This screening will be followed by a discussion with journalist Ed Vulliamy and Dan Jolin of Empire Magazine.
After rising through the ranks of her male-dominated profession, idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) receives a top assignment. Recruited by mysterious government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate joins a task force for the escalating war against drugs. Led by the intense and shadowy Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), the team travels back-and-forth across the U.S.-Mexican border, using one cartel boss (Bernardo Saracino) to flush out a bigger one (Julio Cesar Cedillo).
Sicario was nominated for 3 BAFTA Film Awards, as well as the Palm d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.
Dan Jolin is Features Editor of Empire magazine, the world’s biggest movie magazine. He has been working in film journalism since 1997.
Directed by: Dennis Villeneuve
Country: United States
Year: 2015
Runtime: 120′
Rating: R
“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 COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the remit of which ranged from spying on women’s tea parties to what Noam Chomsky described as the, “Gestapo-style assassination”of Black Panther leaders.
In the post-screeening Q&A we were joined by director Johanna Hamilton via video link.
“It’s the FBI!” exclaimed a member of the audience, when the video programme experienced a slight delay in connection.
Hamilton began by outlining the two main challenges she faced in documenting a story hidden for 40 years:
“One, that they had never been found. They never revealed themselves. They were talking to Betty Medsger, The Washington Post journalist, she was writing a book and that is how I gained access to the story.
“The other real substantive thing is was that because they had never come out, we weren’t sure how the government would react. It was one of the largest FBI investigations that the bureau had ever undertaken. That’s a very little know fact, obviously because it was such a public embarrassment. . . . This was really a we did it as opposed to a whodunit.”
Hamilton then quoted the FBI’s response to reporters covering the film:
“We’re a different institution today than we were in the 70s. We’re reformed. We’ve reformed ourselves partially as a result of the revelations that happened in the 70s.”
“They didn’t reference the burglary directly,” noted Hamilton, “but obviously that was a great relief that the Citizens’ Commission was not going to go to jail.
“President Obama has become known for prosecuting whistleblowers,” she continued, “and obviously the film was coming out in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations so there was a lot of hoopla surrounding that.”
Director Johanna Hamilton
“I really did want to be able to tell the full personal story and the political aftermath of the story,” said Hamilton, on her decision to use recreations:
“I wanted it to be cinematic, and for people to really be able to put themselves in their shoes. And they’re very unconventional whistleblowers. They’re very non-traditional, they’re not insiders. They were outsiders, so they do have to do this quite extraordinary thing. It was really improbable that they would pull it off, number one, and that they would find what they were looking for, and that they would remain undetected all that time.”
A member of the audience commented that he had left the states as a student in 1967: “What I found in your film, that very few people who are not of my generation may not feel so much, is how innocent we all are. . . . The brutishness of it is still active today. I see Laura Poitras is in your production credits. She’s got an indictment against her . . . and I think the situation has got much worse.”
Future screenings and workshops can be found on the film’s official website and Twitter account.
]]>
On 8 March 1971, the night of the legendary boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. The members of the self-proclaimed Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI picked the lock on the door, took every file in the office, loaded them into suitcases and walked out the front door.
Mailed anonymously, these documents started to show up in newsrooms, unleashing fierce debates on whether or not to publish them. Despite demands by the Nixon administration to suppress the story, The Washington Post went to press, uncovering the FBI’s vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
For the first time, the members of the Citizens’ Commission come forward and speak out about their actions. Through a combination of exclusive interviews, rare primary documents from the break-in and investigation, national news coverage of the burglary and dramatic reenactments, filmmaker Johanna Hamilton tells the story of the Citizens’ Commission. This is a story with haunting echoes to today’s questions of privacy in the era of government surveillance.
Directed by Johanna Hamilton
Duration: 79′
Year: 2014
A Frontline exclusive Preview Screening of Clint Eastwood's latest film J. Edgar.
Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar is a political thriller based on the true story of one of the most powerful men in history - J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was one of the key establishers and the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations for almost fifty years. The power he yielded in America spanned 8 presidents and three wars. His methodology was questionable and still has implications on people's right to privacy and saftey around the world today.
]]>A Frontline exclusive Preview Screening of Clint Eastwood‘s latest film J. Edgar.
Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar is a political thriller based on the true story of one of the most powerful men in history – J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was one of the key establishers and the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations for almost fifty years. The power he yielded in America spanned 8 presidents and three wars. His methodology was questionable and still has implications on people’s right to privacy and saftey around the world today.
Hoover was a man who placed great value on secrets – particularly those of others – and was not afraid to use that information to exert authority over the leading figures in the nation. He gained an untouchable status that allowed him to be one of the most powerful men of his time.
As seen through the eyes of Hoover himself, J. Edgar explores the personal and public life, and relationships of a man who could distort the truth as easily as he upheld it during a life devoted to his own idea of justice, often swayed by the darker side of power.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts and Judy Dench.
J.Edgar will be in cinemas on January 20th.
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Running Time: 137′
Year: 2011
]]>