Videos Explore Rape in Haiti & South Africa

Two recent online video documentaries explore separate cultural perspectives on the issue of rape.

"Inside the Cycle of Rape" (PBS/Frontline) examines a warden's attempt to rehabilitate a group of perpetrators in a South African prison.

Reporter Elena Ghanotakis (pictured) went to Cape Town for the first time in 2004 on a post-graduate fellowship from Dartmouth College to do HIV awareness work with women and girls. "Through this experience, I met many women and children whose lives had been devastated by sexual violence and abuse."

Eventually, I received permission from Pollsmoor Prison, a maximum security facility on the outskirts of Cape Town, to interview dozens of men convicted of rape. The permission process to film at Pollsmoor took 2 years...

My guide inside Pollsmoor was warden and therapist Chris Malgas, who runs a counseling program for convicted offenders using groupwork and individual therapy. My follow up story is a raw look at some of those interactions between Chris and his group, a testament to why it's so difficult to stop South Africa's cycle of sexual abuse...

The perpetrators testimonies provide a grim picture of growing up in the townships and the crimes these men committed. Many talked about being exposed to violent gang culture from a young age, where rape was a rite of passage.

During my time at Pollsmoor, I learned as much about Chris, a 33-year veteran of the prison system, and his motivation to keep his voluntary program going, as I did about the environment inside and outside prison that grooms these men to commit their crimes...

*****

"Children of Rape" (MSNBC.com) looks at sexual violence and its legacy in post-quake Haiti. Meredith Birkett tells us, "I produced this story with the raw materials reported by Nadav Neuhaus. It was a very difficult story to report, but Nadav did a wonderful job of working with the rape victims in a sensitive way and depicting their plight with respect." The video is accompanied by a slideshow.

A year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, women in Haiti’s still-teeming tent cities face yet another threat: sexual violence. With little protection from community or law enforcement, many have been violently raped, only to become pregnant with their attackers’ children.

Photojournalist Nadav Neuhaus traveled through Haiti’s tent cities last summer, photographing and interviewing dozens of residents in the camps that still house more than 1 million people. During a visit to Camp La Piste, home to 50,000 displaced people, Neuhaus noticed an unusually high number of pregnant women. A community organizer and a local midwife confirmed his worries: Many of the women were pregnant as a result of rape.

They came to Camp La Piste after losing parents, brothers and husbands in the earthquake, leaving them to fend for themselves in the sprawling squalor, where roving gangs of armed men terrorize residents.

In a new report, Amnesty International documents the rise in sexual violence, including at least 250 rapes reported in the first few months after the earthquake. Fueled in part by these sexual attacks, the birth rate in Haiti has tripled since the quake, climbing from 4 percent to 12 percent, according to population experts.

Most women told Neuhaus they don’t report the rapes, either out of shame or fear of repercussions. Even if they wanted to report the crimes, there's little help in a country where police and justice systems are destroyed or distracted and where resources for the powerless are almost non-existent.

Cinematic Videojournalism?

Have you been following the fuss over "cinematic journalism"? It started when Khalid Mohtaseb went to Haiti and produced a video montage of the earthquake's aftermath. As you can see, it's visually stunning...



... and therein lies the controversy. Although it's not clear what exactly the dispute is.

First, some objected to the idea of shooting pretty pictures of people in misery, claiming irresponsible ethical breaches. Then, when Mohtaseb shared his aesthetic secrets on a popular DSLR blog (color-grading with Apple Color and Magic Bullet), others objected to "glamorizing" reality in the name of journalism. Others found it vile that he used a Kessler Crane Pocket Dolly to create motion in otherwise stagnant shots, arguing that the technique belonged in fictional Hollywood films, not in real-life disaster zones.

Mohtaseb and his defenders counterclaimed that visual journalism need not consist solely of gritty images, and that shooters should take advantage of the ubiquity of high-definition technology to produce something that will grab attention by deliberately looking different from the typical TV news footage we're all too accustomed to seeing. Many applauded the simple fact that it looked new and fresh and stylish.

