Mir (October 7), Phil Grabsky’s look at the generation of Afghans who have grown up since 9/11, specifically tracking the irrepressible and lovable Mir from a naïve 8-year old to a fully grown adult.

Sabereh, Farzaneh and her stepfather Khalegh from the documentary I Was Worth 50 Sheep.

Global Voices broadcasts are supported by a number of online engagement opportunities — including online screenings, discussions, commentary, and opportunities for viewers to participate in live chats to discuss the issues presented in each episode. For up-to-date information on these events and opportunities, follow Global Voices on Facebook here.

For the complete lineup and schedule, visit www.itvs.org/series/global-voices.

The Judge and the General reveals the transformation of Judge Juan Guzmán in Chile as he is assigned by judicial lottery to investigate the first criminal cases filed against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. An international detective story, the film follows the judge as he uncovers the truth about the regime he had supported.

BTB recently caught up with filmmaker Elizabeth Farnsworth, who gave us the following updates since the film first broadcast in 2008:

Judge Juan Guzmán, now an arbitrator and criminal defense lawyer in Santiago, is active in the campaign to replace the current Pinochet-era constitution with a new, more democratic charter. He is currently writing a book about the subject with a group of constitutional law scholars. He has taught human rights law in Chile and at universities around the world and will lecture at Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. He has received many awards and honors, including, most recently, an honorary doctorate from Haverford.

In 2009, Judge Victor Montiglio indicted 135 members of Augusto Pinochet’s security forces for the murder of Cecilia Castro and others in related cases. Trials are pending.

On August 18th, 2011, the Valech Commission delivered a second report to the president of Chile, detailing its continuing investigation of torture under the rule of Augusto Pinochet.  This report confirmed 9,800 cases; earlier reports had confirmed another 28,000.  This means that at least 37,800 people were tortured by Augusto Pinochet’s security forces.

Co-Director/Producer Patricio Lanfranco recently reported that Chile has been convulsed by massive street demonstrations. Students have been striking for more than two months over environmental, educational, and constitutional issues, among others. Polls show 80 percent of the population supports their demands.

For more information and updates on the film, visit the filmmakers’ website (available in English and Spanish): westwindproductions.org

For an update in English on the current status of cases involving human rights crimes under the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, click here >>

The Judge and the General reveals the transformation of Judge Juan Guzmán in Chile as he is assigned by judicial lottery to investigate the first criminal cases filed against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. An international detective story, the film follows the judge as he uncovers the truth about the regime he had supported.

The Judge and the General airs Sunday, September 18 on WORLD at 9AM, 3PM, and 10PM (all times are in Eastern).

Indiewire: Two Spirits Receives the Audience Award from PBS-Independent Lens
Lynda Nibley’s documentary Two Spirits has received the PBS-Independent Lens Audience Award, recognizing its status as the highest-rated film of the 2010-11 season by the measures of online voting and other forms of audience support.

Pop Matters: Cuba, An African Odyssey
El-Tahri’s fascinating documentary, produced in 2007 with the French-German television network Arte and premiering in two parts on ITVS’ Global Voices this month, traces the complicated history of Cuban efforts to help African independence movements during the Cold War.

Institute For the Future blog: Karim Ahmad introduces FUTURESTATES
Karim discussed his goal of tackling complex and often controversial topics often not seen on public TV, as well as the potential to engage new audiences across a wider range of platforms.

About.com: The Transmedia Approach to Documentary Development and Marketing
The Garbage Dreams multiplatform brand is the film’s issue. More specifically, the brand is the issue of waste disposal, recycling and how all that effects human life on Earth. That’s what the film’s about. That’s what the game’s about. That’s what the discussion is about. The issue is the brand. Branding by issue is a different way of conceiving and developing a movie’s marketing strategy, but it certainly seems appropriate for documentaries.

NCME Blog – News Hub: Building Inclusive Communities
One such project is the Independent Lens documentary Welcome to Shelbyville and the accompanying Shelbyville Multimedia engagement campaign, produced by Active Voice. Following the May 2011 PBS broadcast, Welcoming Gathering potlucks and Community Cinema screenings, held nationwide, ITVS partnered with the U.S. State Department to host a special screening of Welcome to Shelbyville for policy makers, advocates, service providers, and government officials working on refugee resettlement issues.

