In this event, organized by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR), we sit with multiple award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and artist Laura Poitras to discuss her decades of work documenting U.S. imperialism and surveillance policies around the world. Among other topics of political urgency, Poitras's works investigate the strategies and tactics developed in the aftermath of 9/11 that have come to be known as the 'war on terror': ground wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere; torture and detention; mass and warrantless surveillance; and the use of drones in what officials call 'targeted killing'. In this conversation, Poitras sits with ISHR's Dr. Shourideh Molavi to discuss her works, some of which the two have collaborated on, and will screen clips of Poitras's films on these topics, discussing the longer imperial legacies of present-day U.S. policies.
Laura Poitras is a multiple award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and artist. Her most recent film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion, only the second documentary to win the top prize in the festival’s history. Her journalism exposing the U.S. National Security Agency’s global mass surveillance programs was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and the George Polk Award for National Security reporting. In 2006, the U.S. government placed her on a secret terrorist watchlist and detained and interrogated her dozens of times at the U.S. border. In 2015, she successfully sued the government to obtain her classified FBI files. The hundreds of heavily redacted documents reveal that the FBI conducted physical and digital surveillance of her, sent FBI agents to her film screenings, subpoenaed her private communications, and conducted a classified counterintelligence investigation.
Please register by April 3rd at 10 am ET.
