Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist, according to international press freedom groups. An increasing number of journalists in Mexico are freelance and working without the backing of a media outlet. This can further increase the risks that they face, especially when working in conflict areas and contribute to an already precarious labor situation.

FFR is an international organisation founded by freelance journalists that works to improve the safety and labor conditions of freelancers, especially those who work in conflict zones without the backing of a media outlet. Due to the situation freelance journalists find themselves in, the Frontline Club will be starting a chapter of FFR in Mexico to create a support network and provide solidarity.

The event will feature two documentaries about journalism in Mexico and will be followed by a discussion with local and international journalists about the situation for freelance journalists in Mexico and the work of Frontline Freelance Register. El Paso, is a documentary that tells the story of Mexican journalists who fled in exile to Texas after receiving threats in Mexico, related to their work. Death in Veracruz is a mini documentary produced by AJ+ that shows the daily life of Mexican Photo journalist Félix Márquez and Jorge Sánchez, the son of assassinated journalist Moisés Sánchez in Medellín, Veracruz.

More information here: http://www.centroculturadigital.mx/actividad/Frontline-y-Freelance-Periodistas-en-Riesgo-H1qFaSARW

Run Time: 18:00 – 21:00 hours

Sarah Giaziri – Frontline Freelance Register
Andalusia Knoll– Frontline Freelance Register
Mónica González – Periodistas de a Pie
Rodrigo Cruz – Documentary Photographer

The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul – Andy Hayward. The number of transphobic related murders in Turkey is one of the highest in Europe. Hayward explores the world of trans sex workers in Istanbul who share with him their day-to-day experiences, intimate thoughts and emotions against a backdrop of prejudice and violence.

Watch the trailer for The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul here: https://vimeo.com/218785390

Run Time: 22 mins

Sununú: The Revolution of Love – Olivia Crellin. Fernando Machado and Diane Rodriguez have captured the media’s attention for being the first transgender parents in South America. Fernando became pregnant by his girlfriend Diane and gave birth to a son. This documentary portrays the humdrum life of the couple, that is similar to that of any young parents. But outside of the family sphere, Diane and Fernando are tackling larger issues that have global consequences to our attitudes to gender and family diversity.

Watch the trailer for Sunnú: The Revolution of Love here: https://www.sununufilm.com/

Run Time: 25 mis

On Friday 15 May, the Frontline Club hosted the UK premiere of This Is My Land, followed by an insightful discussion with director Tamara Erde. Screened on the 67th anniversary of Israeli Independence and Nakba Day, the film poses an important and highly relevant question: how does teaching of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affect younger generations in the contested region?

This Is My Land follows several history teachers and students in six schools over an academic year. It provides a nuanced perspective of how educational institutions across Israel and the West Bank grapple with national identity, curriculum censorship and a relentless fear of the ‘other’. Observational in style, the film reveals gaping discrepancies between concepts of freedom and historical truth, and a sense of how trauma and conflict are transmitted onto the next generation through the pages of a textbook.

At the beginning of the film, Erde explains how, as an Israeli student, she was never taught to consider Palestinian history. It was not until she joined the army that she gained greater awareness of the other side of the conflict. During her discussion at the Frontline Club, she commented on her motivations for making the film.

“For me, something that is really important and lacking in education, is the other side’s vision, narrative and history. The first step is just to realise that there is another side and story, that is today being completely ignored. It’s [about] opening up to tolerance and understanding that you are not alone in the world… to see people on the other side with their pain from the past, all this complexity.”

Thought provoking evening @frontlineclub: This is my land | Tamara Erde http://t.co/VHnxaohRFM

— Stephanie Biden (@StephanieBiden) May 15, 2015

Asked by an audience member how she had approached each school, Erde said:
“You have to get approval from the Ministry of Education for each teacher. From the Israeli side, all the teachers who were centre-left were not authorised.”

She added that while there were numerous schools from which she was denied access, the teachers she filmed were intriguing, both in their characters and the way they approached teaching.

“What I was looking for was teachers who on the one hand represent the national curriculum, but on the other hand do try to challenge themselves or ask questions within what they can do.”

Despite the complex personalities of the teachers, several audience members noted how bleak the film seemed in terms of optimism, and asked whether Erde felt any sense of hope that the two sides could find a solution.

She responded: “While editing, there were times when I thought I’d like it to have a happy ending. But at the same time, I wanted to stay loyal to what I felt and what I saw during this process… From what we’ve seen over the long years, the solution doesn’t come from politics. We need to try and bring it from other places, and I think education could have been one of the major places. But today, it’s just following politics completely.”

One audience member asked whether the film had been screened in Israel or Palestine and, given the contentious topic, the reactions it received.

Erde said: “We did some private screenings in the cinemas on the Israeli side and Ramallah… There were many good responses from teachers who saw the film and said it raised many important questions for them. On the Israeli side we did some screenings in April. There were first reactions saying, it’s okay for us to see it inside Israel but don’t show it outside so you don’t reveal anything about the problems here.”

