We see mafias as vast, powerful organisations, harvesting billions of dollars across the globe and wrapping their tentacles around everything from governance to finance. But is this the truth? Travelling from mafia initiation ceremonies in far-flung Russian cities to elite gambling clubs in downtown Macau, Federico Varese sets off in search of answers. Using wiretapped conversations, interviews and previously unpublished police records, he builds up a picture of the real men and women caught up in mafia life, showing their loves and fears, ambitions and disappointments, as well as their crimes.

Mafia Life takes us into the real world of organised crime, where henchmen worry about their bad managers and have high blood pressure, assassinations are bungled as often as they come off, and increasing pressure from law enforcement means that a life of crime is no longer lived in the lap of luxury. As our world changes, so must mafias. Globalisation, migration and technology are disrupting traditions and threatening their revenue streams, and the Mafiosi must evolve or die. Mafia Life is an intense and totally compelling look at these organisations and the daily life of their members, as they get to grips with the modern world.

Each week, at least four men and women vanish without trace or are found dead, cut down in a hail of gunfire. Mysterious disappearances, political murders, the killing of women, gangland hits: thousands of cases, seemingly unrelated, are reported every year from all corners of the globe.

But according to political scholars and activists, there is a connection: more and more are dying protecting their land and homes from global industry’s relentless push to develop the natural resources that lie beneath their feet.

This bloodshed is both interconnected and global, they say, and is a direct product of a phenomenon dubbed ‘necropolitics’ or the ‘politics of death’.

This event will be a film screening and panel discussion on the Thomson Reuters Foundation special investigation, in eight countries, of the violent phenomenon dubbed ‘The Politics of Death’.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/220826482/3d21502466

Run Time: 25 mins

Check out Place’s ‘Politics of Death’ website here: http://www.thisisplace.org/shorthand/politics-of-death/

Moderator: Paola Totaro, Editor, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Paola is the Land and property rights editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is an award winning journalist and immediate past Persident of the Foreign Press Association in London. Paola has worked as a writer and correspondent specialising in European affairs, politics, social policy and the arts and a former Editor of The Saturday Sydney Morning Herald.

Speakers  

Ana Zbona, Project Manager for Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders Project  – Business and Human Rights Resource Centre

Ana joined the Resource Centre in 2016. Before joining, she worked as a manager of a fair trade/community development program with the NGO Mosqoy, working with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Prior to that, Ana was an advocacy assistant in the EU advocacy team of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, a research assistant for the Slovenian Human Rights Ombudswoman, and a fellow at the EU Delegation to the UN and at the Slovenian Mission to the UN.

Joe Avapura Moses – HRD and Chairman Paga Hill Heritage Association

Joe Avapura Moses is a community leader and a land rights defender with the Paga Hill community who lived along the waterfront of the Port Moresby peninsula in Papua New Guinea (PNG) before their homes were illegally bulldozed to make way for the Paga Hill Development Company Ltd. to develop a hotel, marina and exhibition centre.

As a result of his human rights work spearheading a legal resistance to this land grab, Joe has endured intimidation and police harassment, which ultimately forced him, his wife Ceyline and their two children into hiding.

Erin Kilbride – Media Coordinator, Front Line Defenders

Erin has conducted field research and led campaigning initiatives on human rights defenders facing severe threats in Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma/Myanmar and Bahrain, among others. She has reported for media outlets including Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Think Progress, The Diplomat, Middle East Eye and Voice of America.

Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management, Cass Business School – Bobby’s primary research interests are in the areas of sustainability, climate change and corporate social responsibility. He has published extensively in leading scholarly journals and is the author of two books: Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and the co-edited volume ‘Organisations, Markets and Imperial Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalisation’. He serves on the editorial board of seven international journals and is Senior Editor at Organisation Studies. 

In this double Sundance winner, Matthew Heineman takes us deep into the world of Mexican drug cartels by embedding himself with two vigilante groups on either side of the US-Mexico border.

In Arizona’s Altar Valley — a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley — Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across the border. Meanwhile, in the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years.

Heineman repeatedly places himself in harm’s way, filming the chaos as Mireles’ vigilante group begins taking over towns – in the process adapting many of the violent tactics of the drug lords they’re trying to overpower. A visceral journey into North America’s heart of darkness, Cartel Land is a chilling meditation on the breakdown of order and the borderline where life trumps law.

Director: Matthew Heineman
Country: USA/Mexico
Running time: 98′
Distributed by Dogwoof

Pug, a wisecracking 13-year-old living on a dangerous Westside block in Baltimore, has one goal in mind: to join The 12 O’Clock Boys, the city’s notorious urban dirt bike gang. Converging from all parts of the inner city, they invade the streets and perform dangerous stunts at high speeds. The gang has a history of clashing with the police, who are forbidden to chase the bikes for fear of endangering the public.

Pug looks to the pack for mentorship, spurred by their dangerous lifestyle. He narrates their world as if explaining a dreamscape, and this insight is complemented by unprecedented, action-packed footage of the riders in their element. The film presents the pivotal years of change in a boy’s life growing up in one of the most dangerous and economically depressed cities in the United States.

Director Lotfy Nathan followed Pug for three years over the course of the film’s production, documenting his transition from a witty and energetic boy to a teenager eager to find comradeship in a gang that prides in its recklessness and disregard for authority. Nathan does not pass judgement on the group’s activities; instead he gains up-close access to their high-suspense rides, following the mayhem through the eyes of a boy on the margins.

