Documenting Photojournalists at Work

I saw this story in The New York Times calling attention to a series of four short documentaries on HBO each dealing with a different photojournalist at work in a different location.  We don't get HBO. So much for that - at least for now. But here are links to the web page for each installment: [1] Eros Hoagland  in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, [2] Michael Christopher Brown in Libya, [3]  Hoagland (again) in Rio de Janeiro, and [4] Véronique de Viguerie in South Sudan.

I respect the difficulty and risk involved in working as a photojournalist on the front lines. At the same time, it is important not to romanticize the work or those who do it. It will be interesting (eventually) to see how these episodes work.

Reading Around

Two essays by John Gray - whom I typically find both smart and provocatively misguided; one on the legacy of Keynes, the other on the vacuity of Slavoj Žižek.

At The New York Times, a pre-release backgrounder on the film "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry."

And, finally, an Editorial from Nature on the Republican attempts to eliminate political science funding at the NSF.

Ironies of Boycotts

“All wars are useless … and sometimes in films we tend to
glorify them by making all those great characters and
they show you it's all about bravery and brotherhood of
man. And I don't believe in that.”
~ Ari Folman

Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman has just released Waltz With Bashir, an animated film that takes up the matter of Israeli military culpability in the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Folman was serving in the IDF at the time and while the Israelis themselves did not take part in the massacre, they provided 'technical support' for those who did. I came across this short and not terribly well done interview with Folman from last week's New York Times Magazine which reminded me of this much more interesting interview I heard with him on npr a couple of weeks ago.

I have posted here about the ambiguities of John Berger's condemnation of the Israeli attack of Gaza and his call for boycott. Here are my questions: Does marshaling our purchasing power amplify our voices? Or does it depoliticize and moralize them? In the past week or so Naomi Klein too has published in several prominent venues - e.g., [1] [2] - a call to boycott Israel. Klein advances a fairly straightforward argument on what, I think, is an incredibly complex issue. Should we be avoiding Folman's film (for instance)? Or are our efforts more usefully directed at our own government which mindless supports Israeli actions - including abstaining last week on the U.N Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt to the ongoing invasion of Gaza? Perhaps we might make contact with the many Israelis who dissent from their government's war and whose voices are, as I've said here and here, remain largely inaudible in coverage of the invasion? The latter strategies would shift us and our actions from the category of consumer to that of citizen.

A Well Founded Fear

I just discovered the web page for this new film, which documents the fates of asylum seekers whose applications were denied by authorities in Australia. The film takes as its premise the pertinent question - What becomes of such individuals when they are deported to their home countries? (Thanks to APiA)
__________
Update: And now I am told by a former student Emily Hickey - who's gone off to make good in the world - that the folks at PBS here in the states produced a documentary of the same name a few years back. This film deals with asylum hearings in here in the U.S. ~ you can find the web page here.