Digging into hidden issues and overlooking injustices – Global Investigative Journalism Network

Double Exposure Festival 2024: digging into hidden themes and overlooking injustice

To Rowan Philip for the Global Network of Investigative Journalism • November 7, 2024

Submitted by GIJN member 100 reportersThe four-day Double Exposure Film Festival and Symposium 2024 (November 7-10) will present 23 feature-length and short documentaries that shed new light on hot topics in North America and beyond.

While DX festivals over the previous two years have focused on topics such as decline of democracy And growing authoritarianismThis year’s program features a very diverse set of hidden themes, such as prisoner abuse, under-recognized women scientists and recently learned lessons from historic struggles for social justice.

GIJN highlights five notable documentaries that incorporate innovative investigative approaches in the list below.

Finding Amani

First, a simple project to collect interview excerpts from children living in unstable conditions around the world leads to a mysterious murder in East Africa. Then, the investigation into the murder mystery by filmmakers and a 13-year-old aspiring journalist leads to the discovery of the main culprit: climate change.

This extremely compelling documentary brings together teenager Simon Ali’s personal efforts to investigate the death of his father, who was killed while working as a naturalist guide at a wildlife sanctuary in Laikipia, Kenya. The project also offers a stunning example of how investigative documentaries can evolve organically when filmmakers allow themselves to follow unexpected turns and emerging talent.

For example, while most of the children in the wider project pointed the provided cameras at themselves, original director Nicole Gormley noticed that Ali instinctively pointed the camera outwards – to capture and ask questions. A natural journalist who aspires to make a career in reporting, Ali is featured in the film. And Kenyan translator Debra Aroko played such an important role in this story that she became a co-director.

The film ultimately reveals the underlying motive for Ali’s father’s murder: the deadly tension between conservationists and pastoralists feeling the economic and existential impacts of climate change.

In a statement, both directors said: “Simon’s journey has forced him to confront the reality of decisions made by people far removed from his world. That’s why we think this is a film about climate change. At first glance, this may not seem like it, because rather than describing the problem in broad strokes, the film focuses on a microcosm of Simon’s life and his home in Laikipia, highlighting the often ignored intersectional nature of the impacts of climate change.”

Home-grown

Is there anything more to the growing and increasingly violent ultra-nationalist movement in the United States than mindless hatred and white supremacy?

Featuring behind-the-scenes video and embedded reporter’s footage, the film features three men – an Air Force veteran; Latino conspiracy theorist; and a soon-to-be electrician father married to an Asian woman — have leapfrogged normal political activism and taken the fight for Donald Trump to the streets.

It begins with a video of a member of the Proud Boys militia preparing for a confrontation the day before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol; a man who was later sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the violence that day. However, the film also shows some unexpected paths to radicalization. For example, one man began his journey into the far-right militia after being inspired by the progressive documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, and in one scene he finds common ground with a Black Lives Matter leader. This is one of the many contradictions revealed in the chaotic worldview of the characters, where shocking bigotry and a penchant for violence can somehow exist side by side with compassion for minorities and support for gay rights.

Director Michael Premo also highlights the documentary’s second surprising finding: the growing number of blacks and Latinos among the ultranationalists, boldly and successfully aligning themselves with these groups as color director.

“We set out to do an honest, unbiased study of people heeding the call of us-versus-them politics,” Premo says. “What we have achieved is a visceral cinematic contribution to the debate about the future of democracy.”

As noted by The Washington Post in his reviewThe film succeeds in part because it adopts an important tenet of far-right documentaries: it eliminates the “spreading of disinformation” and rather focuses on the actions, choices and feelings of individual subjects.

Projecting protest

With so much focus on disinformation, incitement and invasion of privacy directed at social media, journalists have largely ignored another fast-growing form of provocative communication around the world: the covert projection of giant messages onto private and public walls.

This short documentary explores the trend of guerrilla light projections, where protesters use the latest improvements in projection technology to temporarily plaster public spaces with building-sized messages and statements. Some said things like “Dissent is patriotic,” while others projected giant swastikas and anti-Semitic messages—where one counter-protester with a projector could intuitively “drown out” hundreds of pro-democracy protesters with light. Director Tom Clement shows how this phenomenon is “blurring the line between freedom of expression and property rights” and is increasingly becoming the source of legal problems, conflicts and seemingly oppressive new laws. The film sheds light on the light itself and includes footage of disputes between protesters, property owners and law enforcement in a largely unregulated area where the law is not always clear.

Men of war

This documentary offers inside information about the little-known and disastrous coup attempt in Venezuela in May 2020 – an operation called Operation Gideonbut more derisively known as “Piglet Bay”. He also offers useful insight into the arrogance and misconceptions of private armies, as well as the consequences of a foreign policy vacuum.

The story centers on a decorated US Army Special Forces veteran, now living in exile in Mexico, who coordinated an amphibious invasion that included mercenaries as well as some Venezuelan exiles and opposition groups. The failed attack resulted in the deaths of eight people and dozens of arrests.

Directors Jen Gatien and Billy Corben gather additional evidence and testimony from an army general, a journalist, an exiled dissident and a family member of one of the captured American mercenaries. The film’s value stems in part from the fact that this fiasco, which occurred in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis and amid multiple scandals within the Trump administration, received surprisingly little coverage in other media. Another useful finding is that there are well-trained and well-armed conspiracy theorists who believe they can use violence to achieve “regime change” to achieve lofty ideological goals as private citizens – and that there are deluded government agents who are still finding them. useful.

Strike

This documentary reinforces the light that prisoners themselves have shed on a shocking problem in the American correctional system: indefinite solitary confinement.

It tells the story of an extraordinary mass operation in which 30,000 inmates in half of California’s state prisons went on a hunger strike to protest the practice of indefinite seclusion made possible by the physical design of prisons. Drawing on testimony from hunger strikers, prison planners, and corrections officials, Mexican-American filmmaker JoBill Muñoz explores the creeping politics and criminal justice history that led to this inhumane practice, and shows how dissent can work even under tightly controlled conditions. The feature-length documentary focuses on the practice and cannonball attack at the notorious “supermax” Pelican Bay prison in northern California and forces viewers to understand the cruelty of one of the main experiences for prisoners: endless silence.

“We met with the families of the hunger strikers, mostly women from Los Angeles, who considered themselves the voices of their brothers, fathers, uncles and sons and used all their savings to make the 12-hour trip to Pelican Bay. Muñoz said in a joint statement with co-director Lucas Gilkey. “Finally we have met… men who spent decades of their lives in a concrete tomb.”

They added: “‘Strike’ is an exploration of human resilience in the face of oppressive systems, inviting audiences to reflect, engage and participate in a collective journey towards justice.”

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Rowan Philp – Senior Correspondent at GIJN. He was previously the chief reporter for a South African publication. Sunday Times. As a foreign correspondent, he has covered news, politics, corruption and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world.

This article first appeared on Global Network of Investigative Journalism and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.