Alternative View Season – The Vice Guide to Liberia
Throughout May the Frontline Club is screening a series of films that look at issues in unconventional ways. Often their methods have gained huge success outside of the mainstream methods of reporting and presenting topics. Due to this the films have received controversy and we want to explore why this is and what you think. The films shown as part of this series are The Vice Guide to Liberia, Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup and The Miscreants of Taliwood.
We show the first in the series, The Vice Guide to Liberia, on May 13 at 7pm. Here’s how VBS.tv, part of the Vice media network, describe the film:
In The Vice Guide To Liberia, VBS travels to the capital city Monrovia to meet three men who participated in the 14 years of civil war that ravaged the West African country.
Former warlords General Rambo, General Bin Laden and General Butt Naked give us guided tours of some of the most dangerous, impoverished areas including jails, brothels, and heroin dens.
Despite the UN’s intervention in the country, the majority of Liberia’s young people live in desperate poverty. Surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution, the ex child soldiers who were forced into war struggle to fend for themselves by any means necessary. As the former President Charles Taylor fights accusations of mass war crimes in The Hague, the people strive for positive change against all odds. America’s one and only foray into African colonialism is keeping a very uneasy peace indeed.
Andy Capper has been the Editor of Vice Magazine for the last eight years after co-founding the title in Europe with Andrew Creighton. He’s also a writer for publications like The Guardian, The Observer and NME. He runs the editorial side of VBS in the UK and has recently made films about the rise of the far-right in Britain, Muslim extremists, Liberian warlords, hunting and, along with his co-director on Swansea Love Story Leo Leigh, the decline of British civilisation in VBS’ popular Rule Britannia documentary series. In the last two years he has edited two books. One is a compendium of punk / skinhead photography by Gavin Watson called Skins & Punks. The other, is an oral history of the story behind VBS’ award-winning documentary Heavy Metal In Baghdad.
