SnagFilms Presents Free Memorial Day Documentaries

SnagFilms is a site where you can watch and share hundreds of free feature-length documentaries online. This weekend it is showcasing a slate of films devoted to Memorial Day themes.

As SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen wrote for Huffington Post:

Featured films include Return To Tarawa, the story of a veteran of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought by U.S. Marines, who returns to that Pacific atoll only to discover that what should be hallowed ground has become a garbage dump—and that the bones of warriors remain in place, unidentified and apparently ignored, at least by our government. Leon Cooper won’t forget, and the film outlines his last battle: to clean up “Bloody Tarawa” and venerate the dead.

Nanking is the highly-honored documentary that picked up its Peabody Award this week—now online for the first time. It brilliantly depicts the heroism of civilians just prior to World War II who tried to prevent a Holocaust from occurring when Japanese troops marched into the then-capital of China in 1937. Nanking reminds us that bravery is not the sole province of the soldier, and that moral and physical courage can come from unlikely sources.

In Vietnam, Long Time Coming, U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers embark on a 1600-mile bicycle tour throughout Vietnam, reflecting with their former enemies on our long war. A similar approach to post-war understanding, On Common Ground, tells the story of American and German World War II veterans meeting 55 years later on the very battlefield where once they’d fought.

Other Memorial Day films featuring World War II themes include Battle of the Midway, and Pearl Harbor: Day of Infamy. East LA Marine tells the story of US Marine PFC Guy Gabaldon, who captured over 1500 Japanese soldiers and civilians—single-handedly. For those who wish to reflect on Memorial Day along the contours of its original creation, SnagFilms is showing Arlington Field of Honor, which offers a tour of America’s most sacred warrior graveyard. Other films in the special offering include Devil Dog Diaries (National Geographic’s inside look at a unit in action during Desert Storm), and So Very Far from Home, the true stories that were the basis of Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

We tried our hand at creating our own SnagFilms Memorial Day movie-theater widget, and found that it is easy to do. This one contains 3 films -- Pearl Harbor: Day of Infamy, Return to Tarawa, So Very Far From Home -- but there are plenty more on SnagFilms that are worthy of your attention.

Watch more free documentaries

See SnagFilms' free Memorial Day documentaries here.

Student Media Advisor Wanted...in Iraq

From Jackie Spinner, via the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS):

I started a student newspaper at The American University of Iraq. Last week we launched the college radio station. I won a Fulbright Scholarship for next year in Oman and need to find someone who can spend the upcoming academic year advising the student newspaper and directing our media operation.

This is a one-year backpack journalism job for someone who is willing to backpack in northern Iraq with a staff of 45 student journalists who are writing in a language they learned three years ago and trying to produce Iraq's first independent student newspaper in what Kurdish writer Bakhtiar Ali has appropriately described as a struggling dictatorship and not a struggling democracy.

If this sounds like your dream (it has been mine), please email me at jackiespinner@mac.com or jackie.spinner@auis.org. The pay is good. Housing is provided. Travel is included. Full health benefits. No language requirements. Significant others, spouses and children welcome. (Many of our teachers have their families with them). Relative safety in northern Iraq. We have a bowling alley, symphony and movie theater. I walk to and from work in American clothes. I speak English on my cell phone in the market.

For more information about the student newspaper, check out these links:

The American University of Iraq:
http://www.auis.org/

Student Newspaper:
http://www.auisvoice.org/

Recent articles about publishing a student newspaper in Iraq:

PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/05/college-media-in-iraq-offers-independent-voice-for-students130.html

US News:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2010/04/26/inside-iraqs-first-independent-student-newspaper.html

College Media Matters:
http://collegemediamatters.com/2010/05/06/the-founding-of-iraqs-independent-student-press-part-six-the-conclusion/

International Journalists' Network:
http://www.ijnet.org/ijnet/training_opportunities/independent_iraqi_newspaper_captures_student_voices_1

(NOTE: Unlike the media "job offer" from the State of New York (below), this one actually pays.)

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario Wins MacArthur Fellowship

Congratulations to photojournalist Lynsey Addario, based in Istanbul, Turkey, who has received a coveted $500,000 "no strings attached" MacArthur fellowship for "creating a powerful visual record of the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century."

According to Photo District News, "Addario is the only photographer among the 24 grant winners announced Tuesday. Fewer than ten photographers have been awarded MacArthur Fellowships since the program started in 1981."

