Wild Tales - Next Film Club Selection

Sunday, October 25, we will be seeing a film from Argentina, Wild Tales. The film is divided into six segments. It's a film with dark humor - about inequality, injustice and stresses of daily life and how people react to those stresses. The characters in this film cross the line that divides civilization and barbarism.

After 1000 Times Goodnight

Female war photographer, Anja Niedringhaus

I have a feeling that the part played by Juliette Binoche in 1000 Times Goodnight was patterned after Anja (pictured above). Her history sounds quite a bit like the woman in the movie. She was brave, she took risks and she ultimately was killed doing what she loved in 2014 in Afganistan. 

After seeing 1000 Times Goodnight, I was wondering about women journalists and how many had been wounded or killed. After doing a little research I found some answers in this article by Wojciech Adamczyk.

http://ssp.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ssp-2014-3-077-096.pdf

You probably won’t want to read this lengthy article so I’ve condensed it a bit.   

“A relatively new problem is posed by the repeated instances of aggression against female investigative journalists and war correspondents. Data collected by The Committee to Protect Journalists shows that the percentage of female media employees killed while performing their professional duties could amount to seventeen percent per year.”

Women didn’t start reporting on wars until the late 19^th century. Here is a list of some of the women in history that became investigative reporters and reported from the war zones:

Lady Florence Caroline Dixie – 1881, The Boer War (She was assaulted by two men dressed as women who threatened her with a knife and tried to strangle her).

Kathleen “Kit” Blake Coleman – 1898,  Spanish American War, Cuba

Martha Gellman – 1937, Spanish Civil War

Dickey Chapelle – in 1965 reporting from Vietnam, killed by a piece of exploding shrapnel.

Jill Carrol – 2006 reporting from Iraq, was kidnapped then later released.

Marie Colvin - 1980s reported from Kosovo, Chechnya where she lost her teeth, from Sri Lanka, lost an eye. She wrote “do women report wars differently from men? The question used to make me bristle. It irritated me to think that I would be judged as a woman war correspondent rather than as a writer, taking the same risks and covering the same story as my male colleagues.” She was killed in 2012 in Homs, Syria, under a barrage of missiles and mortars.

Mika Yamamoto – was killed in Aleppo, Syria after being fired on by govt. troops.

Victoria Guerin – in the 1990s reported on the mafia in Ireland. She was shot by two attackers on a motorbike and died two days before she was to present a paper at a conference in London entitled Dying to Tell a Story: Journalism at Risk.

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya – She accused Vladimir Putin of state terrorism. She was murdered in 2006, shot to death in the building where she lived. There was no clear answer as to who carried out the attack

What I didn’t find in this research was a study of women journalists and their families which was the theme of the film we saw. Maybe the subject is too close to home and the women don’t want to talk about it. 

Upcoming Films to Local Theaters

 (my opinion only, not the opinion of the North County Film Club)

October:
Steve Job

November:

Trumbo - about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) and the Hollywood blacklisting

Spotlight - Investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church

Janis - about singer, Janis Joplin