How do documentary film directors avoid censorship in countries like Egypt and China?
Karim El Hakim risked his life to shoot footage in downtown Cairo for his documentary about the Egyptian revolution. Alison Klayman and Stephen Maing managed to film documentaries inside China. One is about an extremely popular and periodically jailed artist, and the other is about two bloggers risking their personal safety to expose stories censored in the state media.
So, what happens when documentary directors get in the middle of the cat-and-mouse game between dissidents and government censors?
The Global Journalist forum at the True/False Documentary Film Fest featured these directors, along with Josh Fox, who was the director of an expose’ about natural gas fracking, called Gasland.
Global Journalist shared some highlights from the panel discussion, which was moderated by Jason Spingarn-Koff, a director and video journalist for the Opinion section of the New York Times.
