Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington

Tim Hetherington was a tall, lanky man with a craggy handsome face, a winning smile and an uncanny capacity for connecting with people.  A photojournalist who covered conflict zones, his main goal was to connect with people he was photographing.  He felt you had to be more than a photographer, you had to be a participant.

His initial foray was covering the revolution in Liberia, capturing in action the young men whose sole uniform consisted of rust-coloured T-shirts with their cause identified on the front.  And he was hooked - not so much on the process of shooting pictures of the weapons and the gore - but on trying to understand the young men involved.

Although his sympathies tended to lie with underdog rebels, he spent a year with an American platoon deployed in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.  This period solidified his conviction that war created a common bond among men unmatched in the rest of their lives.  His friend and colleague Jim Brabazon remarked in the Q&A following the film that as long as there are young men yearning for such a bond, there will always be the raw material for creating wars.

Hetherington and his colleague Sebastian Junger's film Restrepo was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2010.  Hetherington traded in his combat gear for a tux and walked through a surreal Hollywood with his fantastically beautiful girlfriend.

Despite making a decision to give up the risky life of the conflict journalist, he was irresistibly drawn to Libya to cover the revolution there.  In footage taken in a jeep with other journalist comrades, Tim is heard to ask "Which way is the front line from here?", and this becomes the title of the elegy Junger films in honour of his friend. but sadly lost his life after a piece of shrapnel pierced his femoral artery.  Tim's life could have been saved if one of the journalists of rebels with him had been trained how to deal with such trauma, and in his memory, Junger has started a not-for-profit called RISC - Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues.

In the Q&A, there was discussion about the increase of young untrained freelancers going to conflict zones, and a reference to the fact that major media companies are not buying photos from freelancers.  Brabazon bristled at the idea that this might be because of ethical values of the media.  He pointed out that they'd always buy a great photo after the fact, but didn't want to 'commission' it beforehand, in order to avoid any issues of liability, or the cost of insuring the photojournalist.

This was a very good film indeed and I highly recommend it.  And Restrepo is now very high on my list of 'must see' films too.

The Ambassador

I wish that Mads Brugger, the filmaker, had attended this showing of his film The Ambassador, as is customary at Hot Docs.  I had so many questions in my mind at the end of the film.

As Mr. Cortzen, Brugger buys the post as Liberian ambassador to the Central African Republic.  The film introduces us to two brokers, one British and one Dutch, who specialize in selling these posts.  Venal politicians sell these regularly, we're told, to fill the coffers of the government, or the pockets of the politicians.  As these brokers put it, such a post at $150,000 is a bargain as the holder then has untrammeled passage out of the country to bring diamonds out of the country, making such a designation worth millions.  

The CAR is widely considered to be a failed state, but this film argues that you can't be a failed state without having once been a viable state.  The CAR has been oppressed by vile and lunatic dictators and is riddled with corruption.  And Liberia is no paradise of good governance either.  So the movie shines a harsh light on two of Africa's worst basket cases.  And it's not a pretty picture that emerges.

Cortzen arrives as a business diplomat and sets about making contacts, both for his avowed purpose of building a match factory, and his lightly veiled purpose of smuggling out blood diamonds.  He establishes a partnership, and hands over lots of cash, but wonders if he'll ever see it again.  Another diplomat warns him of the delicacy and risk involved in setting out to do what he doing.  The head of security he has been meeting is assassinated. His promised papers certifying he is indeed the Liberian ambassador to the CAR have mysteriously not arrived and the situation increases in tension.    Meanwhile, the whole tawdry business is being filmed, sometimes openly and sometimes with hidden cameras. 

The movie focused on two of the continents most pitiable countries.  There are many good news stories starting to emerge from Africa, and many are predicting that the continent may pull itself out of its despair.  This movie perpetuates an image of Africa as a continent rife with corruption and mistrust, which is sad.  It's not that it's untrue, it's just that we westerners tend to generalize from the worst situations to all of Africa.

The movie left me puzzled at the end.  The Ambassador was clearly a satire.  But Cortzen seems to have nevertheless pulled off the deception.  Did he ever reveal what he'd done to the Africans?  Did he ever smuggle those diamonds?  How did he finance the purchase of the ambassadorship and the considerable bribes in Africa?