Edinburgh Film Reportage Welcomes World Press Congress

 

Good Night and Good LuckEdinburgh's Filmhouse Cinema is showing a short season of films to coincide with the International Press Institute's World Congress taking place in Scotland's capital city. The cinema will screen four films showing the inside world of journalism and its ability to stand up to corrupt politicians and expose the truth. The IPI's World Congress is being held between May 27 and May 30.

 

War PhotographerLaunching the Filmhouse programme Edinburgh City Council leader Donald Anderson said: "I am delighted to welcome the International Press Institute's World Congress to the city of Edinburgh. The Scottish capital has a long and proud history as a place where free thinkers would come to debate the great issues of their time. That tradition continues today.”

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck will screen Friday 26th to Monday 29th. It's a film that tells of the McCarthy era in America from the viewpoint of crusading journalists.

Les Diseurs de VeriteSunday offers Christian Frei's documentary War Photographer, a film about James Nachtwey, a committed, shy man, who is considered one of the bravest and most important war photographers of our time – but hardly fits the cliché of the hard-boiled war veteran. No rumbling swaggerer, he is an unobtrusive man with grey hair and the deliberation of a lecturer in philosophy.

On Monday 29th, Les Diseurs de Vérité, also known as Journalists, a film about an Algerian journalist and columnist torn between his concerns for his own and his family's safety, and his need to be a 'speaker of the truth'. Completing the Monday programme is Rupert Wyatt's British short Get the Picture. A group of prisoners are about to be executed in front of a photographer and journalist. Are they there purely to report or is their presence provoking the event?

Alberto Vendemmiati & Fabrizio Lazzaretti's Jung: In the Land of the Mujaheddin is the Tuesday 30th May offering. It's a superb and unsettling documentary following in the footsteps of journalist and one-time special envoy Ettore Mo in the war-torn Mujaheddin districts of northern Afghanistan, a region that has been at war continuously for 25 years, first against the Russians, then against the Taliban. Fascinating and powerful stuff Jungbrought out to a world audience by courtesy of the filmmaker's art.

As Edinburgh's council leader Donald Anderson put it quite succinctly about the congress of ideas and topics of the day: “Art and culture have always played a part in those discussions and I am pleased to launch this short programme of films that examine one of the issues of our times, the role of a free media in rich and poor countries and in democracies and dictatorships. Intriguing and challenging, I hope you enjoy these films and find in them ideas worthy of discussion.”