Truth and Power 1: Control Room and Other Stories

Overnight, the 11th annual Beijing Independent Film Festival in the capital city of China was banned. It ended before it ever began. We follow the rapid sequence of events from the cutting off of the building’s water and electricity supply to the seizure of all festival property. What exactly threatens the organisers of cultural events in a country where artistic liberty is considered a crime? Will they succumb or will the screenings still take place? A look behind the scenes of the festival organisation and the steps taken after it was cancelled is tensely recorded using authentic footage, mainly from the mobile phones of the organisers, film makers, activists and passers-by.

Can a documentary camera be a tool for democracy in China? Jia Zhitan certainly thinks so, and wields his camera like an anti-bureaucratic weapon. Jia, a member of Caochangdi’s influential Villagers Documentary Project (organizer Wu Wenguang has been training local villagers to use digital video cameras to record their participation in ultra-local politics), wants to run to be a delegate to the National People’s Congress. He wins the first round, but is deemed unqualified by officials for reasons they keep to themselves. As the irrepressibly scrappy and stubborn Jia seeks explanations and redress from ever higher levels of authority, he records their interactions scenes that would play as entertaining satiric comedy if they weren’t so frustratingly real.

Part of the cancelled 11th Annual Beijing Independent Film Festival.

“Vagina….I’ve said it!” Leading Chinese queer filmmaker Fan Popo chronicles the past 10 years of performances of Eve Ensler’s famous feminist episodic play throughout China following its debut by The Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in December 2003. At times banned and partly censored, performances have taken over university campuses, theatres, cafes, villages, streets and public transport. Popo’s film portrays its growing popularity as a process of self-awakening, of learning and of localisation, the ten-year look-back showing the many ways in which it has played a vital role in giving people courage to find their voice.

Part of the cancelled 11th Annual Beijing Independent Film Festival.

We will be joined after the screening for a Q&A with filmmaker Fan Popo.

Donald Trump’s denunciation of “fake news” has been so effective a rallying cry it would be easy to conclude – and no doubt he’d do little to dissuade you – that his administration had pioneered the concept. Depending on who you ask, the denunciation of “fake news” is either an antidote to propaganda or simply next-level manipulation. Brian Springer’s 1995 documentary, which uses pirated satellite feeds to reveal US media personalities’ contempt for their viewers, puts the concept of fake news and a gaslighting presidency in context. TV outtakes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly-spun fabric of television – a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside those who manufacture the news.

‘I’m not saying it’s the truth,’ director Jehane Noujaim once said of her award-winning film, ‘it’s our truth.’ Control Room provides insight into the Arabic network Al Jazeera’s presentation of the second Iraq war to their worldwide audience. Noujaim’s film follows the journey of three characters from Al Jazeera and US Central Command through the beginning of the Iraq war, in order to tell the larger story of how truth is gathered, presented, and ultimately created by those who deliver it. Control Room calls into question many of the prevailing images and positions offered up by the US news media, while exposing the institutional bias on both sides.

Panellists will discuss role of government in imposing narratives on filmmakers and the populace, dealing with the undermining of the concept of objective truth and “expert” testimony. With the rise of subjective opinion above scientific fact and the struggle to provide counter-testimony to mainstream narratives, how do we combat the weapon of media manipulation and control?