From the New York Times:
If there is one hard lesson we've learned since 9/11, it is the degree to which fear lurking just below the placid surface of everyday existence can poison the social climate. Fear of terrorism, fear of disease, fear of the Other, of the Unknown, is easy to instill and hard to dislodge. Instead of surrendering blindly to paranoia, one way of combating it is to confront the very things that scare us the most. Attending the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which returns to New York for its annual run, Thursday through June 30 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, is as good a way as any I can think of to quiet those fears. It is one thing to read about the conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America and quite another to see the faces and hear the voices of people, who, to reiterate a cliché, are really just like us.
Read more here.