Drawn from seven years of immersive reporting, award-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold will be at Frontline to talk about her 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book, Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which explores the devastating effects of fracking on a small town in Pennsylvania through the eyes of one of its residents.
Amity and Prosperity centres on the story of Stacey Haney, a single mother of two living on a family farm in southern Washington County. She sees the fanfare around fracking and decides to lease the gas rights under her land to to help pay for some much-needed upgrades around the farm. Haney starts to regret her decision when her athletic teenage son, Harley, begins suffering from an unexplained illness, and several of her farm animals die and joins with neighbours and a husband-and-wife legal team to investigate what’s really in the water and air, eventually exposing the damage that’s being done to the land her family has lived on for centuries.
Griswold traveled to the region 37 times over seven years as she worked on the book, finding plenty to write about in southwestern Pennsylvania, from community quarrels to years-long legal battles that had state-wide implications. A poet-turned-journalist and contributing writer for The New Yorker, she continues to cover environmental issues related to the oil and gas boom.
Griswold will be joined in conversation with Steve Coll, a staff writer at the The New Yorker and the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Between 1985 and 2005, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. He is the author of eight books of nonfiction, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Reviews:
“Amity and Prosperity is at heart a David and Goliath story fit for the movies. It has everything but a happy ending: bucolic setting concealing fortune and danger; poor but proud locals who’ve endured sequential boom bust cycles of resource extraction . . . tough, reluctant victim-heroes . . . and a courtroom drama, as a tenacious husband-wife legal team takes on the industry and the state . . . [a] valuable, discomforting book” —Jo-Ann Wypijewski, The New York Times Book Review
Speaker
Eliza Griswold is the author of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, which won the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Her translations of Afghan women’s folk poems, I Am the Beggar of the World, was awarded the 2015 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She has held fellowships from the New America Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Harvard University, and in 2010 the American Academy in Rome awarded her the Rome Prize for her poems. Currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York
University, she lives in New York with her husband and son.
Please note: this event is now a day later that originally advertised because of late changes to speaker’s travel.
]]>This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Craig Atkinson via Skype.
Do Not Resist is an urgent and powerful exploration of the rapid militarisation of the police in the United States. Opening on startling on-the-scene footage in Ferguson, Missouri, the film then broadens its scope to present scenes from across the country — a conference presentation where the value of high-end weapons technologies is presented to potential police buyers; a community that has just received its very own military-grade tank; and a SWAT team arriving at a home to execute a warrant. The cumulative effect of these vignettes paints a startling picture of the direction in which American law enforcement is headed.
Craig Atkinson filmed his directorial debut over two years and in 11 states. Through keen and thoughtful observances, Atkinson deftly presents the characters and stories that comprise this pressing issue. The result reveals a rare and surprising look into the increasingly disturbing realities of American police culture.
Directed by: Craig Atkinson
Country: United States
Year: 2016
Runtime: 73′
Ukrainian Sheriffs follows Viktor and Volodya, two men who have been appointed local sheriffs by the mayor in the isolated town of Stara Zburyevka, Ukraine. While dealing with petty crimes such as stolen ducks and drunken neighbours, the news about the war slowly creeps in on them through their televisions and pressure to join the army. Meanwhile, the tragicomic situations dealt with by the inexperienced ‘sheriffs’ have their roots in the prevalent unemployment, poverty and illiteracy in the region.
The filmmakers follow the adventures of Viktor and Volodya with a keen eye for the comical side of everyday situations. Driving in their yellow Lada flying its own little Ukrainian flag, they travel from incident to incident – calming an angry neighbour, investigating the discovery of a body, struggling to unfold a stroller and attempting to re-integrate the community’s freeloaders. The seasons pass until political developments reach the village by way of the TV screen, sowing separatist discord. Around the time of the celebrations for the country’s 70th Independence Day, the men of the village are drafted into the army.
Ukrainian Sheriffs offers a lighthearted yet telling look beyond the war and inside everyday life in small town Ukraine.
Ukrainian Sheriffs received the 2015 IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) Special Jury Award.
Directed by: Roman Bondarchuk
Country: Ukraine/Latvia/Germany
Year: 2015
Runtime: 85′
The evening will include short stories capturing the essence of big issues, films showing life in other parts of the world under difficult or extraordinary circumstances, and stories focusing on remarkable individuals.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with In the Valley of Guns and Roses director Simon Hipkins.
Full lineup to be announced soon.
