SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
citizenfour
Watch: The New Trailer for Oliver Stone's Biopic of Edward Snowden
'Run, hide, live to tell the truth'
Apr 28, 2016
The first trailer for Snowden, Oliver Stone's biopic of whistleblower Edward Snowden was released on Wednesday, offering a glimpse of the forthcoming film that depicts Snowden's entry into the National Security Agency (NSA), his 2013 release of mass surveillance documents, and his subsequent escape to Hong Kong.
Watch:
The film covers similar ground as Citizenfour, the 2014 documentary chronicling the fallout of Snowden's revelations, which was directed by Laura Poitras, one of the journalists who helped report on the documents, along with Glenn Greenwald. Citizenfour received the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2015.
The film depicts all three. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden, Melissa Leo as Poitras, and Zachary Quinto as Greenwald. The film also stars Tom Wilkinson as Ewen MacAskill, the Guardian journalist who traveled to Hong Kong to meet with Snowden and report on the leaks.
In the trailer, Snowden is shown being discharged from the army due to an injury and subsequently joining the NSA to "help my country make a difference in the world."
He is also shown taking an SD card loaded with government secrets out of the NSA building by hiding it under the tile of a Rubik's cube, perhaps a reference to a message he sent to Poitras ahead of their real-life rendezvous in Hong Kong: "We will meet in the hallway outside of the restaurant in the Mira Hotel. I will be working on a Rubik's cube so that you can identify me."
(He simply put the files on a USB thumb drive and walked out of the building.)
Snowden watched the trailer, too.
\u201cFor two minutes and thirty nine seconds, everybody at NSA just stopped working. https://t.co/OLjCV6wkGp\u201d— Edward Snowden (@Edward Snowden) 1461770055
"Run, hide, live to tell the truth," the trailer states.
Snowden is set for release on September 16.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Dissident Artists Collaborate in Laura Poitras Documentary
10-minute video by award-winning filmmaker shows WikiLeaks activist Jacob Appelbaum and artist Ai Weiwei building installation in Beijing
Jun 09, 2015
Acclaimed journalist and filmmaker Laura Poitras on Tuesday released her first film since last year's Academy Award-winning Citizenfour--a 10-minute video for the New York Times which chronicles artist Ai Weiwei and WikiLeaks activist Jacob Appelbaum collaborating on a project.
Ai and Appelbaum are both known for their work against unchecked government power and state surveillance in China and the U.S., their respective home countries. They began building their installation together in Beijing in April. Poitras--who, like Appelbaum, contributed to the publication of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's disclosure of widespread government surveillance in 2013--asked to film them.
Poitras writes for the Times:
The art project the pair made, "Panda to Panda," was not about surveillance. It was about secrets. They stuffed cuddly toy panda bears with public, shredded N.S.A. documents that were originally given to me and Glenn Greenwald two years ago in Hong Kong by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Inside each panda, Ai and Appelbaum placed a micro SD memory card containing a digital backup of the previously published documents.
The project's title, "Panda to Panda," is the synthesis of two terms created by dissident cultures. The slang term for the secret police in China is "panda," which is a censorship-evading Mandarin homonym: "national security" sounds like "national treasure," a.k.a. the panda. "Panda to Panda " also refers to peer-to-peer communication (P2P), a method of decentralized networking and a philosophy of egalitarian human interaction on the Internet.
Like the red lanterns Ai hung under every surveillance camera the government installed outside his studio, "Panda to Panda " playfully acknowledges and rejects state power.
Watch the video below:
Keep ReadingShow Less
Laura Poitras' Documentary 'CitizenFour' Nominated for Oscar
Film detailing story leaks and motivations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen as frontrunner for prestigious award
Jan 15, 2015
The documentary film directed by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour, which chronicles the impacts of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's decision to entrust journalists with some of the U.S. spy agency's most deeply-held secrets has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Not her first nomination, Poitras was previously recognized for her 2006 film, My Country, My Country, about life in Iraq under U.S. occupation.
Announced Thursday morning from Hollywood, the Oscar nomination--which also named Poitras' co-producers Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky--was greeted enthusiastically by fellow journalists and filmmakers as well as supporters from across the world.
"Congrats to my brilliant colleague Laura Poitras!!!! CITIZENFOUR nominated for Best Documentary Oscar!" exclaimed Glenn Greenwald, who is both featured in the film and counts as the journalist who has worked most closely with Poitras on the Snowden story since it exploded in the summer of 2013.
And fellow progressive filmmakers behind last's year nominated film, Dirty Wars, tweeted:
Along with CitizenFour, the other nominees for Best Documentary Feature include: 'Finding Vivian Maier' by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel; 'Last Days in Vietnam' by Rory Kennedy and Keven McAlester; 'The Salt of the Earth' by Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribiero Salgado, and David Rosier; and 'Virunga' by Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara.
However, as the Guardian film critic Ben Beaumont-Thomas speculates, "With its incredible access and agenda-setting subject, Citizenfour could well consider itself the favourite in the category."
In this staged Q&A at the New York Film Festival in October, Poitras discussed the film in detail:
NYFF52: "CITIZENFOUR" Q&A | Laura Poitras (Full)Laura Poitras talks about "CITIZENFOUR," her documentary about Edward Snowden, the NSA, and surveillance, during a Q&A at ...
Watch the 'Citizenfour' trailer:
Citizenfour Official Trailer 1 (2014) - Edward Snowden Documentary HDSubscribe to TRAILERS: https://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: https://bit.ly/H2vZUn Subscribe to INDIE & FILM ...
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular