Message from Andrew Berends via D-Word sent on Wednesday this week:

As you may know, I’m back in the U.S. after ten days being detained by the State Security Services in Nigeria. I’d been in Nigeria for six months filming DELTA BOYS (http://deltaboys.com/) about the oil conflict in the Niger Delta. I was picked up while filming at the Nembe Waterside in Port Harcourt. Nembe Waterside is a bustling port through which all kinds of traffic flows. It’s a point of entry to the Niger Delta creeks where villagers fish and militants are encamped. I was arrested while filming women bringing their products to market, and was falsely accused of espionage.

In the end, I was never charged with a crime. I was turned over to immigration and deported. While I regret that I didn’t manage to spend just a few more weeks there filming, I am happy to be back in New York with six months worth of footage.

Unfortunately, my Nigerian translator Samuel George and my friend and host Joe Bussio are still in Port Harcourt. They were also arrested and harassed simply because of their association with me. While I’m safe in my Brooklyn apartment, I’m doing everything I can to assure their well-being.

Joe has been cleared of all charges. Samuel is expected to report to the SSS again in a few days. During the course of this ordeal, Joe and Samuel incurred $10,000 in legal expenses. We have raised $2,000 from the support of Reporters Without Borders (http://www.rsf.org/), and $3,000 from the Committee to Protect Journalists (http://cpj.org/) and the Correspondents Fund (http://correspondentsfund.org/) combined. We’ve also raised over $1500 since Friday evening through donations from individuals, including a number of very generous D-Worders. But, we still need help to raise all the money.

To make a donation, please visit: http://helpandy.chipin.com/

As independent documentary filmmakers and journalists, we rely on people like Samuel and Joe, especially when working in unfriendly environments. When things go wrong, it’s our responsibility to help them. It is important that translators and local journalists around the world know that they can do their jobs without fear for their lives, their families, or the expenses they will incur on our behalf.

Thank you so much for your support.

Andrew Berends

Just a heads up that I am also blogging over on the Shooting People TOOLS blog about the new(ish) digital, webbified world of production and distribution. Check it out for a link to download the Shooting People/BAFTA Short Sighted book of contacts for filmmakers making shorts (including some tips for filmmaking in a Web2.0 world written by moi), plus lots of other good stuff: most recently links to the Peter Broderick indieWIRE articles on new distribution strategies and The Film Panel Notetaker’s coverage of Independent Film Week. I’m always keen to hear about good blogs/websites/conferences etc. covering the intersection of film and the web so please leave a comment if you have any suggestions/tips.

I was lucky enough to attend the Flaherty Seminar this year and was thrilled to be introduced to so much great work and so many wonderful filmmakers so it’s good to see that they are launching a monthly screening series in NYC so that more people can access the work that they curate (this year’s curator was Chi-hui Yang, director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival). I was a particular fan of Oliver Hussein’s short films so I urge all of you to go along to the first in the series at the Anthology Film Archives on Monday, October 13th to watch his films and meet the funny and talented guy behind them. The theme of the Flahery this year was The Age of Migration and German-Indian Canadian resident Hussein’s surreal, border-crossing sensibility embraced this perfectly.

Films and videos to be screened include:

·    Q (2002, 15 min.) – A fantasy of globalization set in a multicultural consumer space that fulfills its shoppers’ and viewers’ every desire and need. Consumption of art, merchandise, and entertainment is flattened and one and the same–a fluid, seamless experiential encounter.

·    Squiggle (2005, 21 min.) – A personal exploration of a young man’s desire to understand himself as an artist as he returns to India, his homeland. While a group of Indian workers build a mud-architecture performance stage by hand, he muses on the art world and ideas of ritual, tradition, and place.

·    Swivel (2003-05, 15 min.) – An experimental work where the camera continuously swivels around to create a 360° panoramic portrait of new Shanghai, passing from the suburbs into the city and back.

·    Shrivel (2005, 8 min.) – A surrealist fantasy of a hyper- globalized Indonesian suburb where American consumer culture and lifestyle have taken over. Amidst tract homes, bad hair, and incessant cell phone calls, a hysteric, soap-operatic mystery unfolds.

·    Green Dolphin (2008, 9 min.) – Finding its narrative inspiration in the 1947 Lana Turner film Green Dolphin Street, this hybrid films follows a Filipino Canadian woman as she recounts her complicated romantic affairs (which may or may not be imagined), while a spatial continuum is opened between her suburban Canadian setting and the bustling streets of Jakarta.

·    Mount Shasta (2008, 8 min.) – A 16-mm film of a puppet play created by Husain and based on incidents during a road trip through Oregon. Music by Canadian independent recording artist Mantler (a.k.a. Chris A. Cummings).

Get tickets here.

Future fall screenings will feature the hilarious Alison Kobayashi (Canada), and Lee Wang (USA) and will include post-screening discussions with the filmmakers

Instead of yelling at your TV, send your thoughts via Twitter during the debate tonight. Some tweets will be added to the Current live broadcast.

And if you’re in NYC you can participate in Hack the Debate in 3-D at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO:

HACK THE DEBATE – 3D!
video_dumbo presents Current TV’s “Hack the Debate,” an interactive broadcast of the first presidential debate. For visual enhancement, video_dumbo will transform the Broadcast into 3D based on a new polarized filter technique called Chroma-depth®. Ironically, this stereoscopic system is based on the colors RED and BLUE. Each object displayed in those colors will create the illusion of either protrude out of the screen, or retract behind the screen – creating a true stage for this political theater.

