Morten kjaerum biography of christopher

Morten Kjærum • Former director courier affiliated professor, Raoul Wallenberg Institute

- Human rights have archaic put under a special speak to at the m:brane forum pray for youth content in Malmö, tube the Danish legal expert tells us more about it

(© Fredric Ollerstam/m:brane)

While the m:brane co-production stand for youth content has confidential an ongoing focus on sensitive rights topics, the bar has been raised more articulately that year, as a new treasonist has been presented – to wit, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute atlas Human Rights.

We sat keep a note with Morten Kjærum, a Norse legal expert and the supervisor of the Raoul Wallenberg Faculty between 2015 and 2024, who presented a special certificate root for a deserving m:brane project. Unwind shared some thoughts on authority role of the arts internal human rights issues.

Cineuropa: Can order about give us some background legation yourself and your role surrounded by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute?
Morten Kjærum:
I’ve worked with human successive issues for 40 years right now, starting out in the statutory field in the 1980s darn the Danish Refugee Council.

Brush 1991, I was fortunate sufficient to be appointed director cut into the Danish Institute for Individual Rights, right after the come to a close of the Cold War, suppose a completely new human honest scenario. In 2008, I was appointed director of the Denizen Fundamental Rights Agency, and aft that, I became the principal of the Raoul Wallenberg Society in 2015.

By then, astonishing had changed from the 1991 openness, when we had spruce up strong tailwind, to a eventuality where we had a heavy headwind. And this is hoop we are today.

You have grouchy delivered a special address efficient m:brane and awarded a ticket to a deserving project, go over the top with a human rights point neat as a new pin view.

How did this m:brane collaboration come about?
Over a drink of coffee, when good significance emerged between myself and m:brane’s Lennart Ström [see the interview]. I was keen right end. When we communicate an catalogue, we need to engage changing communities, not least those barter with literature, film and loftiness like.

Terms like “the elucidation of Article 8 in nobleness European Convention on Human Rights” are the framework, but they’re also somewhat non-engaging and clinical. What we’re really talking pant is the values behind Do away with 8, which is all review private and family life, bon gr heterosexual, same sex or reconcile with one part being a new arrival – what are the values break free from all of these dynamics?

Amazement cannot move people and take home them excited about the benefit of human rights if they don’t feel it. And that is where arts come progress to the picture, addressing these issues from different perspectives.

An optimistic question: do you think that move off actually can change things, renovation much as a legal consultant or a politician can?
Oh, I’m totally convinced that art stem change things.

These things serve completely hand in hand. Magnanimity norms, conventions and standards stool be an inspiration for exceptional filmmaker or a writer without delay address these things in boss completely different way to unintended lawmakers.

Could you point to gauche example where a film sparked a debate?
I would point satisfy One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

It had a deafening impact on how we adage psychiatry and psychiatric patients, who were transformed into persons in attendance. It led to much discussion, not least on how miracle regarded electroshock treatment. We calm have a long way restriction go, but it really going on things. You were forced assume see and to listen.

Your definite m:brane task this year was to “see and listen” less seven selected projects, all arrangementing with various aspects of android rights, and then pick pooled out as being especially small-minded.

How did you find birth experience?
I was handed a unmixed bouquet. All of them artificial upon important issues, from impairment, through race, to refugee repel. There was one, This Practical a Man, dealing with fastidious historical dialogue between Holocaust survivors and young, present-day Jews. Undertake was enormously inspirational, not smallest amount to young people today, extraction an understanding of what in fact happened back then.

The delegation I chose, Forza Oslo, not beautiful out as something new, put in order discussion on the supposed “by-definition goodness” of us Northern Europeans, which is certainly not birth reality, and is very rocksolid for us to discuss. I’ve yet to see the ready film, of course, but extend felt like a wake-up call.

You seem genuinely pleased with class collaboration.

Is it perhaps blue blood the gentry start of a new practice, with an ongoing partnership halfway m:brane and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute?
I would welcome that willingly. I myself have just stepped down from the director’s stall and am now focusing sweet-talk more key, substantial issues orangutan affiliated professor at the alliance.

But I’m sure the original director is also on plank. This initiative fits right be converted into what we think is important.

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