The Forum Blog
Shorts at the Frontline Club
By Olivia Acland On Friday 16 January, the Frontline Club was at full capacity for an evening that showcased the diverse faces of documentary filmmaking, both journalistic and poetic. The documentaries screened offered snapshots into five very different worlds, allowing the audience to glimpse the lives of remarkable individuals in addition to illuminating pressing issues, […]
UK’s Laws for Foreign Fighters Returning from Syria Need Nuance
By Graham Lanktree At the Frontline Club on 14 January, Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ISCR) at King’s College; Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner turned activist with the UK group Cage; and former MI6 director of global counter-terrorism Richard Barrett, now […]
Gerard Russell on the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
By Francis Churchill “It’s just useful when we see today the narrative of conflict to remember that it was actually possible for faiths to coexist quite remarkably,” said Gerard Russell, referring to Baghdad in c. 800 C.E. On Tuesday 13 February, the former United Nations and British diplomat joined an audience at the Frontline Club […]
A Dangerous Game: “Democracy has been Corrupted by Individuals with Power”
By Javier Pérez de la Cruz “Wherever you go in the world, democracy has been corrupted by individuals with a lot of power”, said Anthony Baxter by way of an introduction to a screening of his latest film, A Dangerous Game, at the Frontline Club on Monday 12 January. The documentary, which follows on from Baxter’s first international success You’ve Been […]
The Billion Pound Base – Dismantling Camp Bastion
By Agnes Chambre A preview screening of The Billion Pound Base – Dismantling Camp Bastion, followed by a Q&A session with director Richard Parry, producer Leslie Knott and executive producer Mike Lerner, was held at the Frontline Club on Thursday 27 November. The film about Camp Bastian in Afghanistan is reportedly the first of its kind. Although a large number of […]
Hunting for Osama bin Laden
By Robert Van Egghen “How can you have a war on terror when terror is a tactic?” asks one of the American counter-terrorism analysts interviewed in Greg Barker‘s new film, Manhunt, about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, which was screened at the Frontline Club on Monday 24 November. Director Greg Barker joined the […]
Violence and the traditions of colonialism
By Will Worley A preview screening of Concerning Violence, followed by a discussion with Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson, was held at the Frontline Club on Friday 21 November. The film is based upon the seminal anti-colonialism book, The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, a Martinique born psychiatrist who became involved with armed anti-colonial […]
How to Freelance Safely – Part Two
By Graham Lanktree As many major news organisations close foreign bureaus, freelancers are called on more and more to cover global conflicts. They face risks often without the structure, training and resources that come with having a large media outlet behind you. Continuing a conversation that began at the end of October in New York at the […]
When a lie masquerades as the truth – questions of documentary filmmaking
By Elliott Goat “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” Janet Malcom, The Journalist and the Murderer Hosting a debate on the role of fiction/nonfiction in documentary storytelling, David Wilson, founder of True/False film festival, chaired a panel of past […]
Talking about Thailand
By Mackenzie Weinger If the event on Wednesday 12 November had taken place in Thailand instead of at the Frontline Club in London, members of the Thailand: A Kingdom in Crisis panel could have been jailed. That’s because panellists broke the Thai lèse majesté law — the crime of violating majesty — by discussing the […]
Ebola – “The solution is how countries are living with it”
By Francis Churchill On Monday 10 November, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Liberia – Living With Ebola, the first episode in Al Jazeera’s latest series of Africa Investigates. The film documented the impact of Ebola on those at the front line of the disease in Liberia, focusing on the communities worst hit […]
Attacking the Devil: Illustrating the best of investigative journalism
By Georgia Luscombe On Friday 7 November, the Frontline Club played host to award-winning journalist Marjorie Wallace and director Jacqui Morris (McCullin, 2012) for a preview screening of Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime, followed by a Q&A. As audience members stirred with sympathy for the victims of the thalidomide […]
The End of the Wall: 25 Years After the Fall
By Graham Lanktree The young Harvard-educated economist Miklós Németh didn’t dream he would play a decisive role in the fall of the Berlin Wall when he was appointed Prime Minister by Hungary’s Communist Party to fix the nation’s finances in late 1988. Only a year later he was at the centre of it all. On […]
Michael Žantovský on Havel: Dissident, Playwright and Philosopher
By Tom Adams On 3 November the Frontline Club hosted an event organised by the Czech Centre London, the insight with Michael Žantovský was part of the ‘Made in Prague’ festival season. Michael Žantovský, who is the current Czech Ambassador to the Court of St James, was discussing his new book called Havel: A Life. Václav Havel was elected as President […]
Gabriella Coleman and the Many Faces of Anonymous
By Tom Adams On Thursday 30 October, an excited crowd packed the Frontline Club for an insight with Gabriella Coleman, currently the Wolfe Chair in scientific and technological literacy at McGill University, where she researches, writes about and teaches on computer hackers and digital activism. In her latest publication, Coleman provides a unique insight into the mysterious […]
CITIZENFOUR: Snooping and security
By Max Hallam On Wednesday 29 October, the Frontline Club held a special preview screening of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’s new film CITIZENFOUR ahead of its UK cinematic release on Friday 31 October. While working on a documentary trilogy about post 9/11 America, Poitras began to receive encrypted emails from a subject known only as […]
FOR SALE: Modern Day Slavery
By Elliott Goat “Sometimes they don’t even know where here is.” In the build up to the Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust Women Conference, on Monday 27 October the Frontline Club hosted a debate on modern day slavery and human trafficking chaired by Prabha Kotiswaran, senior lecturer in Law at King’s College London and advisor to […]
Can news still change the course of history?
