Producer James Brabazon talks about Tim Hetherington’s life and legacy

“Why do young men go to war?” was asked again and again at the Between the Lines follow-up screening of Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington on Thursday 17 October at the Lexi Cinema. It was a question that occupied Hetherington during his lifetime and a question that director Sebastian Junger and producer James Brabazon aimed to discover about Tim in this powerful and moving film.

A very candid Q&A with the producer Brabazon followed the film – which covered the late Tim Hetherington’s career as a war photographer – whose honest revelations added an extra dimension to the screening.

“The essential issue is that young men find comfort in war. One of the unspeakable truths is that it’s fun. You can see at the start of the film, every single man is laughing,” Brabazon points out, referring to the opening scene where amongst the heat of the fires burning in the Libyan corridors there is a sense that the men who run around with their AK-47s are doing something fun. “That’s uncomfortable,” he adds.

“Somehow water always finds its course and there is something about the theatre of war that bonds young men like you don’t see anywhere else. Tim was interested to see why young men go to war. . .   And did he need to be there? No.

 

“But yet he finds himself at the front line, having a good time. It’s that vortex of violence.”

When an audience member asked Brabazon if Tim’s death compelled him to leave war reporting, we were even given a glimpse of his reasons for going. Contrasting himself to director Sebastian Junger, who decided to stop going in to report conflict, he confessed he felt he had a duty to show people what was going on.

“The way that [Junger] feels is that when you’re working in war, you think you’re putting yourself at risk, but in fact what you’re doing is endangering and putting at risk the lives of those people around you, that love and care for you.

 

“I felt that after Tim died, I really couldn’t stop. I felt somehow stopping would constitute a betrayal of our friendship,” he admitted.

 

“I’m not really very good at much,” he said after a searching pause. “There are lots of things that I can’t do. There is this one thing I can do, and when I get it right, I’m not bad at it. But I feel all we do after all is tell other people’s stories, and if you can tell people’s stories who live at the ragged, violent margins of society and you give those people a voice in a way that is translated so that other people can understand it – if you don’t do it, then who will? Because someone needs to, and I feel I can.”

His admission is something also seen in Hetherington throughout the film and you witness the intensity with which he interacts with the people he photographs and brings out the truth. “He made work to be seen,” said Brabazon, when asked about Hetherington’s legacy. “And he wanted to affect change.”

Sebastian Junger has gone on to found RISC Training – “Reporters instructed in saving colleagues” – as a response to a lack of medical knowledge among frontline reporters.

Between the Lines was a three-day festival that took place at Rich Mix from 1 to 3 March co-organised by DocHouse and the Frontline Club. In a series of follow up events we continue to explore the challenges facing documentary makers, investigative journalists and citizen reporters in the new media landscape.

Director Sebastian Junger and producer James Brabazon screened Which Way is the Front from Here – The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, on the 7th October 2013 at the Frontline Club. Tim Hetherington was not only a close friend to both Junger  and Brabazon, but also one of the Club’s founding members and a former speaker. The screening was followed by an emotional and heartfelt Q&A.

Director Sebastian Junger (left) with James Brabazon. Photo: Pete Ford

According to the HBO synopsis, the film ‘traces Hetherington’s work across the world’s battlefields, to reveal how he transcended the boundaries of image-making to become a luminary in his profession.’

Covering his life from childhood, to self-discovery in India, to finding his photo-journalistic focus in Liberia, to his last moments in Libya, the film is a moving and loving tribute to a close friend of Junger and Brabazon. Using Hetherington’s own footage, it offers an not only an insight into his progression as a journalist, but also into the reasons why did he what he did. As he put it:

“I probe this idea: the who am I, what am I doing?”

In the Q&A session that followed the screening the question of the film’s focus was asked, with Junger replying that:

“I didn’t want it to be a film about Tim’s death. I wanted it primarily to be a film about his incredible life.”

Brabzon said that he saw there being a legacy for this film:

“I have lost count of the number of young photographers who say they got into this because they saw Tim’s work. If the work in this film inspires other people to approach their work in the same way, and the same spirit as Tim did, then for us that is a small success.”

The harrowing footage of Hetherington stepping in to save the life of a suspected spy in Liberia raised the debate on whether a journalist can ever justify participating in the events they are reporting.

Hetherington’s attitude to this is clear throughout the film, with him at one point stating that: “I’m a big white guy, I’m in your country, and for me to pretend otherwise is just stupid”. Brabazon added:

“The point is not whether you are being objective, but whether your work is credible and authentic.”

While Junger has stopped filming in war zones as a direct result of Hetherington’s death, Brabazon reached a “diametrically opposed conclusion…[feeling] somehow that it would be a betrayal of what Tim and I did together, to stop.”

Junger has gone on to found Risc Training – “Reporters instructed in saving colleagues” – as a response to a lack of medical knowledge among frontline reporters.

The film will be released in cinema’s across the UK on 11 October. More information about the film or details about upcoming screenings can be found the Facebook page, and you can view the trailer here: