I am happy to announce the latest publication from Global Wire Associates – Recharge E-waste: Ideas For Reducing Electronic Waste And Greening The Tech World. This is a multimedia anthology of the best work from the firm’s “Recharge E-waste” campaign, illustrating the global environmental problem of electronic waste and possible solutions presented by both grassroots activists and international policymakers.
Recharge E-waste also shows the results of three, year-long surveys conducted with 600 past and present Global Wire Associates clients worldwide on their views on e-waste. One survey shows that while most clients have at least some knowledge about electronic waste and the environmental and health problems they cause, nearly a quarter of participants still throw away their old electronics into the trash. Most North American and European participants had the least knowledge about electronic waste and were shocked to learn that this waste stream mostly makes its way to developing countries. This is crucial to know as most e-waste originates in developed countries.
Our study also shows that most participants globally have a distrust in tech companies having a say in electronic waste recycling, and that either the United Nations or individuals governments should be responsible for setting e-waste policy. As on participant in New Zealand said: “If Apple is not transparent about working conditions in the foreign factories making their products, how can we trust them to be responsible for properly discarding old products?”
Recharge E-Waste: Ideas For Reducing Electronic Waste And Greening The Tech World
Buy the e-book here. Price: US$3.99
(The ebook is in English, but we hope to have it translated into other languages in the next few weeks.)
Upcoming Webinar
Recharge E-Waste Online Book Release Party – Saturday, 12 January 2013 Noon EST (Full)
Join us for our official book release party of our latest publication, Recharge E-Waste: Ideas For Reducing Electronic Waste And Greening The Tech World. Global Wire Associates managing director Talia Whyte and research director Maria Ferrera will discuss their findings on electronic waste systems and innovations on dealing with the problem. Price: Free, but first come, first serve as space is limited. As of 7 Jan, this event has met capacity. Email info[at]globalwireonline[dot]org to register to get on the waiting list.
President Obama will go down in history for many reasons. He is not only the first African-American president, but he is also the first commander –in-chief to get into the Oval Office with the help of Internet campaigning. New York filmmaker Arun Chaudhary got involved in the Obama for America campaign in early 2007 and instantly made a mark for himself by making ground-breaking videos for the campaign’s YouTube channel. Following Obama’s 2008 victory, Chaudhary also went down in history as the first official White House videographer.
Chaudhary chronicles his many journeys on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office in his new book First Cameraman: Documenting the Obama Presidency in Real Time. I receive many copies of books to review on a regular basis, especially Obama-related books in the last year. I was convinced to read this book because of Chaudhary’s unique view into the making of this historic presidency through his camera lens. He wasn’t just a fly on the wall; he was, as he said, “a gorilla in the corner.”
“Video is the most important barometer of truth we have in politics,” Chaudhary said in the book.
As a videographer myself, I am also interested in learning filmmaking tips from others. I not only got some tips, but also got a crash course in presidential filmmaking history. While the Obama campaign set the new standard for online videos and new media, visual communication has actually played a role in politics since the medium came to prominence during World War II. Hollywood and Madison Avenue have usually worked hand-in-hand with politicians to create campaigns that reached the masses and influenced voters.
Chaudhary points to Primary, an influential documentary about the 1960 Wisconsin primary battle between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The film was a breakthrough for its use of mobile cameras and lighter sound equipment, which helped to created an intimacy with the candidates and their followers.
Primary was produced by Robert Drew, who also directed Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, which follows President Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace as they navigated racial integration at the University of Alabama in 1963. The film aired four months after the incident on ABC and received mixed reviews, due not only to the divisive racial issues brought up, but also many critics didn’t like that cameras were allowed into the White House. Today the film is seen as a milestone in cinéma vérité. When the film was entered into the National Film Registry last year for preservation, the Registry said that Crisis “has proven to be a uniquely revealing complement to written histories of the period, providing viewers the rare opportunity to witness historical events from an insider’s perspective.”
Crisis, Primary and other political films influenced Chaudhary’s work. However, back in 2007 Obama’s campaign was still learning how to use the Internet to their advantage, with only Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run to use as a benchmark. Chaudhary recalls using his many five and a half hour drives between Chicago and Des Moines to think about how to make better videos about Obama. And he spent even more hours recording Obama greeting supporters on the road while eating many turkey sandwiches along the way.
“We knew we’d be generating a lot of content and that the most crucial task would be sorting and posting ,” said Obama advisor David Axelrod in the book. “We thought that video could be the life of the campaign online, an authentic mirror of the whole campaign.”
Authenticity is a running theme in the book. Chaudhary says that while the Internet did play a big role in Obama’s victory, just like John F. Kennedy, Obama won the American people over on his charisma and authenticity.
“Senator Obama did not become President Obama because of some mysterious dark Internet powers that only his youthful supporters understood how to tap into,” Chaudhary said. “He won because he was the right candidate with the right message at the right time. The boundless, open-all-night Internet simply gave his team the space and freedom to present him and his message to as many people as possible, in more ways than usual.”
After the election, Chaudhary was in charge of shooting, editing and posting the Weekly Address on video, and later on started up the web series West Wing Week, which shows highlights from the president’s work that week. Again this wasn’t an easy job, as his job never existed before. Prior to Obama’s election, White House videography was usually handled by the military. A lot of people within the administration didn’t really understand what Chaudhary’s job was either. However, over the course of two years his work became a valuable documentation of this administration, as seen by example in the video below.
One of the complaints of Obama during both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns was his many “unpresidential” appearances on shows like The View and The Daily Show. Chaudhary reiterated that like the Internet, “a campaign’s target audience should be people who didn’t follow politics closely but might have a particular vested interest in a specific issue, whether it be the cost of Medicare prescriptions or the legality of carrying a concealed weapon into Wal-Mart. Those were the people we needed to engage.”
After logging in many long hours following the president around the world, Chaudhary gave up his position last year to do nonprofit video advocacy and spend more time with his family. He reflects on his job and legacy he left behind.
“I wanted to show a side of Barack Obama that the American people might not otherwise see; to use the power of video and the freedom of my access to capture more of the American presidency than had ever yet been recorded, which was a state policy goal of this administration, and one that I could actually help with.”
“I also like to think that the Office of the President has grown a little with me, that I’ve helped to equip it with the infrastructure necessary to keep up with the clamor of the day while at the same time preserving history right as it’s happening. No less important, I’ve been able to advocate for the rules of traditional filmmaking in one of the epicenters of the ‘new ways’ of doing things.”
In recent years more Americans have become conscientious about the food they eat. Activist Frances Moore Lappé helped to start this food revolution in the 1970s with her best-selling book, Diet for a Small Planet, which argues that grain-fed meat production is wasteful and a contributor to global food insecurity. She resolves that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food, but rather by poor food policies dictated mostly by big business (Big Ag).
Poor access to healthy, nutritious foods continues to be a problem in the United States, as the rates for obesity, diabetes and heart disease grow rapidly. While many of the problems addressed in Diet for a Small Planet have only gotten worse, a new generation of food activists – literally – are fighting Big Ag with the use of social media and multimedia storytelling.
Anna Lappé, Frances Moore Lappé’s daughter, recently launched Food MythBusters, a user-friendly online resource center “to combat pervasive industry myths about the food we eat and how it’s grown.”
I was invited to a pre-website launch event last week, where the Lappés talked about their new initiative.
“Sustainable farming does work,” said Anna Lappé. ”The food industry has given the impression that growing sustainable food and solving world hunger are two different things, when in fact, they can both work together.”
During the event Lappé premiered the video below to the audience. In the animated short film, it explains three main food myths being pushed by Big Ag and what she thinks are real solutions for many agriculture problems.
The ultimate goal of the website is to use short films to talk about food politics and getting users to take action. This video is geared towards getting Californians to vote yes on Proposition 37,which would require labeling of genetically modified foods.
Organizations like Food MythBusters and Forest Whitaker’s PeaceEarth are part of a growing movement of digital activists who see the importance of using video to advance social change. Being able to see a problem first hand in a well-shot video that provides fair and balanced information and resources on a subject, whether it be on food security or conflict resolution, makes viewers more likely to want to proactively do something about it.
As Frances Moore Lappé said, any great social movement begins with communicating with each other about the problem and taking action.
“Hope is not what we find in evidence; it is what we find in action,” she said.
As many of you know, I have been working on a documentary for the last year. It is my first endeavor into filmmaking, and so I spend a lot of time watching other films to see what makes a good film good. I saw the critically acclaimed film Argo the other day, which was a really good film. Being a foreign policy geek and knowing a few things already about this little known story from the Iran Hostage Crisis, I went into the movie wanting to like it. Argo has all the base elements for a fantastic film – suspense, bravery and redemption with a splash of Hollywood parody. Also, this movie could not be more important in today’s geopolitical environment. Embassy killings and hostile US relations with Iran seem to be as relevant today as they were in 1979.
However, after watching Argo, I began to realize that the film was very “loosely based” on both a 2007 Wired Magazine article and a memoir by the real Tony Mendez. In fact, many parts of the film were totally made up. While this wasn’t a documentary, but rather a scripted, feature film where director and main star Ben Affleck has taken great artistic license, Argo gave me a lot to think about when dealing with fact and fiction in filmmaking.
Spoiler Alert: I will be discussing how the film ends
1. The Real Tony Mendez, His Latino Heritage and His Marriage
Being that I spend a lot time reporting on race relations, the first most obvious issue with this film is that white Irish Ben Affleck played CIA agent Tony Mendez, who is Latino. Of course, this always brings up the conversation of why a qualified Latino actor didn’t get this pivotal acting role. Some of the arguments I heard in favor of Affleck ranged from Mendez’ race doesn’t play a major role in the film, to Affleck has the same fair-skinned complexion as Mendez, to just simply it’s Affleck’s film and he can do what he wants with it, including starring as Mendez. Also in the movie version, Mendez is portrayed as a man recently separated from his wife with whom he has one child with. In fact, Mendez never indicated that he had a troubled marriage with his wife, who succumbed to cancer in 1986. In fact, his wife drove Mendez to the airport for his trip to Iran. The real Mendez also had two sons and a daughter with his late wife. When Mendez was asked recently by Fareed Zakaria on his CNN show about Affleck playing him in Argo, he said the following: “Well as I always say, Ben is a nice guy. He’s probably not as good-looking enough to play me, but we’ll give a pass. He’s a damn good director, so I was proud to have him on the big screen looking at somebody and say my name is Tony Mendez. That was quite a moment.”
2. Uh-oh, Canada
In the film Ken Taylor, the Canadian Ambassador to Iran during the hostage crisis, is given a lot of credit for allowing the six Americans to hide out in his home, despite growing suspicion from his Iranian maid. However, Taylor might not like Affleck’s film because it is believed that Taylor played a bigger role in the now famous “Canadian Caper.” According to the book Our Man in Tehran, Taylor was a spy during the whole hostage crisis at the request of then President Jimmy Carter and the approval of the then Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark. The six Americans stayed in the home basement of Canadian embassy employee, John Sheardown, who wasn’t featured in the film. Apparently, the Canadians did a lot of things for the Americans, including “providing them with food, shelter, clothes, real passports sent by our government, documents, maps and Scrabble. The Canadians scouted the airport, sent people in and out of Iran to establish random patterns and get copies of entry and exit visas, bought three sets of airline tickets, even coached the six in sounding Canadian.” In Argo, Mendez is shown doing all the above instead. At the end of the film, the CIA lets Canada take the full credit out of fear of retaliation for the other American hostages still in Iran. Also, Taylor is played by Canadian actor Victor Garber, who looks at lot older in the film than what the real Taylor looked like in 1979. When asked about his thoughts on the film, Taylor said “that we’re [Canadians] portrayed as innkeepers who are waiting to be saved by the CIA.”
3. Hollywood’s Role
Who would have thought Hollywood could play such an important role in American diplomacy? Yes, Mendez did head out to L.A. to set up a fake production company, but there was no such script called Argo. While the CIA account says otherwise, according to a piece in Slate, Mendez didn’t sift through a pile of other scripts with makeup artist John Chambers (played in the film by John Goodman) and a snarky producer played by Alan Arkin (a person who didn’t exist in real story) before finding Argo. Chambers gave Mendez a real script upon their first meeting called Lord of Light, which was based on a best-selling science fiction book. Mendez changed the name of that film script to Argo just to be funny. In the film Mendez drew the storyboards, whereas in real life the storyboards were drawn by comic book artist Jack Kirby. While Alan Arkin’s character is fictionalized, Robert Sidell, famed makeup artist for E.T. and other films, was actually the other real person involved in “making Argo.” In the original Hollywood Reporter article announcing this film, the headline said “Two make-up artists turn to producing with sci-fi ‘Argo.’ ”
4. Escape from Tehran
The ending was the best part of the movie when Mendez and the six Americans make it through the airport disguised as a movie production team. Everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong or almost wrong. After the CIA cancels the scheme in the film, Mendez has an epiphany overnight and decides to go ahead with the mission anyway. Mendez tells his CIA boss this and the US government goes through the motions to give clearance for the airline tickets at the very last minute and to contact the now shutdown production company out in L.A. Meanwhile back at the airport, the travelers get their tickets. However, the customs agent couldn’t find the white visa sheets for the American travelers, but lets them through anyway. Then the Iranian security guards question their passports and travel arrangements at the gate. When one of the security guards calls the Hollywood production company to verify the travelers, John Chambers just so happens to answer the phone at the very last minute. The Americans finally get on the plane and as it is taking off, the security guards realize they were duped, thanks in part to shredded documents repaired by carpet weavers. The film ends with the Iranian police and army chasing the Swissair plane the Americans are traveling on, but the plane takes off before they could catch them. Champagne bottles are popping as soon as the plane is out of Iranian airspace. Mendez gets an award from the US government, and reconciles with his wife. Happy ending and fade to black… The only problem with this whole ending is that it didn’t happen in real life. In fact, according to the real Mendez, getting through the airport and onto the plane was “smooth as silk.”
So clearly Affleck was taking a lot of artistic license with the film. However, would the film have been less interesting without the over the top dramatics and suspense? Probably. If the ending used the real events as they happened, the film’s overall impact probably would have been less thrilling (and not to mention less money at the box office and lower Oscar-winning chances). The film’s parody of Hollywood was probably a real reflection of how Hollywood really operates. Maybe one day someone will make a proper documentary that will truly tell the story in earnest. Argo is not the first or the last film to take historical events out of context, but it makes me question the ethics of balancing fact and fiction in a film. The reality here is that most people will see this film and take everything as fact when that is simply not true. I saw this comment left on a website reviewing this film, which sums up how I will go forward with my own future filmmaking.
“One can be entertained and prompted to seek the truth all at the same time.”
I am happy to announce the latest publication from Global Wire Associates – Recharge E-waste: Ideas For Reducing Electronic Waste And Greening The Tech World. This is a multimedia anthology of the best work from the firm’s “Recharge E-waste” campaign, illustrating the global environmental problem of electronic waste and possible solutions presented by both grassroots activists and international policymakers.