FAMOUS IN AHMEDABAD
Director: Hardik Mehta
2016 / 29 min / India
Set during the kaleidoscopic backdrop of the biggest kite-flying festival in India, this stunning film witnesses the transformation of an 11-year-old Zaid from a boy next door to an aggressive and a passionate kite-runner – until he comes across a challenge that threatens to keep him away from the one thing he loves.
IN THE VALLEY OF GUNS AND ROSES
Director: Simon Hipkins
2016 / 25 min / UK
In the heart of Bulgaria’s Rose Valley, single mother Irina is desperate to give her four-year-old daughter, Stefi, a better start in life. Her main source of income comes from her dangerous work at a weapons factory where she measures and packs gunpowder into artillery shells.
THE NEW CHE OF HAVANA
Director: Alex Mallis
2016 / 7 min / USA
AlexMallis.com
A Cuban skateboarder and artist must reconcile looming changes and a nascent free-market economy with his desire to continue operating his tattoo shop – currently illegal in Havana.
SHOOTING THE TRIBE
Director: Gemma Atkinson and Fred Grace
2013 / 8 min / Colombia, UK
In 1989, the Kogi tribe of Colombia opened their doors to a BBC documentary film crew. Their intention was to send us a warning that if we continued to live our lives the way we do, the destruction of the planet was assured. 25 years later, Shooting the Tribe takes us back into the jungle of the Sierra Nevada, to understand why it is they, not us, whose way of life has changed.
BACK
Directors: Jenna Belhumeur, Elena Boffetta
2015 / 13 min / United States
BACK focuses on the hidden aspects of long-term confinement through the eyes of Otis Johnson, who was incarcerated for over 40 years. The documentary explores what re-entry means for inmates who are released in a society that has drastically changed over several decades.
Cuba was the first communist state to be created in the western hemisphere – it’s also the last one standing. But the United States’ economic embargo against Cuba, coupled with the break up of the Soviet Union, has left this island nation struggling to provide for its citizens’ most basic needs.
In 2011, President Raul Castro introduced a series of dramatic reforms designed to stimulate growth. For the first time in decades, Cuban citizens were allowed to sell their homes and open businesses. Foreign companies are now permitted to invest in Cuba too.
The President insists that these measures are designed to preserve, rather than dismantle, Cuban socialism. But can he successfully open up the economy without betraying the promise of a classless society upon which the Cuban state was built? Juliana Ruhfus and Seamus Mirodan investigate.
People and Power is Al Jazeera’s weekly investigative documentary programme that looks at the use and abuse of power. People and Power: Cuba for Sale will be broadcast on Al Jazeera English on 24 February.
Reporters: Juliana Ruhfus and Seamus Mirodan
Runtime: 25′
The panel:
Richard Gott (moderator) is a British journalist and historian with forty years experience of Latin America. He was for many years on the staff of The Guardian newspaper in London. He is currently an honorary research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. He is author of Cuba: A New History (Yale University Press), and Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso).
Stephen Wilkinson first visited Cuba in 1986 and has been travelling to and writing about the island ever since. Now assistant director at the International Institute for the Study of Cuba, Stephen has a PhD on the subject of Cuban literature. He has written numerous articles on such questions as the history of US-Cuba relations, Cuban attitudes and policy towards homosexuals and the nature of the Cuban state. Stephen’s book: Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture was published in 2006 by Peter Lang. He frequently comments on Cuba issues on The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free website.
Juliana Ruhfus is the senior reporter for Al Jazeera’s ‘People & Power’ investigative and current affairs strand where she has worked since 2006, when her film on Liberian ex-combatants launched the channel’s programming content. Nearly 30 films later she has gone undercover in Turkmenistan and in Cambodian orphanages, produced the five part ‘Corporations on Trial’ series, and her two-part investigation into the trafficking of Nigerian women into the Italian sex-trade is one of the most-watched People & Power shows in its history. In 2010, she was awarded the Ochberg Fellowship, and in 2011 she received a scholarship for Harvard’s Global Trauma Program. She is currently on the European board of directors for the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
Since 1995, Helen Yaffe has spent time living and researching in Cuba. Her PhD thesis, undertaken at the London School of Economics, was published as Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009, and subsequently in four other language editions. Her research and publications have continued to focus on Cuban political economy, as well as the political economy of Latin American regional economic integration. Helen has taught Cuban and Latin American (economic) history at UCL, LSE and Birkbeck. She is currently a Fellow in the Economic History department at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she lectures and teaches on the history of economics.