Others objected to the fact that, without interviews or narration, the images alone presented no context or understanding of the situation. We get to know the subjects only by their faces, not their hearts, minds or souls.

You can follow the debate here and here and here.

Vincent Laforet, an award-winning former New York Times photojournalist, chimes in, adding perspective about using DSLR for news and documentary video:



Here's Mohtaseb himself hashing it out with veteran TV news cameraman Philip Bloom:



From our perspective, the wrong questions are being asked. The controversy shouldn't be over whether videojournalism can consist of gorgeous images -- visual journalists of every generation have always taken advantage of the latest optical advances. Isn't that the point of owning a HD-DSLR? Color correction and enhancement has been with us a long time, and is fair game -- provided, of course, it doesn't alter reality.

As for employing cinematic style, we're not sure why there should be a problem with enriching one's visual vocabulary by looking towards Hollywood for inspiration. While we draw the line at "special effects" that distort what the naked eye would see at that same location, it's always been the job of the visual journalist to employ an arsenal of legitimate techniques to draw our eye to the subject, and see it in a novel and unexpected way.

Ultimately, what was Mohtaseb trying to achieve? In a Huffington Post interview, he said:

My intent when creating this piece was to cover the disaster in a non-traditional manner as well as create a piece that can be viewed as a series of moving photographs... I wanted the visuals to do the talking rather than have sound bites or interviews. Most of the footage coming out at the time was of the devastation and destruction. I wanted to show that life continued despite incomprehensible odds.

The visuals are admirable, and unquestionably light years beyond the oft-numbing pedestrian B-roll we've grown accustomed to seeing on TV newscasts. But we would argue that the piece falls short of telling its intended story, and not necessarily just because it substitutes a maudlin strings soundtrack for human voices.

Ironically, what's called for is more Hollywood influence, not less. Like an array of beautiful words in search of sentences and paragraphs, Mohtaseb's beautiful footage needs to be arranged into scenes and sequences to tell a compelling story. We need to get to know the characters, up close and personal, to empathize with their plight.

The video might serve a useful purpose as a companion to a fleshed-out text article, but to qualify as journalism on its own merits, it needs to show us more than well-lit, well-composed colorful images. It also needs to enhance our comprehension of the situation and inform us of the basic W's: who, what, when, where, and most of all, why.

Not all shooters can be great interviewers, and vice versa. Very few have all the requisite skills to find, plan and execute a multi-dimensional story that engages, entertains and enlightens.

While solo artists gravitate toward videojournalism -- or are pushed in that direction by budgetary considerations -- they also need to candidly assess their strengths and weaknesses, and compensate accordingly by recruiting collaborators to assist in areas where they are deficient.

So can "cinema" and "videojournalism" coexist? Of course! However, what we are seeing in this Haiti montage may be great cinema, but it's not quite journalism.

5 YouTube Reporters Win $10,000

YouTube's Project: Report videojournalism contest, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, has announced its five grand-prize winners. Each receives a $10,000 grant "to report on an under-reported story outside of the United States."

Here are the winning entries. Let us know what you think:

Mark Jeevaratnam tells the story of a group addressing prescription drug abuse in an Appalachian coal-mining town in southeast Kentucky:



***

Paul Franz follows the story of Joseph Dieune, a Haitian migrant worker who sends money to his family back home:



***

Samantha Danis explores the challenges facing the deaf community in America:



***

Alex Rozier reports on an organization in Missouri trying to help the world’s immobile people:



***

Elan Gepner documents how the Philadelphia Student Union is trying to combat violence through community-building efforts:



***

For other honorees, visit the Project: Report center, where you can also see the semifinalists' submissions and their video blogs.

We hope their work inspires you to think about ways you can use your video camera and YouTube to share important stories with the rest of the world.

