The Tackling Torture Video Contest has chosen eight finalists for its first competition. The five Serious video finalists and three Satirical finalists are posted for public viewing at  YouTube in the Tackling Torture Video Contest channel. The seriousness of the topic has attracted filmmakers of all ages from around the world: Canada, Indonesia, Germany, Australia and the USA.

Four prizes will be awarded. $500 Jury Prizes will be awarded by a jury of five distinguished filmmakers, activists and historians, Sebastion Doggart, Joseph Jolton, Peter Kuznick, Alfred McCoy and Andy Worthington, in each of the two categories. $300 Audience Prizes, chosen through public voting, will also be awarded in each of the two categories. The public is welcome to vote until January 30, 2014 at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNBWLTY. Winners will be announced February 7, 2014 in an event to be scheduled in Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota (details TBA).

Through this contest, Tackling Torture at the Top, a committee of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM, www.worldwidewamm.org), hopes to produce entertaining and informative videos that contradict the harmful and inhumane view that torture works and is in any way justifiable, to educate the public, and to raise questions about the direction of our foreign policy and our use of the military, and by so doing, give the public the awareness and courage to rein in our country’s out of control security apparatus. For more information about the contest go to http://tacklingtorturevideocontest.webs.com/. Links to treaties and other documentation are found at the “Background Links” link at the top (http://tacklingtorturevideocontest.webs.com/background-links).