Visit our pressroom to find additional coverage of ITVS programs.

In honor of Independence Day, Global Voices and the WORLD Channel present four international documentaries throughout the month of July that focus on the different, difficult actions people and organizations have taken in the fight for independence.

The month begins with Storm of Emotions (July 3rd at 10 PM), chronicling the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the efforts to achieve democracy amidst great social and political turmoil. Read more about the Global Voices line up after the jump >>

July continues with the two-part documentary Cuba, An African Odyssey (July 10 and 17 at 10PM), showcasing the previously untold story of Cuba’s support for African revolutions. The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (July 24 at 10PM) follows and focuses on one village as it is continuously transformed by ideologies, regimes, and dreams of economic prosperity. The month concludes with The Siege (July 31 at 10 PM), a documentary about a historic event in 1996 when the Peruvian Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement seized the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima and held dozens of foreign diplomats hostage for 126 days.

All four documentaries will be broadcast on Sunday nights at 10 PM on the WORLD Channel.  Find a comprehensive overview of the 2011 series and a calendar of online events on the WORLD Channel’s website.

A Working Mom by filmmaker Limor Pinhasov

Being a working mom rocks!  We’re the ones chosen to advise policy, lead teams and manage projects. We make our own rules, run our own businesses, and raise our kids.  We’re sharp, whip smart, well adjusted, and reliable.

The Innovator:“Making adjustments to traditional work situations can make a work life balance a little more realistic for working families. I have been asking for some telecommuting hours, but there was no official policy in place for this sort of thing. Human resource departments want to keep good employees, it may be up to you to open this door and walk through it with them. Present your own proposal about how this can be beneficial to both parties.You have to do the research, know what you want and ask for it. With much discussion initiated by me, and definitely some patience, I am now piloting this working situation so my employer can write policy about it.” ~ Liz PW.

The Enforcer:“It takes discipline and structure to work from home and it isn’t a joke to me, and people in my life have learned this the hard way. I kicked a friend out after a 20-minute visit because she arrived at 11:40 though I’d invited her to come over at 9:30 a.m. I’d told her, because the ongoing childcare swap for my Thursdays involves me taking the kids in the morning and the other mom taking them for the afternoon. When Mom #2 arrived right on time for the noon double-daughter pick-up, I told my friend I had to go to work. She looked at me like I had 5 heads. ‘But you work from home!’ But I work. From home.” ~ Amanda R.

The Multi-Tasker:“Work stays at work, and home stays at home, right? Wrong. Home goes to work, and work goes to home. And while at home, and on top of your work, comes your need to spend time with your child. Conundrum? Nah. I went out and bought my son a ‘Thomas The Tank Engine’ laptop computer, and invited him to work by my side. That way, when I do work from home, I still get to spend time with my son.” ~ Stacy B.

The Closer:“I’ve been a sales executive for ten years, and I’m good at my job. In the beginning though, I struggled with relationship building. I had a hard time connecting on a personal level and building trust was a challenge. But when I became a mother, I unconsciously owned the space and felt comfortable discussing it and sympathizing with clients I knew were in the same position. The floodgates opened! Identifying myself as a person with great responsibility outside of my job made it easy for others to trust me. I’ve closed more sales in my role as a working mom, than I did before.” ~ Karen C.

The Role Model:“One of my first back-to-work jobs after both kids were in school was at a museum in NYC. I was an assistant to one of the VPs. What we had in common; was kids in NYC private schools. What got me the job was telling her if I could handle the calendars of 2 Brearley girls, I could handle hers. More importantly, I went back to work, and then back to school to pursue better work, because I have daughters. I had a feeling about wanting to be one of their role models as a strong woman with her own life.” ~ Annie S.

The Communicator:“…having a child of my own has made me care even more for the children I work with professionally. I am better now at seeing the whole child. I also think I understand parents more now that I am a parent and this makes communication (in general) easier.” ~ Lauren R.

Want to learn more? Tune in to a the WORLD channel on Sunday, June 19^th to watch the Global Voices premiere of Working Mom, and be sure to share your own stories below.