Edward Snowden
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“A System of Turnkey Tyranny…”: Edward Snowden on AI in the Era of Pandemic Panic at CPH:DOX
In the wake of the novel coronavirus, CPH:DOX has moved much of their program online, with a series of “debates” streaming live and available for viewing. Today’s is especially timely: Edward Snowden answering the question, “What is the effect of AI on the present and future of surveillance?” Kicking off the conversation is a discussion of privacy and surveillance issues related to government and private industry actions in the wake of the pandemic. It’s loosely tied to the festival’s screening of iHuman, Tonje Hessen Schei’s doc on the future of AI. The talk is moderated by DR’s science and technology […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 23, 2020 -
In the Eye of the Storm: Laura Poitras on CITIZENFOUR
Red tail lights glow in an inky black tunnel. In voiceover, a woman’s voice softly reads. “Laura,” the email begins. The sender writes of encryption, passwords, the government documents he intends to send and the reason he addressed this email to her. “You’ve been selected,” Laura speaks, as the sender goes on to explain that every phone call she makes, trip she embarks on, person she befriends will be observed, recorded, surveilled. “This is a story few but you can tell.” With this cool, measured voiceover, drawing us into her life at the moment it changed forever, documentary filmmaker Laura […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014 -
Positive Trauma: Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy on CITIZENFOUR
Paris-born editor Mathilde Bonnefoy has criss-crossed documentary and fiction, working with directors such as Wim Wenders (The Soul of a Man) and, most prominently, Tom Tykwer. Her first feature editing credit is the director’s time-bending international hit Run Lola Run, and she has continued to work with Tykwer on Heaven, Three and The International, among others. Long based in Berlin, Bonnefoy, as she relates below, was sought after by Poitras because of her work on Tykwer’s films and the “thriller” nature of CITIZENFOUR’s source material. Below, in the final days of post-production, I speak to Bonnefoy about encrypted workflows, working […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014 -
Laura Poitras’s CITIZENFOUR Will World Premiere at the New York Film Festival
Laura Poitras’s long-anticipated third film in her trilogy dealing with post-9/11 foreign policies and the security state, CITIZENFOUR, will world premiere in the Main Selection of the 2014 New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced. Poitras had been working on the film following her Oscar-nominated The Oath when she was contacted by a mysterious whistleblower, who later revealed himself to be Edward Snowden. That encounter changed the course of her film, to say nothing of our national dialogue concerning the limits of our freedom in the internet age. From the Film Society of Lincoln Center: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2014 -
The Death of Mr. Tarelkin: Edward Snowden on the Multi-Media Russian Stage
Volunteers welcome you into the theater, guiding you towards your allotted place. The lights are going off slowly. As you sit down on your chair, you look ahead at the stage. It’s unlike any other stage. I was at the Culture Center ZIL in Moscow, attending a performance of The Death of Mr. Tarelkin, staged by the Manege/MediaArtLab Open School, Ballet Moscow Theatre and the International Centre for Dance and Performance TsEKh. This was a sidebar event at the 36th Moscow International Film Festival (June 19 – 28), described on the website as “a performance where Russian classics, contemporary dance, […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jul 30, 2014 -
“A Different Approach to Dissent”: 1971 Director Johanna Hamilton and Whistle Blowers on Government Abuses
On March 8th, 1971, an anonymous group of individuals calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole thousands of secret government documents. Within those documents was considerable proof of what many in the activist community had long suspected but been unable to prove: that the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was spying on law-abiding citizens and participating in a broad range of illegal activities designed to neutralize any and all critics of American policy. The group made photocopies of the most damning documents and sent them to various […]
by David Felix Sutcliffe on Apr 24, 2014 -
Laura Poitras on Turning on the Camera
One extraordinary passage among many in Peter Maas’s New York Times Sunday Magazine cover article on Laura Poitras and her role in the Edward Snowden story details the symbolic meanings of the documentarian’s most basic act: turning on the camera. By this point in the story, Poitras has been contacted by Snowden, has had a series of encrypted exchanges with him, but doesn’t know who he is. She, along with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill of The Guardian, travel to Hong Kong to meet the source for what will be the most explosive national security tale of modern times. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 17, 2013
