Guest Blogger- “Feeling War” Film Series

UCM’s Digital Journalism Program invites you to join us for a three part film series called Feeling War: Experiencing International Reality leading up to the Show Me Justice Film Festival held on April 7th and 8th. Next week will be the second installment of the film series with our screening of War Photographer on Thursday, February 11, at 3:30pm. It will be held in the Union, room 229. The event is free and open to the public.

Feeling War: Experiencing International Reality highlights international war and crisis from the perspective of photojournalists and videographers.

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War Photographer, directed by Christian Frei, follows the American photographer James Nachtwey, documenting his motivations, fears, and daily routine as a war photographer. The film shows him working in many different areas that are under heavy conflict such as The Balkans, Indonesia, and Palestine during two years of war. Christian Frei used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey’s camera, giving the audience a first person point of view of the action.

 

Nachtwey is a war photographer who has received many awards including, but not limited to, the World Press Photo Award twice and the Robert Capa Gold Medal five times. Nachtwey works on photographic essays across the globe, documenting wars and social issues. He has also been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. In 2003, he was injured in a grenade attack while working in Baghdad; his life has been at risk several times while trying to show the reality of war. Nachtwey has a very quiet and reserved demeanor that some people find strange. However, he explains in the film that working in a profession in which he experiences horrors, he has to spend a lot of time doing introspection and finding ways to deal with his own emotions in order to do be able to do his job.

“Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee.
I did not want to see this.
Would I cut and run, or would I deal with
the responsibility of being there with a camera” -James Nachtwey

Directly following the screening will be an audience discussion about the film.

For more information about James Nachtwey, the places he has been, photographs of his work, and the movie War Photographer, feel free to visit the website http://www.war-photographer.com/