Addario's work for the Council on Foreign Relations' Darfur Crisis Guide, produced by MediaStorm, is featured in the sixth edition of our "Photojournalism: The Professionals' Approach" textbook.

The MacArthur program notes:

Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist whose powerful images are visual testimony to the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century. In a time when many readers are becoming numb to the constant flow of images of war, death, and suffering, Addario combines a rigorous journalistic approach with a keen artistic eye to render events in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere in startling and unexpected ways.

Her vibrant color photographs of refugee camps in Darfur reveal both the cruelties that have been perpetrated as well as the dignity and humanity of the victims. Relentless in her pursuit of images that evoke an overall narrative, she has gained access to regions and peoples often closed to outsiders.

Free of a singular didactic perspective, her photographic essays from Afghanistan and Iraq depict the underlying realities of war: the pain, confusion, and exhilaration of being a soldier; the daily struggles for civilians, especially children, living in a war zone; and the lives of Taliban leaders.

A regular theme in Addario’s work is capturing the lives of women in male-dominated societies. Her most recent project involves photographing survivors of gender-based violence in the Congo and is part of a traveling exhibition intended to increase awareness of the ongoing human rights abuses taking place there. Addario’s dedication to demystifying foreign cultures and exposing the tragic consequences of human conflict is drawing much-needed attention to conflict zones around the world and providing a valuable historical record for future generations.

Her work has been exhibited at numerous national and international venues... and has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, and Harpers, among many other publications.

Addario has been based in Istanbul since 2003 and covers the Middle East for the New York Times. She won a 2008 Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography and contributed to the New York Times staff portfolio that won a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. While on assignment in Pakistan, she survived a car crash earlier this year.

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to "talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work."

LINKS:

* Lynsey Addario's Website

* Darfur Crisis Guide

* MacArthur Foundation Website

* National Press Photographers Association story

Meet the Journalist of the Future

Three qualities once made journalists valuable -- their access, their expertise, and their monopoly on mass communications.

Now that all three of these traits have been broadly disseminated via the Web, what now makes us special -- and worth paying for?

Adam Westbrook takes a stab at answering that, on his personal blog. Currently working as a broadcast journalist for Bauer Media, one of Europe’s largest media companies, he has more than 5 years experience on the front line of broadcast news. He recently accompanied the last British troops serving in Iraq as they prepared for withdrawal, reporting from Baghdad and Basra, where he produced content for radio, online video and audio slideshows.

"I’ve covered some of the biggest stories of the past three years," he writes. "I’ve interviewed government ministers, genocide survivors, ex-cons and premiership footballers."

In his essay, "Introducing the Journalist of the Future," he paints his portrait "based on books, blogs, a couple of talks I’ve given recently and all the noise on Twitter."

Westbrook argues that we must become Web designers, collaborators, specialists, flexible adapters, entrepreneurs, storytellers, jacks of all trades.

Take a look and see if you agree, and let us know what your vision of tomorrow's journalist looks like.

My Student is Hanging in the White House

Kudos to my former SFSU student Andrew Craft, photojournalist extraordinaire at the Fayetteville (NC) Observer. His memorable photo of a soldier departing for Iraq was framed and presented by the city to Michelle Obama, who was touring the Fort Bragg area to investigate military family support services.

As you can see in the first minute of this C-Span video, the First Lady said: "This picture is moving... It says so much...It's going to go up in my office tomorrow..."

The photo, entitled "Tearful Departure," depicts Capt. Shelia Jenkins comforting her daughter, Khadyajah, 7, while holding the hand of her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Claude Jenkins, as he departs on a bus to his flight to Iraq.

Andrew was recently named the 2008 North Carolina Photographer of the Year by the North Carolina Press Photographers Association -- for the second year in a row. It makes a professor proud!

Election Trio

As the big day approaches.... KobreGuide offers 3 stellar candidates for your consideration:

Video Haiku: The Campaign in Moments
An eclectic collection of offbeat images and short videos from the long and whimsical campaign trail. (Washington Post)

From Iraq to the Campaign Trail
Iraq War veterans are turning to politics with the same sense of duty that pushed them to enlist. Meet two on the trail. (New York Times)

Race in the Race
Mixed-race Angelinos smartly address the role of ethnicity in their lives and in the Presidential election. (Los Angeles Times)

We hope you'll elect to view all of them. Then exercise your freedom of speech and let us know what you thought about them.