G-20 Police violence: No escaping the citizen camera

Riot police G20 Toronto
Riot police on the streets of Toronto for the G20 summit. Photo taken on June 25, 2010 by Katerkate (Flickr CreativeCommons)

Pioneering cinematographer Dziga Vertov (the Camera Eye) dreamed of an omnipresent camera, one which could look at reality from all angles and at all times. Could he ever have imagined today’s reality, with everyone recording video on their cameras and cell phones?

As Quebec filmmaker Philippe Falardeau says, we are in the age of “tout le monde filmant, tout filmé.” (“Everyone filming, everything filmed.”) And we have known since the 1991 case of Rodney King, a black man savagely beaten by police in which an amateur video proved there was a police cover-up, that video is now a precious tool for democracy and against repression.

Katarina Cizek and Peter Wintonick made a film about this ten years ago or so, (Seeing is Believing, 2002) and since then cell phones and social networks have caused the citizen camera phenomenon to grow exponentially.

The latest case in point is the way the scandalous brutality of the police intervention at the Toronto G20 summit was documented on video. For a good first-hand account and commentary by Ezra Winton (Cinema Politica, Art Threat) rest here.

I have had my share of experiences shooting at political summit meetings. With my friends Anna Paskal and Malcolm Guy, I made Pressure Point, about a civil disobedience action at the 1998 Montreal Conference. I documented the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001 with the help of six other directors and crews. (View from the Summit, co-produced by Erezi and the NFB.)

And I was at the Montebello summit in 2007, filming with the Raging Grannies. That’s where a police agent provocateur was caught on camera, providing conclusive proof – for those who still doubted it – that fueling violence to discredit and criminalize dissent is indeed a police tactic.

In Toronto, the authorities needed to show that there was serious trouble. How else would they justify spending more than a billion dollars on security?

Filmmaker Paul Manly and the Communications Energy and Paper Workers Union provided these links to images from the police intervention in Toronto. Watch and draw your own conclusions! Their comments included.

And there is quite a lot of conjecture about the footwear worn by some of the supposed Black Block smashers. It is rumoured that the police collective agreement specifies that regulation footwear be worn on the job no matter what, and it does seem that the smashers were wearing footwear that looked very like police footwear….
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19928

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XgEI5dCrE
This video shows police dressed as anarchists helping with arrest raids at Queens park.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaoDCPDrQ18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4V3dPJGYw
This series shows police near police cars at King and Bay before the cars get trashed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeU8ObPrI3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M2NKWve-z4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlqHTUz3C9g
This series shows riot police half a block away from Young and College doing nothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOMYlsVNCo

This is another angle of the police cars at Bay and King before the black bloc arrive – police had lots of time to act but didn’t.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMbWTc4pmUo

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

Seen at Hot Docs

Monica and David_2
Monica and David

I was at Hot Docs in Toronto, now one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, all of last week. I wasn’t able to see some of the films I really wanted to see because of meetings. But here are a few screening notes.

The most surprising film I saw was Feathered Cocaine, an Icelandic film which starts out as a film about falconeering and falcon smuggling, then veers off into the drug trade, and finally ends up very convincingly proving that the U.S. authorities never really tried to catch their declared Enemy # 1, Ousama Bin Laden !

While the Americans claimed to be searching for him in Waziristan, he spent several months every year in meetings with his financiers in hunting camps in the Iranian desert, with his five falcons which were all equipped with radio emitters.

The U.S. authorities, including the CIA and the Pentagon, showed no interest in first-hand information about these facts. The story is no joke, it’s journalistically sound, backed up with solid evidence. Chapeau !

Another very impressive film: Secrets of the Tribe, a shocking story of how several generations of anthropologists have used unequal power relationships to take advantage of the Yamomami people of the Venezuelan rain forests. Medical experiments without informed consent, pedophilia, the building on scientific reputations and super-egos on the backs of unsuspecting aboriginals, it’s a real horror story.

As a reader of the world’s best newspaper, the Guardian Weekly, I was well aware of this story already. But the film tells it well and should be a must-see for the academic world.

But the most moving film I saw was Monica and David, a film about two young people with Downs syndrome who get married. As in any case where the social conventions are stripped away and you are confronted with strong emotions, this is captivating.

But in this case, the emotion is love, and the two young people show enormous courage in confronting their challenges -as do their mothers and other members of the family. I was very impressed by the quality of shooting, sound recording and editing in this first film by director Alexandra Codina. Great work !

ACodina2774
Director Alexandra Codina

I am leaving for a future post John Walker’s excellent film A Drummer’s Dream.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for help with this post.