The Frontline Club’s Documentary Programmer Julianne Rooney sat down with director of The Divide Katharine Round to discuss how she captured a specific scene in her documentary about rising inequality across the globe.

Filmed and edited by Adam Barr.

You can listen to the full Q&A session with Katharine Round following the screening of The Divide below.

Harriet Agerholm sat down with The Guardian‘s migration correspondent and author Patrick Kingsley to discuss his latest book, The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.

Filmed and edited by Adam Barr.

So when Hersh published a controversial essay presenting a counter-narrative to the US government’s account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden readers around the world paid attention.

Seymour Hersh’s new book, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, expands on that essay and how the killing of Bin Laden boosted President Obama’s re-election campaign, and delves into the foreign policy decisions made by the White House under Obama’s leadership.

With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.

She spoke at the Frontline Club with writer and friend Natasha Lenard about censorship, pain, the subversive power of drawing and Donald Trump.

Funmi Iyanda has been trying to wrap her head around Nigeria’s problems for two years. In partnership with the Frontline Club and the Royal African Society, Funmi enlisted the expert insight of Professor Charles Soludo, Feyi Fawehinmi and Natznet Tesfay to help understand Nigeria’s myriad problems and begin to think of ways to fix the Nigerian economy.

On 11 November, the Frontline Club hosted the screening of Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia. Finished less than a year after Vidal’s death, the film gave an intimate and in-depth insight into Vidal’s life and career as a writer and political commentator. The screening was followed by a lively Q&A with director Nicolas Wrathall.

Director Nicholas Wrathall taking questions from the audience. Photo: Greta Hoffman

The film starts with Vidal standing next to the tomb he has picked out for his companion Howard Auster and himself  – it already has his name on it. From there, it takes the audience on an emotional journey through Vidal’s childhood and adolescence with his politician grandfather Thomas Gore, right up to his own career as a writer, political commentator and public figure. The film also touches on his friendship with famous people such as John F. Kennedy, Bruce Springsteen and Tennessee Williams, portraying a man “who was everywhere at once, all the time.”

In one of the final scenes of the movie, Vidal, who has just lost his lifelong companion Howard Auster, warns the Americans against forgetting the mistakes that have been made in the past in order to not repeat them in the future: “It is the United States of Amnesia” Vidal says, “we miraculously forget everything. So the lessons that we should be learning we probably will have forgotten in no time at all.”

After a long applause for director Wrathall, the first question was raised from the audience. How he could ever find a beginning with all the material that Vidal’s life provided? Wrathall responded that he first thought about making the film after 9/11 and Gore Vidal’s commentary on it (Vidal had stated that the United States had had it coming). However, he only had the opportunity to meet Vidal for the first time in 2006 through his nephew Burr Steers. In the film he mainly wanted to focus on Vidal’s politics. He added that it was easy to make the film with him as Vidal loved being in front of the camera.

Towards the end of the film the relationship between Vidal and Christopher Hitchens was discussed  – specifically how Hitchens fell from grace when he declared Vidal’s opinion on 9/11 as mad. One member of the audience asked humorously whether Vidal thought that maybe Russell Brand would be a good dauphin for him. Wrathall answered that Vidal had indeed been a supporter of the Occupy movement – which Brand also supports – and thought that it is good that people like Brand are out there.

Another subject that raised questions was why the director had left out the years of the Kennedy assassination, despite the fact that Gore Vidal and JFK were good friends. The answer was simple: the Kennedy’s had been reported on from every angle and there had been a need to be selective on the material. Wrathall had, however, included the footage of an afternoon of sport shooting with Vidal, Kennedy and Tennessee Williams.

The screening was held two days after publication of a New York Times feature, in which Vidal’s half-sister Nina Straight and nephew Burr Steers claimed that they had evidence that Vidal was “not mentally competent when he changed the terms of his will the year before he died”, leaving his entire estate to Harvard University. The piece also suggests Vidal had sex with underage men. When asked about these recent revelations, Wrathall said:

“The Steers are currently trying to do damage control on this as they have been misquoted. . . . As far as the question about Harvard is concerned, he bequeathed all of his estate and money to Harvard which is very surprising to me and many people as he never went there. . . . There was quite a lot of bitterness and confusion in his family, who didn’t understand this. His will was changed in 2011 and I did interview him around that time. He was still sharpish, not quite the person he was in 2006 when I knew him, and he was drinking a lot…”

The film is currently being shown at festivals all over the world and will be in theatrical distribution in the US from April 2014. View the trailer here:

FCP X works with new paradigms from tapeless workflows. The workshop will step you through this revolutionary new way of editing by taking you through an edit from start to finish.

We’ll look at how to import and organise your media, create a rough cut, trim and cut, add music/effects/titles and voice over, colour correct and export for multiple platforms.

Own laptops and editing media are optional, though desirable if you have access – we do not provide hardware or software in these workshops.

Workflow

• Importing / transcoding files,
• Creating events,
• Keywords,
• Grouping clips
• Reviewing media,
• Marking.

Sequencing Clips

• Magnetic timeline,
• Adding clips to the timeline,
• Clip timing,
• Auditioning,
• Story lines and compound clips.

Adjusting Video

• Speed,
• Scaling,
• Cropping,
• Distorting,
• Keyframing.
• Text

Music & Audio

• Editing / Enhancement,
• Recording V/O

Effects

• Template effects,
• Adjusting effects.
• Colour correction,
• Auto balancing / matching colour,
• Manual correction.

Exporting

• Quicktime / Apple devices /  Vimeo / Youtube,
• Compressor.

Trainer: Simon Ruben

Simon is an award winning freelance editor and video trainer with over seven years of broadcast experience across a range of genres.

Simon has designed and delivered popular courses for the Frontline Club since 2007 including Final Cut Pro, Compressor, DVDSP, Motion. He has also tailored courses for FT.com, Save The Children, Medecins Sans Frontiers, Soho Editors and the NUJ.

Simon has an MA in Mythology from Bristol University and found digital story telling to be the perfect vehicle for his academic and narrative passion.

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 In Bratislava, Frontline Club founder, Vaughan Smith, speaks to freelance journalist John D McHugh on freelance newsgathering in Afghanistan.