By Antonia Roupell “Does the Pubic Still Care?” was the poignant title of the discussion on conflict and disaster reporting which was chaired by Ben Parker at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 October. The event was organised by the Oversees Development Institute and Humanitarian Policy Group. Channel 4 News anchor, Jon Snow, and senior reporter for […]
The Future of Journalism: Will we be better informed? Part Two
By Josie Le Blond What is the future of news? Will the public know more or less in the internet age? These questions were the focus of a panel discussion marking the launch of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 22 October. Shrinking international news budgets, bureau […]
The Future of Journalism: Will we be better informed? Part One
By Isabel Gonzalez-Prendergast On Wednesday 22 October, the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine launched at the Frontline Club. The magazine’s editor, Rachael Jolley, introduced the issue and handed over to author and columnist, David Aaronovitch, who chaired the accompanying debate on the future of journalism. Aaronovitch initiated the discussion by asking each panellist to speak individually on […]
Opposing Power
By Max Hallam The Term offers a fascinating insight into the world of the groups opposing Vladamir Putin’s presidency in Russia. After its screening at the Frontline Club on Friday 17 October 2014, producer Max Tuula joined the audience for a brief Q&A via Skype. The film follows the efforts of a number of opposition leaders, […]
The NFB’s hunt for the holy grail of interactive storytelling
By Graham Lanktree Interactive reports that hold short-attention spans online are the holy grail for web editors. Loc Dao, an executive producer and creative technologist at the National Film Board of Canada’s digital studio, has come up with a few recipes for success. At the Frontline Club on Wednesday 8 October, Dao shared the lessons learned […]
Still the enemy within after 30 years
By Graham Lanktree When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced on 6 March 1984 that she would close 20 coal mines, there was little clue it would spark the country’s longest strike and leave Britain’s trade unions sorely diminished decades later. For a year roughly 160,000 coal miners from across the UK walked off the job as […]
Ebola: Tearing a hole in West Africa
By Mackenzie Weinger On Wednesday 1 October, several experts told a crowd at the Frontline Club about the unprecedented and horrific impact that the Ebola epidemic is having in West Africa. The panel — moderated by Ade Daramy, chair and spokesperson for the UK Sierra Leone Ebola Task Force — tackled the international community’s response to […]
1971: The year they took the truth
By George Symonds “J. Edgar Hoover was apoplectic.” On Monday 29 September 2014, the Frontline Club screened 1971, the incredible story of eight US citizens whose courage – both moral and physical – led them to break into an FBI office to confiscate evidence of the bureau’s grave abuses of power. The self-incriminating documents revealed the existence of […]
ISIS is here for a generation
By Richard Nield The threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the international network of militants it has spawned will be with us for a “generation”, according to experts speaking at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 24 September 2014.
Libya: “A country which seems to be falling apart by accident.”
By Caroline Rogers On Wednesday 17 September, a panel chaired by Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum, came together to discuss the current plight of Libya; what has gone wrong since the 2011 revolution, whether it really is on the brink of becoming a failed state, and what role the international community should play in pulling Libya […]
In The Shadow Of War: The long-term reality
By Antonia Roupell On Monday 22 September the Frontline Club screened In The Shadow Of War. The film explores the impact the Bosnian war still has on today’s youth. It focuses on four characters whose lives, a generation after the war ended, are still shaped by the events of the 1990’s. The documentary was followed by […]
The Process: “A view from the ground, of life inside the process.”
By Ratha Lehall On Friday 19 September, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of The Process, followed by a lively Q&A with the director, Joshua Baker, moderated by Jonathan Miller, foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News. The film follows three main characters in Israel and Palestine: a young Israeli woman who has moved from her settlement to […]
Night Will Fall: “Bearing witness to atrocity”
By Phoebe Hall On Tuesday 16 September, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Night Will Fall, followed by an insightful Q&A with director André Singer and producer Sally Angel. The powerful film interweaves eyewitness testimony and original archive footage in order to chronicle the process of the filming, by American and British and Soviet […]