Directed by Lotfy Nathan
Duration: 71′
Year: 2014

On Monday 28 October, the Frontline Club screened The Engineer, a documentary uncovering the extent of gang violence in El Salvador directed by Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli. The Q&A that followed was chaired by Stephen Jukes, Dean of the Media School at Bournemouth University.

The Engineer portrays the work of Israel Ticas, the only criminologist in El Salvador who unearths mass graves in search of hundreds of missing humans – many teenagers among them – killed during the ongoing gang conflict. When the two biggest gangs MS-13 and 18 Street declared a truce in 2012, the murder rate fell but the number of disappearances has been rising since.

After the screening, Charles and Passarelli provided the audience with personal background information on the total of three months they spent with Ticas, to get an insight into his day-to-day job. When Jukes asked what effect accompanying the engineer to underground sites and to film fragmented bodies had, Charles remembered:

“Once we shot the material we had to put it in a drawer for a while. When you’re there, you’re so focused on making sure you get the right shots but when you’re editing, that’s a different story. . . . I think in retrospect it affected us more than we thought.”

When a member of the audience asked about the role of the police in the conflict and whether they observed cases of corruption, Passarelli said:

“There are rumours that gang members infiltrate the police. . . . Indeed, many police officers didn’t care [about identifying victims]. Ticas does and in a way he’s the only hope for many families.”

A member of the public said she despised the portrayal of blood and violence. “Killing looks like something people become addicted to and that feels hopeless to me.”

Another guest added that even reconstructing scenes of crime is immoral: “I looked at the engineer and I thought he was a monster.”

Charles concluded the debate by referring to a personal strategy behind Ticas’ job:

“The engineer had an eccentric personality and a lot of it was show, but maybe that was his mechanism of coping with it.”

The future of the gang conflict is also set to be influenced by El Salvador’s presidential elections in February 2014. The current President Mauricio Funes (FMLN) is said to have facilitated the truce that has come under increased scrutiny as drug trafficking and other criminal activities continue.

A web version of the documentary with additional footage and information is available here and you can watch the trailer below:

[vimeo clip_id=”73038161″ width=”400″ height=”225″]

Israel Ticas spends more time with corpses than with his own family. His life is in danger, but he continues to unearth secret mass graves to identify the hundreds of missing teenagers lost to El Salvador’s brutal gang conflict. He is the country’s only criminologist, nicknamed “The Engineer” as he combines his forensic skills with his background in system engineering to get the job done.

In 2012 the two biggest gangs (MS-13 and 18 Street) declared a controversial truce. While the murder rate fell dramatically from 14 to 5 a day, this is not the full picture, the statistics fail to account for the rise in the number of disappearances.

In The Engineer, filmmakers Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli offer a unique insight into the fight against gang murders in El Salvador.

Directed by Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli
Duration: 93′
Year: 2013

On Friday 25 January, the Frontline Club hosted it’s first live film screening – interactive web-documentary, Alma, a Tale of Violence by Isabelle Fougère and Miquel Dewever-Plana. Joined by award-winning e-producer Alexandre Brachet and moderated by Himesh Kar from WorldView, the audience took part in a unique viewing, following the ‘route’ of the story as chosen by Brachet.

On the main screen we watched Alma’s confessions of violence and murder as a member of one of the most violent maras (gangs) in Guatemala. Throughout her confession, pictures and illustrations were brought into view – controlled by Brachet on his iPad. He chose certain moments to drag in the background pictures and illustrations as Alma continued her tale, adding another narrative to her story.

This interaction allows the viewer to control their experience of the film, giving them the opportunity to react to the story and select the scenes and shots in a reflection of their emotions.

“You give them a choice,” said Kar, “on how to engage with the material. It is such harrowing and hard stuff to watch at times, you do offer that choice if do you want to engage with Alma or would you rather look at visuals and just take a breather from what your digesting. You don’t get to do that with a conventional documentary.”

Brachet went on to explain how he intended the documentary to work:

“Technically it is two movies running at exactly the same time and it is up to you to decide to stay with the confession or to escape, you will never know what you will find if you escape, sometimes it is quiet, sometimes not.”

One audience member commented that taking the interactive element aside you were left with the powerful voice of Alma intercut with the most brutal images of the gang’s chaotic world. When asked how closely linked these images were to Alma’s story, Brachet said:

“Sometimes on the screen you have friends of Alma, sometimes you have Alma . . . and sometimes [you have] absolutely no connection in terms of family but still very close. [It was] the next neighbourhood, another gang – so it is always the truth.”

Alma’s confession is presented in a linear narrative that leads the audience to finding out that Alma is now a paraplegic after she was shot by her gang. When asked if the confession happened organically or if it was directed Brachet said:

“Miquel and Isabelle knew Alma for a long time. . . . They met many many times without recording. Alma told [her] story many times, so of course when we met with a camera we knew her story, obviously we directed her to [tell us] what we are interested to tell you [about] and make [it] exactly want we want.”

Brachet worked with photographer Miquel Dewever-Plana and writer Isabelle Fougère to bring together Alma’s story. The iPad app is just a small part of story that also includes an interactive web documentary, two books and a film. You can find out more about Alma’s tale or watch her confession yourself here.