The Stringer, a documentary that has sent shockwaves through the world of photojournalism, will play at the DC/DOX Film Festival next month in the nation’s capital.
Despite the film sparking controversy by questioning Nick Ut’s longstanding authorship of the Napalm Girl photo taken during the Vietnam War, very few have actually seen the movie, as it has only been previously shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
But that didn’t stop World Press Photo suspending Ut’s credit this month, stating that “The level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution.”
However, three former jurors of World Press Photo criticized the organization’s decision, calling World Press Photo’s position, “Guilty until proven innocent.”
“This is a dangerous and flawed position to take and flies in the face of every standard used in the world that one is ‘Innocent until proven guilty’,” reads the letter signed by James Colton, Dave Burnett, and Maria Mann.
“No one, not you, VII, or the film ‘The Stringer,’ has met that burden of proof. Every conclusion made by the above has been an assumption. And your decision to remove Nick Ut’s attribution was based on doubt and assumption, and not on undisputed facts.”
The film festival in Washington D.C. offers a rare chance for people to actually see The Stringer, something that was criticized by the Visa pour l’Image which invited Ut to its photojournalism festival later this year.
“Because people are talking without having seen the [The Stringer]. Because Associated Press didn’t take away the credit. Because we don’t like the fact that this documentary was made after the disappearance of the main people involved, especially Horst Faas, to whom it would have been so easy to ask questions. Because we support him, we invite Nick to come to Perpignan,” wrote Jean-François Leroy, a former photojournalist and founder of Visa pour l’Image.
On LinkedIn, the VII Foundation writes that tickets are on sale now for the showing on June 15 at the Burke Theatre at the US Navy Memorial.
“When a whistleblower comes forward with a shocking admission, former conflict photographer Gary Knight and a small team of award-winning journalists embark on an intricate journey of truth-seeking,” the VII Foundation says of the movie.
“A two-year investigation uncovers a scandal behind the taking of one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century — the ‘napalm girl.’ A fifty-year-old narrative is upturned, and decades of secrets are unraveled in the search for justice for a man known only as ‘the stringer.’ Within the film’s investigation, the culture of the commonplace exploitation of freelance and local journalists in war reporting is exposed.”
Source link
