Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side

For almost one hundred years there was only one way to make a movie: photochemical film. Over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge this initial form of filmmaking. At a moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, Side by Side explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.

Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard

The largest and most famous torrent website in the world, The Pirate Bay, quickly became one of many antagonists of the entertainment industry. The three Swedish founders face $13 million in damage claims by the media establishment. TPB-AFK chronicles a historic drama beyond the copyright debate and tells a human story torn by cyberwar.

Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale FULLY BOOKED

The Human Scale: it’s a ticking time bomb. In the next 40 years the number of people living in cities will nearly double. There is not enough time to build the necessary infrastructure to accomodate all of us. According to revolutionary Danish city planner Jan Gehl, even the largest of megacities must be re-thought, re-designed and re-sized to the human scale.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Andreas M. Dalsgaard

Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain FULLY BOOKED

Google and the World Brain connects the central story of Google Books with fundamental issues related to the Internet – privacy, copyright, data-mining, downloading and surveillance. Through interviews with experts from across the world we learn about the implications of one of the most ambitious and simultaneously controversial projects ever conceived on the Internet.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ben Lewis.

Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Rewind This! BOOK NOW

Home video changed the way the world consumed films. Low cost equipment and the rise of VHS created unprecedented opportunities for the film industry. Rewind This! looks at media consumption, zero budget filmmaking, unchecked global piracy and an exploding film industry, through the rise and fall of VHS. Developments that laid the foundation for today’s digital culture.

Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side

Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard

Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale BOOK NOW

[vimeo clip_id=”67638874″ width=”400″ height=”225″]

Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain BOOK NOW

Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Preview: Rewind This! BOOK NOW

The world is coming to grips with the depth and scale of government surveillance following revelations, released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, about the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) Prism program. On 9 July a panel of experts convened at the Frontline Club to debate the balance between personal privacy and national security.

Mark Urban (left), Sir Malcolm Rifkind (centre), John Kampfner (right), Photo: Jim Treadway

“Balance does not exist,” argued author and commentator John Kampfner, who advises Google on free expression.  Kampfner said that because citizens demand total security, governments simply “cannot allow for balance.”

A deeper question than balance seemed to emerge in the debate, however –  that of trust. Can governments and corporations be trusted to wield the deeply penetrative surveillance technology that has so recently arrived in their hands?`

Sir Malcolm Rifkind believes they can.  The Chairman of the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee and a former Foreign and Defence Secretary, opened his remarks by saying:

“Let’s start from the presumption that the people who run GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 are decent, responsible people, with high levels of integrity.  I think it’s a reasonable assumption.”

The Director of Oxford’s Internet Institute, Helen Margetts pointed out:

“PRISM is [said] to have cost $20 million, which is completely and utterly ludicrous.  As one tech blog put it, most security consultants ‘won’t get out of bed for less than $100 million’.  The actual cost is probably billions.”

Academic and journalist John Naughton disagreed with Rifkind:

“What comes out [from authorities] is, ‘Trust Us.’  And the trouble with that is that, in recent decades at least, our political masters haven’t deserved our trust…”

The big problem is that the technology operates outside of the laws. . . . Without a warrant – in this country – GCHQ can scoop up all of our email metadata [and] all of our mobile phone metadata, and . . . all of your click streams are collected.  In other words, every website we’ve ever visited. . . . You have an amazingly detailed picture of everybody. My question is:  in the long run, can you actually square this with liberal democracy?

John Naughton (left), Helen Margetts (right); Photo: Jim Treadway

Rifkind offered a powerful counterpoint:

“Ask yourself . . . why in America, since 9/11, there’s not been a single further example of that kind of a mass atrocity, or why in this country, apart from the 7/7 bombings, not a single person has been killed – since Lee Rigby, a few weeks ago.  In each and every year since 7/7 –  or since 9/11, whichever you prefer – there have been at least one and sometimes two terrorist plots – in this country – that have been uncovered. . . . I know for a fact that in each of these terrorist plots that were disrupted, it was metadata [that] was a substantial part of the evidence…”

In that light, the chair Mark Urban, an author and an diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight, asked:

“To what extent do we as citizens . . . with a phone and a computer, give our consent to the companies?  Is it possible to live a modern, networked life, without giving that consent?”

To which Naughton answered:

“Our futures are bounded by the nightmares of two old Etonian writers.  One of them is George Orwell, who thought we’d be destroyed by the things we fear.  And one of them is Aldous Huxley, who thought we’d be destroyed by the things we love – things that delight us [iPhones and Google etc]. We’re sleepwalking into a nightmare. . . . We are sleepwalking into this amazing, dystopian world, and we love it.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-trade-off-individual