Bernard Regan, Cuba Solidarity Campaign National Secretary. CSC campaigns against the illegal 50 year old blockade of Cuba, for an end to the US occupation of Cuban land at Guantanamo Bay, and to defend the Cuban people’s right to be free from foreign intervention. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign is broad based and has more than 5,000 members, affiliated organisations and local groups. Together we lobby MPs and government, organise solidarity brigades specialist tours and exchanges, and work to build links and better understanding between Britain and Cuba.
]]>On 10 June, world leaders and NGOs will gather in London for a global summit with the aim to create “irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and practical action that impacts those on the ground”. Ahead of the summit, we will be joined by a panel of speakers who have been working towards this aim for many years. They will be discussing what needs to be done to make it a reality.
The eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been described as the “rape capital of the world”. Increased cases of sexual violence against women in DRC coincided with the emerging armed conflicts of the early 1990s. Although Congolese law criminalises many forms of sexual violence, these laws are often not enforced.
With a particular focus on the DRC our panel will be mapping out what is being done to help individuals and societies affected by sexual violence and what more needs to be done. We will be asking what measures can be put in place to help victims bring the perpetrators to justice.
Chaired by Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian’s Global Development website.
The panel:
Doctor Juliet Cohen is head of doctors at UK-based charity Freedom from Torture. She specialises in the examination of victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking and has written over 1000 forensic reports documenting the psychological and physical sequelae of torture, including rape, for use in international protection claims. In 2012 she provided an expert witness statement on late disclosure of sexual violence for the European Court of Human Rights and is a commentator to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the new International Protocol on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Fiona Lloyd-Davies is an award winning filmmaker and photojournalist who has worked in areas of conflict for over 20 years. She’s been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2001 making films for the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 News and France24. In recent years her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and led to the completion of Seeds of Hope – a feature length documentary that tells the story of women survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC through the extraordinary life and work of multiple rape survivor, Masika Katsuva. Seeds of Hope will be shown as part of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, details here. She has just finished a film about the Minova rape trial which will be shown on BBC Newsnight.
Serge-Eric is a co-founder and member of the Survivors Speak OUT! (SSO) network. SSO is a group of torture survivors and former clients of Freedom from Torture who draw on their lived experience of torture and seeking protection through asylum in the UK, to influence decision-makers and raise public awareness of the challenges facing survivors trying to rebuild their lives. The network has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the development of a new International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Sarah Cotton is the public affairs and communications advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mission in the UK and Ireland. She leads the work of the ICRC with Parliament and works in both the UK and Ireland to communicate ICRC policy, operations and concerns. She also works to develop and disseminate ICRC policy on sexual violence and violence against healthcare. In this capacity she travelled to Lebanon in April 2014 to join an assessment of sexual violence in Syria.
Photograph: Andrew McConnell, 2008. A woman who was raped by a government soldier recovers at the Heal Africa hospital in Goma. Sexual violence has become systematic in DRC with the brutality of attacks often leaving the victims with severe damage to reproductive organs, resulting in multiple fistulas and incontinence. An average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month.
]]>The Marikana miners’ strike in South Africa which resulted in the shooting dead of 34 workers by police is becoming a pivotal moment in South Africa’s post-apartheid history. We will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss the root causes in society and politics in South Africa that lead to the Marikana massacre.
As doubt is cast over governing authorities in the country, ANC leadership elections will take place in December which Jacob Zuma must win to guarantee a second term at presidential elections to be held in 2014. We will be examining how the Marikana massacre reflects on politics in the country and how it may effect Jacob Zuma’s chances of re – election.
Eighteen years after attaining democracy, South Africa is rife with corruption and unemployment is at crippling levels. With more and more miners joining the strike action we will be looking at the root causes of these social problems.
Chaired by Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. He was Africa editor of The Independent from 1986 to 1994 before being appointed Diplomatic Editor, and then joining The Economist as their Africa Editor. He is author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.
With:
Terry Bell, a journalist, commentator and author based in Cape Town, South Africa, he specialises in political and economic analysis and labour matters.
Audrey Brown, a producer and presenter on BBC Focus on Africa and Network Africa.
Andrew Feinstein a former ANC Member of Parliament in South Africa, a
writer, campaigner and broadcaster. He is the author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade and the political memoir After the Party: A
Personal and Political Journey Inside the ANC.
Jonny Steinberg, a South African writer and scholar. He is the author of several books including Midlands and The Number, which won South Africa’s premier nonfiction award, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize. He is currently a lecturer in African Studies at Oxford.
Natznet Tesfay, head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
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