She added that her ultimate aim would be to screen the film in schools.

“What I would have loved to do is to bring it to schools, to teachers and to kids from both sides to see. I think it will be a long process. We managed to do it in the schools that we filmed, and in some private teachers organisations. We tried through the Ministry [of Education], but I’m not surprised it didn’t work. On the Palestinian side, we are trying now and I hope it will work in some way.”

Visit the This Is My Land website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

“I hope you enjoy the film half as much as I enjoyed making it. Apart from the crazy bit,” director Morgan Matthews said on Monday 17 March at the Frontline Club as he introduced his new documentary Shooting Bigfoot in association with BBC Storyville.

Warning: Contains spoilers.

Director Morgan Matthews discusses his latest documentary, Shooting Bigfoot.

Following Bigfoot hunters across Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Ohio San Antonio, Shooting Bigfoot is an hilarious and at times heart pounding documentary. It starts with Matthews innocently following the ‘researchers’ and ‘trackers’ on the hunt for towering hairy creatures and ends with him getting a black eye in a torch-lit chase through the trees, reminiscent of the Blair Witch project.

After the screening Matthews answered questions from the audience, one of the first of which was: Who hit you?

“I prefer leaving it open ended . . . for people to make their own minds up. I don’t think it was Bigfoot.”

Matthews said that it seemed inevitable that he would be set up whilst filming but didn’t know from who or when and that he started to doubt and second guess everything he saw:

“When I heard those noises, I thought it was one of the guys in the wood playing a tape or something, rather than an owl. I kind of thought it was going to come one way or another but I wasn’t sure from which direction . . . apart from Dallas and Wayne. I never thought Dallas and Wayne were going to produce the goods.”

During filming Matthews spent time with three different groups of Bigfoot hunters (among others who didn’t make the final cut). Matthews spent hours alone whilst on stake out in the forest with Dyer and he is now in a row with him over the ownership of Matthews’ documentary footage – it seemed that that relationship was the one that had genuine tension. An audience member asked if Matthews felt safe with Rick Dyer?

“I never trusted Rick. That was what made him interesting. It was freaky at times and when you are in the tent in the woods and it’s four in the morning and there are weird noises around it is a bit freaky and Rick is . . . playing silly buggers. . . . I genuinely never felt Rick was somebody who would either harm me . . . well, hmm . . . I never thought that he’d actually, properly . . . I never thought that he’d shoot me. I don’t think he’s that sort of person.”

Another audience member pointed out the amount of weapons that were on display throughout the documentary and asked if the idea of hunting Bigfoot was just an excuse for blokes to swan about in the forest with guns.

“Almost all about that. . . . They’re doing it for different reasons. But ultimately they’re guys behaving like kids, in a good way, like kids in the woods”

However, Matthews said that he thought there was more to it:

“With Dallas and Wayne, they’re guys who had jobs who had a purpose who lost that and then found Bigfoot. That became their reason to get up in a way. They’re known within that world. With all these communities connected by the Internet somebody who was otherwise previously kind of isolated or weird now there’s a network of people they can be in touch with.”

Director Morgan Matthews introduces tonight's screening of Shooting Bigfoot. pic.twitter.com/9MV7Xf9WHs

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 17, 2014

Did you ever feel like you were exploiting them?

“I think it’s a fair question, I don’t think they’re mental as in mentally ill. They’re quite a bit bonkers in a way that they’re aware of, . . . they’re all showmen to an extent. They’re all aware of themselves part of what they’re doing is involving me in that show.

 

“I felt it went both ways, sometimes they were taking the piss out of me and sometimes it went the other way. It was genuinely a lot of fun. I laughed so much on that trip but genuinely with them. Tom [a serial Bigfoot film maker] just has you in stitches and sometimes it’s hard to hold the camera straight. When Chico [an ex-navy SEAL on the expedition with Tom] fell in the water we were all creasing up in laughter and . . . that’s with them, it’s not at them.”

Was there a point where you found yourself wanting to believe it?

“I think it started like that and I kind of wanted to uncover something . . . [but] I became interested in the story of people, where the lines between fact and fiction were very blurred and they almost invent their own reality and live in that. A case where you believe in something so much it becomes true. The parallels with religion were very clear to me.”

When asked if he felt any of the guys genuinely believed in Bigfoot Matthews said:

“Yeah, but it’s sort of when Tom says that people start believing their own bullshit, I think that’s kind of what happened.”

Shooting Bigfoot airs on BBC 4 at 9pm on Monday March 24, 2014. Find out more here.

Watch the full Q&A and the trailer for Shooting Bigfoot below:

On Friday 12th April the Frontline Club hosted the first UK screening of Dirty Wars; author and investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill‘s chilling account of his journey from a remote corner of Afghanistan to Yemen, the American Congress and Somalia as he investigated the rise of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Producer Anthony Arnove introduced the film and thanked the director, Richard Rowley, Scahill‘s co-writer David Riker and fellow producer Brenda Coughlin. After the screening he was joined by Scahill via Skype.