More information about “Hack the Debate” is available at
http://www.videodumbo.org/opening-night.html
http://www.current.com/debate
http://www.twitter.com/current

Rooftop Films are doing a bunch of great screenings this week. Here’s the info:

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Tuesday, Sept. 16th, 2008
Rooftop and IFP Independent Film Week present
Trinidad
FREE SHOW, FREE OPEN BAR!
40 years ago, Dr. Stanley Biber transformed a sleepy mining town in Colorado into The Sex Change Capital of The World.
Venue: Along the water at Solar One
Address: East 23rd Street and the East River in Manhattan
Directions: 6 Train to 23rd street and walk East to the river. MAP
8:00: Doors Open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by FRANCES
9:00 PM: Films
10:30 PM: FREE Open bar with complimentary beer courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner
*Admission: FREE

Wednesday, Sept. 17th, 2008
Rooftop, IFP and Indie GoGo present
Selections from the IFP Narrative and Documentary Labs
FREE SHOW, FREE OPEN BAR!
A sneak peek at trailers and scenes from independent narrative and documentary films that will be next year’s hot festival and indie releases. Presented in partnership with IFP and Indie GoGo
Venue: Along the water at Solar One
Address: East 23rd Street and the East River in Manhattan
Directions: 6 Train to 23rd street and walk East to the river. MAP
8:00: Doors Open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by Action Painters
9:00 PM: Films
10:30 PM: FREE Open bar with complimentary beer courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner
*Admission: FREE

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Thursday, Sept. 18th, 2008
Rooftop Films and True/False present
October Country
Buy Tickets
A beautifully filmed portrait of an American family struggling for stability while haunted by the ghosts of war, teen pregnancy, foster care and child abuse.
Venue: on the roof of the Open Road Rooftop
Address: 350 Grand Street @ Essex (Lower East Side)
Directions: F/J/M/Z to Essex / Delancey
8:00: Doors Open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by Phosphorescent
9:00 PM: Films
11:30 PM: Open bar at Fontana’s with complimentary beer courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner
*Tickets: $9 on Going.com

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Friday, Sept. 19th, 2008
Rooftop and IFC Films Present
The Pleasure of Being Robbed
Buy Tickets
A curious and lost Eleonore looks for something everywhere, even in the bags of strangers who find themselves sadly smiling only after she’s left their lives.
Venue: on the roof of the Open Road Rooftop
Address: 350 Grand Street @ Essex (Lower East Side)
Directions: F/J/M/Z to Essex / Delancey
8:00: Doors Open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music.
9:00 PM: Films
11:30 PM: Open bar at Fontana’s with complimentary beer courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner

*Tickets: $9 on Going.com

I’m moderating this panel on Monday at 10am at the Conference during Independent Film Week. If you want to find out where the money is, and I know that you do!, please stop by.

FILMMAKING 2.0
Show Me the New Money
Where do you begin when navigating the wide variety of traditional and new media services, sites and opportunities being promoted to assist filmmakers in raising money? How do these tools and services differ from traditional private equity and film financing models? How can the right mix of all three help you access new sources while getting you that much closer to production?

Monday, September 15th, 10am – 11am

Panelists:
Miles Beckett, CEO, EQAL
Ryan Harrington, Indiepix Studios
Slava Rubin, CEO, IndieGoGo
Joel Wright, VP Interactive Media, Paradigm

Another great polemic from Giles Bolton’s book Africa Doesn’t Matter (The UK version is called Aid and Other Dirty Business). Here he focuses on the problems with trade (where current tariffs and subsidies screw both people in Africa and taxpayers/consumers in the West):

If the major problem with aid is that the West isn’t doing enough for Africa, the problem with trade seems to be that the West is doing little at all for the world’s poorest continent. We explicitly fail to manage trade in such a way that they could benefit from it as well as us, the impact of this failure dwarfing the money you spend on aid. Just as with aid, we know what we need to do differently and yet we still don’t do it.

The weird thing is that these trade rules that injure already fragile countries don’t work for shoppers and taxpayers in the West either. The subsidies that fail Africa’s farmers cost us extra in taxes as well as at the checkout, even as most Western governments are presently defaulting on their promises to conclude a world trade round in the interests of poor countries. We are dipping into our pocket with one hand to fund trade arrangements that hinder Africa, and then clumsily dipping into the same pocket to try and aid them with the other.

Good news from Nigeria – documentary filmmaker Andrew Berends has been released and is heading back to the United States. It appears that his Nigerian translator, Samuel George, and another man arrested with them have been asked to return to State Security Services today but it is hoped that they will be cleared too.

Thanks to everyone in the Shooting People community (and beyond) who made calls on Berends’ behalf.

I’m not in Toronto but if I was I would go see Sounds Like Teen Spirit tonight. My friend Jamie Jay Johnson made it and he is just as great as his name suggests (he once made a brilliant film about going on holiday in his bedroom)! I haven’t seen Sounds Like Teen Spirit yet but it’s about Junior Eurovision, a spin-off of the Eurovision Song Contest which was a hilariously camp yearly treat for me back in the UK (ah Terry Wogan, how I miss you!). If you’re in Toronto please go see it for me.