[Nettime-nl] Director of 'Manufacturing Consent' at De Cavia

[<cinema301@squat.net>]

04 November 2003
Visiting filmmaker
PETER WINTONICK:
SEEING IS BELIEVING
Katerina Cizek and Peter Wintonick, Canada 2002, 52 min.
CINEMA VERITE [excerpts]
Peter Wintonick, Canada 1999.
MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA [excerpts]
Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, Canada 1992.
De Cavia, Amsterdam, 20:30, 4 euro

This coming Tuesday we have the great pleasure of welcoming the renown
Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick, who is perhaps best known for the
legendary documentary on Noam Chomsky “Manufacturing Consent” which he
co-directed with Mark Achbar. He will present his film “Seeing is
Believing” which takes a look at the digital camcorder revolution. He will
also show excerpts from “Manufacturing Consent” and “Cinema Verite” and
discuss them with the audience.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

A revolution has swept the world, one without a political agenda or moral
standpoint. Yet this revolution puts might into the hands of the powerless
and the oppressed. It is the video revolution, with the invention and
proliferation of ever-smaller and affordable electronic motion picture
cameras ('handicams'). What happens when beholders of injustice wield
handicams to film more serious occasions than mere weddings and family
vacations? The Rodney King incident in Los Angeles marked a breakthrough
in video's ascension from consumer toy to a shattering incitement for
social change. Now, from South Africa to the Congo to Mexico to the Czech
Republic to the Philippines, grassroots activists record indisputable
atrocities, neglect, corporate greed, racism and tribal genocide and get
results, by disseminating searing images through mass media and public
screenings. Sometimes, as in Mindano, the presence of a videographer in
itself is enough to deter violence (for the moment). There is even a new
international human-rights agency called Witness, that distributes
handicams to those who need a voice (and vision) on the international
stage. SEEING IS BELIEVING contains graphic footage.


MANUFACTURING CONSENT

A modern classic and a penetrating documentary about the career and views
of linguist, media critic and political activist Noam Chomsky. While the
man is the subject of the movie, the filmmakers wisely and carefully
choose not to make Chomsky more important than his insights into the way
print and electronic journalism tacitly and often willingly further the
agendas of the powerful. We learn a lot about Chomsky's formative
experiences as a child, student, academic, activist, and politician (he
has campaigned for office), but we learn just as much about the media
institutions that deny him access today, from ABC to PBS, and therefore
also about the inner workings of mainstream media in American democracy.
The centerpiece of the film, arguably, is a long examination into the
history of the New York Times' coverage of Indonesia's atrocity-ridden
occupation of East Timor, reportage that (as Chomsky shows us) was
absolutely in lock step with the government's unwillingness to criticize
an ally.




THE TUESDAY SERIES is a part of the academie cinema program at the OT301
[former film academy], which arranges weekly screenings of non-fiction
films. The program consists mostly of documentaries of all kinds, although
some of the films shown defy such categorization. Generally the emphasis
is on the artistic, the cinematic and the political.

As the OT301 is in the midst of renovations and therefore closed for the
public, we have kindly been offered a refuge at the Cavia cinema, where
the screenings will be held for the time being


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