“This film started of as a very different story,” Scahill said. “It started off as a more linear documentary and was going to be focussed on Afghanistan and the war within the war – the special operations war. As we started to research who was conducting these raids we realised it was part of a much bigger story…I didn’t realise just exactly how much of a part these forces lay in these expanding US wars.”

Whilst Dirty Wars the book tells many of the stories of the people Scahill encountered in depth the film was much more of a personal journey:

“This was a really transformative experience, I didn’t see us ending up in Yemen and Somalia when we started this project and looking back on it I really think it did change everyone who worked on the film – myself and Rick [Rowley] certainly.”

Dirty Wars, which won the Cinematography Award for US Documentary at Sundance Film Festival 2013, details night raids made by American forces in detail using footage from mobile phones filmed in the aftermath of strikes and first hand accounts from survivors including young children.

“When we premiered… we were overwhelmed by the response from the community of filmmakers and the people that were at the festival… It’s sort of surreal to me but publications that are normally reviewing Hollywood-type movies gave it quite good reviews… It’s going to be interesting to see when it ends up theatrically in theatres in the United States how it plays in middle America.”

“…People have a sense that they were seeing something that isn’t often on the news in the United states and I think that this is a film that is above politics. It’s not a Democratic or Republican or a left or right film. I think it’s really trying to get to the heart of what our world looks like more than 10 years into this world as a battle field mentality.”

The film is accompanied by a haunting original score by David Harrington and performed by the Kronos Quartet. It is collaborations like this that Arnove says led to the Sundance cinematography win and he added that working with Scahill on his previous project Blackwater encouraged them to film this second investigation from the start.

“This time around we really thought it would be interesting to start making the film at the beginning of the investigation which is part of the reason it took unexpected twists and turns in the course of the filmmaking.”

Scahill added that part of the film’s success is that it powerfully resonates with viewers and particularly the story of targeted American citizen and alleged member of al-Qaeda Anwar al-Awlaki.

“One of the reasons that we chose to focus on that story is that it’s a story that should should resonate with folks in this country [the US] who actually have their own moral responsibility to hold their own government accountable.”

As JSOC’s raids are carried out increasingly in the open and are publicly praised – as in the case of the operation which killed Osama Bin Laden – Scahill was asked if feelings of despair come in to play:

“One of the enduring legacies of the Obama administration… is that he’s going to go down in recent history as the president that solidified assassination as a central component of US foreign policy and sold as a popular cause to any liberals who support him…. I am doing what journalists should do which is viewing those in power as a force that needs to be held accountable and confronted for its actions, regardless of whichever party happens to be in power.”

Jeremy Scahill will be in the UK to launch the book Dirty Wars from the 12th May 2013, follow the link to see his tour details and watch the trailer for Dirty Wars the film below.

A screening of Reportero took place at the Frontline Club on Friday 15 February, followed by a Q&A over Skype with the director Bernardo Ruiz.

Ruiz’s documentary follows the story of reporter Sergio Haro and his colleagues at Zeta, an independent Mexican weekly newspaper. Since Zeta was founded in 1980, three of the paper’s staffers have been murdered and the founder viciously attacked. Editor, Francisco Ortiz, was shot in front of his two children.

Mexico’s investigative journalists risk their lives to tell the stories that Mexican officials don’t want told. This moving documentary reminded the audience of Mexico’s journalists who have fallen victims of the country’s ‘war on drugs’, none of which have been fully investigated.

Reportero began as a short documentary centred around a youth centre for deported children. As Ruiz documented his subjects’ lives, a pattern of narcotic-related violence emerged. When put in contact with Sergio Haro, Ruiz describes their initial encounter as “a good first date, within half an hour I knew I wanted to reframe my film around Sergio and his work”.

Ruiz explained that despite the financial challenges faced by the print media worldwide, Zeta is managing to stay afloat thanks to a loyal following of readers, with 25-30,000 issues imported from California each week. The paper’s younger journalists are also “confronting the reality of social media and . . . are chomping at the bit to recreate Zeta in this digital universe”, and Ruiz hoped that this film has “put the dialogue of their safety on the map”.

Violence continues to move and reek destruction across parts of the country. Whilst the public may resist narcotics, “the immense power of the state is not as powerful as the organised distraction of the cartels”.

Ruiz described the relationship between public officials and organised crime as “a messy and difficult situation”. The filmmaker talked about the series of entanglements linking the police to crime and to violence against journalists. He said: “Many perpetrators of violence come from the police and are former public officials.”

The Q&A explored the need for deeper reporting and an international narrative on the economics of the narcotics trade. Whilst consumer culture questions where iPhones are produced, the same questions aren’t asked of narcotics “through wilful neglect or blindness”. But journalists in Mexico are probing the assets of these cartels.

“International coverage of cash flow where narcotic revenue is being spent and banked . . . this story hasn’t yet been broken,” said Ruiz.

Visit the Reportero website to find out more about this film and what has happened since. This is an update from the co-director of Semanario Zeta, Adela Navarro, on the film’s influence on their work:

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