Another News Story (12A.)
Directed by Orban Wallace. 85 mins.
On the surface, this encounter between a documentary filmmaker and roving news reporters would seem to offer up a meeting between two groups you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw, and to find out exactly how far that was. In the summer of 2015 young British filmmaker Wallace set off to Central Europe to tell the story of the news crews telling the story of the refugee crisis. Starting at the Mediterranean he'd be following them following the refugees through the nightmares of the Hungarian border onto the promised land of Germany, and making a name for himself off the back of the people who make a living off of transmitting human misery back to safe European homes.
The aim seems to have been to present the way that the news cycle distorts the reality of the situation it is reporting, but this doesn't really work out. The film really needed to juxtapose what the news crew do on the ground with how their footage is presented back at home, but the clips we see aren't enough to do that. Plus, most news crews are too savvy to let themselves becomes the story, but Wallace gets a break when a group of hardened professionals take him under their wing and help him along.
What the film does offer though is a decent, thorough and well-rounded insight into the story. The refugees are humanised but at the same time, you can see how countries would become defensive faced with the vast flood (if that isn't too Ukippian a term) bursting across their borders. Picking things up on the Greek coast, he doesn't get the whole story from beginning to end, but you do get the European leg in its totality: from being washed up on the shores of Lesbos to being settled in Germany or Scandinavia.
The appeal of the story perhaps is that it is war zone reporting, without the war. You all the frontline adversity, but without the bullets. Wallace gets some wonderful footage. In one moment they are inside a stiflingly hot cattle carriage that could become a death trap when the door opens and a fresh-faced young female journalist looks in at them and announces that she's making a documentary.
Back in 2015, the deceitful nature of the mainstream news media was much on our minds. Some graffiti early in the film reads, "Real eyes realize real lies." Now we can see that its distortion are nothing compared to the baloney we can dream up for ourselves now that we have the ability to propagate it. It ends up being a very complimentary look at the group of people it was meant to expose. Roving news crews are usually presented as being cynical, jaded ghouls, but the ones we see here seem to be trying to do an insensitive job with sensitivity and feeling.
Directed by Orban Wallace. 85 mins.
On the surface, this encounter between a documentary filmmaker and roving news reporters would seem to offer up a meeting between two groups you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw, and to find out exactly how far that was. In the summer of 2015 young British filmmaker Wallace set off to Central Europe to tell the story of the news crews telling the story of the refugee crisis. Starting at the Mediterranean he'd be following them following the refugees through the nightmares of the Hungarian border onto the promised land of Germany, and making a name for himself off the back of the people who make a living off of transmitting human misery back to safe European homes.
The aim seems to have been to present the way that the news cycle distorts the reality of the situation it is reporting, but this doesn't really work out. The film really needed to juxtapose what the news crew do on the ground with how their footage is presented back at home, but the clips we see aren't enough to do that. Plus, most news crews are too savvy to let themselves becomes the story, but Wallace gets a break when a group of hardened professionals take him under their wing and help him along.
What the film does offer though is a decent, thorough and well-rounded insight into the story. The refugees are humanised but at the same time, you can see how countries would become defensive faced with the vast flood (if that isn't too Ukippian a term) bursting across their borders. Picking things up on the Greek coast, he doesn't get the whole story from beginning to end, but you do get the European leg in its totality: from being washed up on the shores of Lesbos to being settled in Germany or Scandinavia.
The appeal of the story perhaps is that it is war zone reporting, without the war. You all the frontline adversity, but without the bullets. Wallace gets some wonderful footage. In one moment they are inside a stiflingly hot cattle carriage that could become a death trap when the door opens and a fresh-faced young female journalist looks in at them and announces that she's making a documentary.
Back in 2015, the deceitful nature of the mainstream news media was much on our minds. Some graffiti early in the film reads, "Real eyes realize real lies." Now we can see that its distortion are nothing compared to the baloney we can dream up for ourselves now that we have the ability to propagate it. It ends up being a very complimentary look at the group of people it was meant to expose. Roving news crews are usually presented as being cynical, jaded ghouls, but the ones we see here seem to be trying to do an insensitive job with sensitivity and feeling.
