To complement Forensic Architecture and Laura Poitras' exhibition presented at the Musée d'art contemporain (Contagion de la terreur), and the 14th Max and Iris Stern International Symposium (March 12 and 13), we are offering this program of films devoted to the documentary work of Laura Poitras, Oscar winner in 2015. Her intensely current cinema is particularly concerned with new contemporary methods of global surveillance.
In this captivating documentary, Laura Poitras turns her camera on another controversial figure: Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. The Oscar-winning director for Citizenfour continues her bold investigation of voices that challenge the authorities and question the state's surveillance of citizens.
Laura Poitras
After a childhood in Massachusetts and studying gourmet cuisine, Laura Poitras abandoned her first vocation to settle in California and enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she notably took classes with experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr. She then left for New York and began to make politically engaged documentaries. My Country, My Country, which deals with the American occupation in Iraq, earned her in 2006 to be placed on the watch list of the United States Department of Homeland Security. She also works as a freelance journalist and in 2012 created a press freedom foundation with journalist Glenn Greenwald. It was with the latter that she subsequently collected the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden on the global surveillance of the National Security Agency. Poitras draws from it his most famous film, Citizenfour, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2014.
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« Refusant la complaisance tant avec ceux qu’elle dénonce qu’avec ceux qu’elle filme, elle fait de ses documentaires de véritables films citoyens, engagés d’abord et avant tout du côté de la transparence et de la vérité, même si celle-ci ne va pas dans le sens de la bien-pensance! »
Helen Faradji, Radio-Canada, 2017
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