After shortly listening to Laura Poitras introducing her documentary "Citizenfour" on "Democracy NOW", I decided to see the film:
She said among others that she had to move to Berlin to edit her video footage she had shot in Hongkong and elsewhere, because she was arrested over 40 times entering the US in the last years since 2006 and feared her footage would be confiscated, knowing that she was on the "watchlist".
This film isn't only of interest for people who want to get a better understanding and grasp of Edward Snowden and Glen Greenwald, but also about the filmmaker Poitras, who never appears herself in the film and her voice only, when she reads text messages or emails she exchanged with Snowden.
Berlin being my former hometown, being more or less upset that Germany hasn't offered Snowden asylum, I decided to watch the film "Citzenfour". Follow me through the orange curvy pipelines down to "Hongkong".
If you want to understand more about Laura Poitras, the film maker, I suggest you read this article in "The New Yorker" The Holder of Secrets.
Poitras was the first person to learn of Snowden’s trove of files, in early 2013, and for months it remained their secret. From the beginning, the language of their correspondence was heightened. Snowden wrote to Poitras, “You asked why I chose you. I didn’t. You chose yourself.” He was referring to films of hers that were critical of the war on terror—in particular, a short piece on an N.S.A. whistle-blower named William Binney. That June, they met in a hotel in Hong Kong, and Poitras made and released a twelve-minute video in which Snowden introduced himself to the world. Since then, he has given numerous interviews, and the journalist Glenn Greenwald, Poitras’s reporting partner on the story, has published a book. But Poitras, guarding her privacy, has said very little while she has finished work on her film.
From
'Citizenfour': Why Edward Snowden Exposed the NSA:
Much of Citizenfour takes place in a hotel room where Snowden reveals the details of the NSA’s massive spying programs to Poitras and former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald. The documentary frames Snowden’s criticism of the NSA’s overreaching data collection practices with commentary from security experts including William Binney, a cryptomathematician and former NSA official, and computer security researcher and activist Jacob Applebaum. One of the strongest voices in the film is that of the Guardian’s Greenwald, who, between publishing stories about the NSA's top secret operations, speaks out in defense of Snowden and other whistleblowers fighting for government accountability.
..
The documentary portrays Snowden as a highly principled activist defending human rights, rather than a fame-hungry government employee seeking worldwide notoriety. It also builds a convincing argument that the U.S. government violated the public's rights by eliminating the need for the NSA to obtain a warrant before gaining access to Americans' phone and email data. One of the key points the film drives home is that, since 2011, the American government has used the threat of terrorism as an excuse to spy on anyone it pleases, even in situations that have nothing to do with national security.
...
One of the only frustrating aspects of Citizenfour is the fact that the story doesn't offer a satisfactory resolution--Edward Snowden's fate is far from sealed.
Even if you disagree with Snowden's actions, the documentary draws some very concrete, if troubling, conclusions about privacy. In America, and throughout the world, there is the sense that whenever one uses a cell phone or the Internet, the government is watching.
"The vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting," Snowden says. "The balance of power between the citizenry and government is becoming that of the ruling and the ruled."
From
The Holder of Secrets.:
Inside the studio, the atmosphere was discreet and tense: thoughts were conveyed in shorthand, words were swallowed, sentences trailed off. This is Poitras’s style, and her small team of collaborators followed her lead. The group was international, and included an American co-producer, Katy Scoggin; a German producer, Dirk Wilutzky; and his French-American wife, Mathilde Bonnefoy, who served as Poitras’s editor. They worked on computers with high levels of encryption, memorized extremely long passwords that were frequently changed, left their phones outside, and shut the windows in rooms where sensitive conversations took place. They were compressing ten weeks of work into less than a month, in time for the première.
To add something in my own words, what I found remarkable in this documentary is that it feels like almost an "unedited" film. You witness Snowden and Greenwald and the reporter from the Guardian sitting in the Hongkong hotel room for hours and days, camera rolling and watching the footage "in the raw" (of course it's not, Poitras said she had twenty hours of footage and they edited it down to a two hour film)
If a film is not "staged" this is the one, imo. It's a very low key, calm and on the other hand horrifying footage, especially when you see how Snowden and Greenwald act to avoid their communications online or in the hotel room from being surveilled.
It's also very troubling to see how "banal" the enormity of what Snowden has to expect from the revelations of the secret files looks like. A shy, calm, yet nervously worried man about possibly having put his loved one in danger, and then his determination to show the surveilling powers that "fuck them, we are not afraid, we don't hide".
There are beautiful images and sequences from Greenwald's home in Brazil and his testimony at the Brazilian Senate (I believe it was) (and he has magnificent dogs, which I remember having heard barking in the background during one of his interviews he gave from there). There are some scenes where I would have needed an American native speaker, who knows more about all the details which have been so far released (with regards to Ramstein in Germany and its function as a hub for drone activities?), and intensely beautiful visuals from Hongkong and Moscow.
The film ends with Greenwald and Snowden in a Moscow hotel room with Greenwald trying to reveal new information to Snowden. It was so sensitive material that he couldn't talk about it, but scribbled it on a couple of pages, showing it to Snowden. The sequence is very strong and excellently made. Snowden's reactions are all very "telling". The viewer can't really understand what it is all about.
Poitras asked me to look away from the monitor. Some footage apparently risked exposing an anonymous source. “There’s one identifying thing,” she told Bonnefoy.(the video editor) “Scroll down, scroll down. I think you just take this out altogether. The whole thing. It’s too identifying. I think, given the risk, we should be careful. What I have the clearance to do is focus on the drone strikes and the watch list.” The watch list is the U.S. government’s long roster of known terrorists and other people deemed to pose a serious national-security risk.
In the footage, Snowden and Greenwald, both of them wearing blue button-downs, are sitting in a Moscow hotel room. Greenwald scribbles notes on sheets of stationery—in order to elude possible audio surveillance—and passes them to Snowden. Greenwald has news for Snowden: an intelligence source has disclosed detailed information about U.S. drone strikes. Greenwald conveys this in a combination of broken sentences, jotted phrases, and obscure jargon.
Bonnefoy said, “The problem is, there’s something in the way Glenn explains this—which is, of course, very cryptic—that makes it completely hard to understand.”
Well, all I remember seeing on the Greenwald's handwritten scribbling were diagrams of steps representing possibly a command chain, all ending with a square with "POTUS" written in it. The way this was filmed is excellent imo. It's also deeply troubling.
Whatever will come out, doesn't smell like peanuts. I could imagine major divisions among the American population about it. Let's hope, nothing like that will really develop.
I recommend watching the film, if you are interested in Snowden and government surveillance. It plays in Washingtn DC at the E Street Cinema at the Landmark Theatresand is not sold out yet for tonights 9:45 pm showing.