'Beyond Gay Rights'

There's more to human rights than gay rights, even in Eureka Springs, even at an event during Diversity Weekend.

That's the promise of the second Human Rights Art & Film Fest, scheduled for this weekend at the City Auditorium. Out of 187 entries, the featured films will look at climate change, segregation and an African-American woman who was a pioneer in classical music, in addition to a block of 2015 winners from the Kaleidoscope LGBT Film Festival of Little Rock.

"I think it's really important right now we help shine a light on those things violating human rights while also celebrating the successes we've had," says festival founder and director Sandy Royce Martin. "I never thought I'd see in my lifetime what I'm seeing from all sides. So it's important we put it into perspective and look at it from the standpoint of human rights and equality for everybody."

Martin was raised by parents who were civil rights and women's rights activists, "so it's just part of my DNA." The success of last year's film festival, which celebrated the right of gay couples to marry in Arkansas, made Martin think it was time for a "niche festival."

"Nobody in the Midwest is doing it," she says. "But we wanted to go beyond gay rights."

That made a film like "Not Without Us" a perfect fit. Edited by Jeff Boyette, the son of Eurekan Nicky Boyette, the film was just completed in April and is beginning its festival journey.

"On the surface it's an environmental film, but more and more the environmental movement has begun to realize it's not just about the earth and pollution, but humanity, at the center," Boyette says. "The repercussions of global warming have a very tangible effect on our society, particularly on the poorest countries, which tend to take the brunt of environmental disasters. The film tries to show the movement as it has taken on those issues of human rights, racism and war."

The festival also includes Larry Foley's "The First Boys of Spring," even though it's about baseball. Back at the turn of the 20th century, pitchers and catchers used to travel to Hot Springs to take the mineral baths. Cap Anson, manager of the Chicago White Stockings, was the visionary behind the idea that became spring training -- and "also one of the reasons why baseball had an unwritten color line for many years," Foley says.

"He was a big-time segregationist," Foley explains. "He did not want his players playing against integrated teams -- especially against teams that had African-American pitchers." As far as Foley knows, although there were plenty of teams sponsored by the Hot Springs hotels and peopled with African-American players, "black and white teams in Hot Springs never played each other."

"There are all kinds of discrimination -- sex, age, race, language. My film doesn't shy away from the topic of discrimination in baseball -- it's not only about the birth of spring training but the birth of the color line," says Foley, chairman of the Lemke Department of Journalism at the University of Arkansas and a lifelong baseball fan.

"'Human rights' covers a great wealth of different topics."

NAN What's Up on 08/05/2016