“You see shots and never know who’s taking them,” Fran Lando said of photographs and film footage in war-torn areas.
Lando is visiting Columbia from Pittsburgh, Pa. with Abby Grinberg for the True/False Film Festival. Today she attended the panel discussion “The Frontline Club: Lessons on Shooting and Being Shot At.”
The Frontline Club is a London-based media club that works to “promote independent journalism and provide training in the safety and health of journalists and other media workers in areas of conflict,” according to the Frontline Club website.
“It was very sobering and very interesting,” Grinberg said. “The people on the panel are very different from the people we ever encounter.”
The panel consisted of Frontline members Richard Perry, Robert King and Ian Olds. The three have covered conflicts in numerous areas including Chechnya, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
“You’ve got to make a statistical analysis,” filmmaker Richard Perry said of the physical threats in war-torn zones. “You’ve got to equate, ‘What am I going to get out of this?’”
These director/producer/cameramen focus on getting “the shot” while calculating the risks they take.
“You’ve also got to figure in the peer pressure,” Perry said. The competition amongst journalists is such that there’s a notion that when a journalist gets shot, he or she must have done something silly.
Though the panel laughed at what they deem to be desensitized comments, the destruction they’ve seen has left its mark. Photojournalist Richard King says certain things can trigger vivid memories.
“Even now there can be a dead animal with decaying odor,” King said. Though it may be only an armadillo or a dog he said, “Decaying flesh smells like decaying flesh.”
Having witnessed children begging for help amidst destruction and the wounded waiting for death as shells continue to drop, the journalists question merit of their work as witnesses to devastation.
“Instinctively I think [our work] has value,” filmmaker Ian Olds said. Still, he worries. “I have profound uncertainty.”
King argues that their work as journalists may contribute by blocking support and resources to groups that violently oppress others.
“It doesn’t end human suffering,” he said. “It just stops certain situations.”
By Sara Jane Maaranen
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