Valentine Video Treats

First Grade Valentines

Directed by Lauren Fleishman & Yoni Brook (Time.com)




We Are the World / Haiti (2010)




We Are the World / Africa (1985)

What Haitian Film Students Saw

Cine Institute in Jacmel, Haiti began as a film festival, offering hundreds of films from around the world free of charge to local audiences. It evolved into a full-service film school, offering Haitian youth training and production support for making documentaries, commercials, and feature films. Its educational mission was to empower the country's students with creative, technical and business skills that could nourish local media, provide jobs, and spur economic growth.

Then came the earthquake.

You've seen the images. You've seen the footage, on TV newscasts and online video reports. All by international journalists who descended on the devastated island.

Now see the videos that local film students shot, and uploaded to Vimeo.

Here's a sample:

Stories of Heroes



And here's a Grit TV video story about those Cine Institute students:



More Cine Institute Haiti coverage here.

Cine Institute film fest's YouTube Channel here.

Haiti Photos: Creating Art Out of Horror

Dirck Halstead's Digital Journalist is down but not out. After Canon withdrew financial sponsorship, it looked as though the online magazine would have to pull the plug after more than a decade of covering photojournalism, and that the December/January issue might have been its last.

The staff is still searching for corporate funding -- and accepting financial contributions from readers via its homepage Paypal button. But it has forged ahead with its February/March issue, now online with photographic coverage of the Haiti earthquake by Damon Winter of The New York Times and Shaul Schwarz of Reportage/Getty Images.

"We chose to profile their work because not only have they produced memorable images," writes Halstead, "but in a way they have created art out of horror."

Our executive editor, Ron Steinman, takes issue with those who object to seeing the many shocking images from Haiti in print and on Web sites. Also from Ron, a Q&A session with freelance American TV cameraman Tim Cothren, who was working in Haiti for the German TV channel N24.

Jim Hubbard, who has been one of the leading advocates of teaching children to take photographs of their environment – "participant photography" – writes that there is no better time than now, nor place than Haiti, to provide citizens with cameras in order for them to document the rebuilding of their shattered country.

E-Bits Editor Beverly Spicer scoured television broadcast and online media to get a comprehensive take on events in Haiti. She presents multiple links to photo galleries, video and news reports.

And there's lots more, including an update on the publication's highly regarded 2010 Platypus Workshops for DSLR Video Journalism, Multimedia and Filmmaking.

"This year, we are switching to the Canon 7D DSLR," notes Halstead. "This camera is a breakthrough for filmic video."

There is only a week left to register for the Las Vegas workshop, April 2–11, at the Flamingo Hotel. It precedes the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Expo, April 12–15, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which videojournalists are advised to attend.

Other upcoming Platypus Workshops:

Prague, Czech Republic: July 9–18.

Rockport, Maine: July 25–August 3.

Workshop info here.

The Digital Journalist here.

Photo Magazine to Aid Haiti Quake Victims

Several world-class photographers, including Mary Ellen Mark, are donating the use of their works to create a special edition of a magazine that you can buy as a fundraising effort to provide medical and disaster relief to Haiti. All proceeds will be donated to the International Red Cross.

The title “Haiti: Onè Respe” comes from a traditional Haitian greeting meaning “honor and respect.”
The photography magazine is made possible through the Magcloud print-on-demand service to benefit victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti.

The project is spearheaded by San Francisco photojournalist Lane Hartwell, one of our former students:

“The news of the disaster in Haiti deeply touched me, both as a person and as a photojournalist. I wondered what I could do to help, and spoke with my friend and colleague Peter Pereira, who had the privilege of shooting in Haiti in November 2009. The idea began with his essay, but others quickly came forward with generous contributions and before we knew it we had a magazine. We started on the morning of the 13th and had it available before midnight on the 14th."

This 40-page special issue is available at magcloud.com