War films
News gathering in Afghanistan
[video:youtube:rPaTgRPr4O4] Here’s a brief video of how a number of Afghanistan based journalists followed a breaking story from their bases in Kabul. How good stringers and local knowledge are invaluable and the value of input from military sources, Veteran reporter and filmmaker Bill Gentile profiles noted journalists from The New York Times, the BBC, Time, […]
“I would never do it again”
Filmmaker Mike Shiley says he’d never do it again. The filmmaker, who quit his job and faked an ABC press pass before infiltrating Iraq, won awards for his documentary Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories. This week he spoke at a screening and Q&A at Temple University in Philadelphia. During the event a number of attendees […]
Bonegrinders
[video:youtube:nzK4qyArD1A] Not quite sure what to make of this… Bonegrinders is a play by Melody Von Smith and it opens on 22 February at the Road Less Traveled Theater, Buffalo, New York and runs until mid-March. According to the spiel, Bonegrinders is the story of a war journalist that returns home after his best friend/fellow […]
About men who kill
“On that day they were chasing each other round with body parts and they thought it was very funny. It was their way of surviving it.†The hard truth is that the US marines are good at killing and rejoice in it. Their training instils a terrible indifference to killing. Their whole spirit reinforces each […]
Bourne to Baghdad
[video:brightcove:1026280250] 2008 looks set to host something of a war film mania. Matt Damon is the latest actor to go to war. The star of the Bourne trilogy of films, starts work in Spain today with film director Paul Greengrass and actress Amy Ryan on an as yet untitled war thriller about life in Green […]
Ross Kemp in Helmand
Ex-soap star Ross Kemp heads to Helmand in a new five-part series. The Guardian has a trailer for the series and background on Organ Grinder, “During one engagement between B Company and the Taliban, we were pinned down by enemy fire in open ground,” he says. “Bullets fizzed inches from our heads, hitting the ground […]
The blogs of war
[video:dailymotion:x29jxt] Broadcast Journalist David Heathfield has a great 8 minute long report on the impact of the internet on how war is reported and who is reporting it in the 21st century. This video offers a good deal of background leading on from our previous post on Reporting restrictions. via cyberjournalist
From Harry Potter to Mogadishu
Daniel Radcliffe, star of the Harry Potter films, is set to portray Reuters war photographer Dan Eldon who was stoned and beaten to death along with Hansi Krauss, Anthony Macharia also from Reuters and Hos Maina from the Associated Press in Mogadishu in July 1993. The film is called Journey and will be directed by […]
Taking the flak
A new BBC comedy about the life of war reporters is set to start filming in January. Martin Jarvis will portray a veteran foreign correspondent and war reporter in the six part BBC2 series, called Taking the flak, set in a fictional African country. The series is written by Frontline club member and former Frontline […]
Richard Engel wins a duPont
Richard Engel wins a duPont Award for his MSNBC War Zone Diary which aims to give an insider’s look at the life of a war correspondent in Iraq. The 2008 duPont awards, which were announced today, were originally established in 1942 and are widely considered to be the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. A […]
Inside the Surge ends
[video:youtube:OBu3AJF52Is] Snappers Tom Van Dyke and Kuni Takahashi working for the Chicago Tribune on a multi-part series from Iraq called Inside the Surge were in for a bit of surprise when they returned to Baghdad last month. They were no longer wanted. Sunday’s edition of the Tribune has more, The Tribune was told that questions […]
Blog Wars at Frontline Club
Go catch the screening of Blog Wars, a film directed by James Rogan, at the Frontline Club next week Followed by Q&A with director James Rogan and Producer Phil Craig, Mon 14th January, 7.30pm Price: £5.00 – [The film] takes a look at the rise and influence of blogs in politics as it follows several […]
At War
[video:youtube:iEVmbED4_0U] At War, a film by Scott Kesterson embedded with Army National Guard 41st Brigade, is due out in 2008 and this is the third trailer – via Afghanistanica
Conquer or die
[video:youtube:VpBeRvhRTw4&eurl] Afghan Knights – “Conquer or die” – Oh dear, oh weary, weary dear… This straight to video crapfest depicts the war in Afghanistan. For value added super realism it is filmed in Kamloops, British Columbia in a country called Canada. “Exotic” Kamloops, as Afghanistanica calls it, is approximately 6524.398 miles from Kabul according to […]
War, truth and the media today
A short film made for the Media workers against the war conference at the London School of Economics last weekend, Amid all the current agonising about media integrity – and at a time when BBC management is preparing to cut news resources even further – can there be any area more worthy of scrutiny […]
Rageh goes underworld
Former BBC foreign correspondent Rageh ‘Scud stud’ Omar starts a new series called Crime Invasion: Britain’s New Underworld with Virgin 1 TV channel, “The show’s got a lot of edge to it. We hope viewers will look at it and say ‘Oh my God, did you see that on TV?’” says Celia Taylor, director of […]
Meeting Resistance
Meeting Resistance, a film by Steve Connors and Molly Bingham, opens this week in the US. It’s a film about the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq from the ‘insurgent’s’ point of view. It portrays a side of the story that is rarely told in western media. The Washington Post says, Polished art it isn’t, but it […]
Behind the scenes – Shake hands with the devil
Following on from this post, I contacted Zimbabwe based Frontline Club member Robert Adams through the Frontline network. I wanted to ask him about the filming of the behind the scenes documentary that will accompany the film based on Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s book, Shake hands with the devil, about the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Where […]
Media made easy
In yet more film news, War made easy is showing in “select theatres” across the USofA. The Valley Advocate says War made easy makes an easy job of the media, Perhaps more searing than its indictment of the politicians who lead us to war is the film’s unflinching critique of the major media, including once-highly […]
Richard Gere goes to war
Richard Gere’s latest film stars the former gigolo as a war reporter – “the war-zone equivalent of ambulance chasers” – as Style Weekly has it, Gere and Howard are soon turned into international journalism’s Starsky and Hutch, on the trail of a Serbian war criminal called The Fox. The movie’s entertainment value doesn’t end here, […]
Out of the hotzone
Kevin Sites, him of hotzone fame and self-styled multimedia internet war reporter – we’ll all be one of him one of these days… – has announced that his latest film will be shown ‘exclusively online’, “A World of Conflict” is the documentary about the “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” project, in which veteran war […]
