Capturing Conflict Film Festival at the Frontline
Film Festival at the Frontline Club  |
| We are extremely proud to announce the Frontline Club's Capturing Conflict Film Festival. The festival showcases a selection of the most important films about the risks journalists and filmmakers take in order to get their stories out. The selection process was an incredibly difficult one and this final programme reflects those we felt were the most significant. We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers for allowing us to screen these incredible films. Hope to see you there, Charlotte. |
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Tortured Truths is the story of La Maison des Journalistes, a Parisian refuge for persecuted journalists from all over the world who have suffered torture, prison sentences and death threats because they dared to express themselves freely. Director Christine Garabedian carefully extracts personal stories from some of the refuge's inhabitants including an Iraqi poet punished for writing about love and reconciliation amongst his countrymen, a political cartoonist from Burma and a Cuban investigative reporter. What they have in common is that they all fled their home countries fearing their lives merely for speaking out.
This one-hour documentary film tells the dramatic story of the dangers and pressures surrounding the press in today's Russia. In the evening of 9th October 2003, Alexei Sidorov, Editor in Chief of the 'Togliatti Observer', was murdered outside his home, becoming the sixth journalist in the industrial city of Togliatti to be murdered since 1995. The killer used an ice-pick, stabbing Sidorov several times before escaping in full view of witnesses and passers-by. Just 18 months earlier, Sidorov's friend and the founding editor of the 'Togliatti Observer', Valery Ivanov, was shot outside his home with a silenced pistol.
In spring 2003, filmmaker James Miller and reporter Saira Shah, following the success of their Peabody-winning films "Unholy War" and "Beneath the Veil" set out to take a first-hand look at the culture of hate that permeates the Middle East. They captured the lives of three Palestinian children growing up in the bullet-riddled streets of Gaza, indoctrinated in the creed of Jihad, and had planned to show the Israeli side next. But on May 2, in the midst of filming, Miller was shot to death by an Israeli tank, falling victim to the conflict he covered.
Is what has been presented on our screens and in our papers a true reflection of events on the ground in Gaza? And how do these reports differ to those aired in other countries? With reporters unable to enter Gaza, attempted media manipulation from both sides and strict regulations governing what images that can be shown on British TV, Jon Snow asks a range of journalists from at home and abroad about the challenges of getting the full story.
Unreported World visits one of the most dangerous places on earth to investigate the growth of a militant Islamic network and asks whether Somalia's fertile training ground for Islamic terrorists could provoke a regional civil war. Reporter Aidan Hartley and producer James Brabazon are the first western journalists to set foot in Somalia since BBC producer Kate Peyton was killed nine months ago while crossing a Mogadishu street. A decade has passed since the UN military mission in Somalia ended following the deaths of 18 US special forces and 1,000 Somalis in the so-called "Blackhawk Down" battle.
A brutal portrayal of what happened in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone in January 1999. Sorious Samura shot the film at great risk for his own life, keenly aware of the fact that the strong images he recorded were the only thing that could shake the world from its indifference to the plight of his countrymen, women and children.
No one captured Africa's pain and passion more incisively than Mohamed Amin, photographer and frontline cameraman extraordinaire. He was the most famous photojournalist in the world, making the news as often as he covered it. 'Mo' trained his unwavering lens on every aspect of African life, never shying from the tragedy, never failing to revel in the success. Through the gaze of his camera lens, he showed the world what some were afraid to see and what most people wished they could ignore. Special |
