CITIZENFOUR, the Edward Snowden documentary by Laura Poitras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nyff-edward-snowden-doc-citizenfour-740060

Yeah this will be interesting. I never saw anything Poitras did, unfortunately.

The two features are both very good, The Oath and My Country, My Country. I think you can find em, PBS wound up showing MCMC (it was not produced for them as iMdb seems to think).

her first film about gentrification in columbus, OH (co-directed with another filmmaker) is quite good, too -- complex and unsettling

early roundup, and a George Packer piece in the New Yorker

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-nyff-2014-laura-poitrass-citizenfour

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/holder-secrets

Sure looks like Soderbergh's style in the trailer, even Snowden as a non-actor actor. Definitely curious to see her other features.

like i said, i'd recommend the columbus, OH one, "flag wars" and "my country, my country" is very good

that new yorker article is very interesting (and somewhat critical of at least an earlier cut of the film) -- thank you.

just noticed that "flag wars" is on amazon instant (and probably other services): http://www.amazon.com/Flag-Wars-Linda-Goode-Bryant/dp/B00249FNW0

highly recommended

Snowden’s paranoia about being watched is at first laughable to the journalists. Snowden dons the famous red hood, covering himself and his computer to enter his passwords so that an observer or camera can’t catch it, while Greenwald looks away trying not to smirk at the absurdity, calling the red blanket Snowden’s “magic mantle of power.” We have all heard the story of Snowden originally reaching out by email to Greenwald but then turning to Poitras instead because Greenwald refused to learn how to use encryption. In the film, Snowden continues to dog Greenwald for his poor security practices, looking shocked when he realizes Greenwald has casually left an SD card with classified documents in his computer. “Let’s remember to change this out every once in a while,” he says. “It’ll be public soon,” Greenwald responds. When Snowden hands Greenwald’s computer back to him to type in his password, Greenwald quickly dashes it off and hands the computer back. “Well, looks like your password is about 4 characters,” Snowden says humorously. “I type fast,” responds Greenwald.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/14/the-best-part-of-the-snowden-documentary-citizenfour/

Godfrey Cheshire, unrestrained

Though superlatives can mischaracterize any movie’s qualities, it is not an overstatement, I think, to call “Citizenfour,” Laura Poitras’ film about Edward Snowden, the movie of the century (to date).

That statement is meant, first off, to suggest certain things about its relation to our collective past, present and future. No film so boldly X-rays certain crucial changes wrought upon the world, and especially America and its government, by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No film so demands to be seen by every sentient person who values his or her own freedom and privacy. No film so clearly implies actions that need to be taken to prevent the 21st century from turning into an Orwellian nightmare in which technologically-enabled tyranny is absolute and true political liberty, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent....

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/citizenfour-2014

Don't remember much about The Oath other than really disliking it.

A.O. Scott:

This is obviously a partial, partisan view, and several journalists on the national security and technology beats — among them Fred Kaplan at Slate and Michael Cohen (formerly of The Guardian) at The Daily Beast — have pointed out omissions and simplifications. Those criticisms, and George Packer’s long, respectful and skeptical profile of Ms. Poitras in a recent issue of The New Yorker, express the desire for a middle ground, a balance between the public right to know and the government’s need to collect intelligence in the fight against global terrorism.

Fair enough, I guess. Such balance may be a journalistic shibboleth; it is not necessarily a cinematic virtue. “The Fifth Estate,” last year’s nondocumentary attempt to tell the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, bogged down in the pursuit of sensible moderation, losing the chance to write history in lightning.

“Citizenfour,” happily, suffers no such fate. Cinema, even in the service of journalism, is always more than reporting, and focusing on what Ms. Poitras’s film is about risks ignoring what it is. It’s a tense and frightening thriller that blends the brisk globe-trotting of the “Bourne” movies with the spooky, atmospheric effects of a Japanese horror film. And it is also a primal political fable for the digital age, a real-time tableau of the confrontation between the individual and the state....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/movies/citizenfour-a-documentary-about-edward-j-snowden.html

sold

I'm hoping this is playing at the Charles in Baltimore long enough for me to see it.

"DROP THE PEN!"

http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/drop-pen-interview-laura-poitras#

Kaplan, national security and foreign policy writer in Slate has his biases, but his take on the film is worth reading--

if all I knew about Edward Snowden were his portrait in Laura Poitras’ documentary, Citizenfour, I’d probably regard him as a conscientious, brave young man, maybe an American hero. But Poitras, a very talented filmmaker who flipped from journalist to collaborator in this story long ago, has chosen to leave a lot out.

I'll read his piece (and many of the others) after I see the film, but "collaborator" has a rather zealous smell to it.

well she was totally complicit in the release of the information; tone or not, she is part of the story.

yeah, I'll take "advocacy journalism" in this particular instance. "Collaborator" has a Vichy France / Commie dupe connotation to me.

This is fine, but I don't know it's a better-made doc than, say, My Country My Country, it's just got up-to-the-minute (white American hero) zest and the You Are There factor. The 45 minutes or so in the HK hotel room are as riveting as you'd expect; Snowden's low-key anxiety and humor is very disarming.

Both General Clapper ("Not wittingly") and Big O earn their derisive laughter.

I'm glad at least one liberal critic honestly tempered his review with 'I'll never forgive that Greenwald for tearing down my goddess Kathryn Bigelow.'

who?

KU: http://www.tobecontd.com/citizenfour-review

Also as Mike D'Angelo writes on Letterboxd, there's no real news here if you've followed the story, aside from the "There is another" tease at the end.

also I read the Fred Kaplan piece...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/10/citizenfour_review_laura_poitras_edward_snowden_documentary.html

I'm fine with taking down the NSA. Also gotta break a few eggs etc.

"Snowden says in the film that he hadn’t planned on stopping in Moscow, but the State Department canceled his passport, so, for 40 days, he was trapped inside Sheremetyevo airport..."

He does not say this in the film, but in the New Yorker interview.

The Snowden-likes-Russia theme is tiresome. I'm sure he felt like saying something nice when asylum was granted, and went too far if that quote is accurate, but again he dissed the Russian human-rights profile in the New Yorker interview.

Kaplan and others are correct that the last 40 minutes or so of the film are a bit duller and unfocused.

This did about $120,000 in 5 theaters this weekend.

Wesley Morris:

A lot of Citizenfour consists of Snowden sitting around, with a computer on his lap or several computers spread about his bed. He does this the way one might wait for someone to respond to a text. People are always staring at screens in techno-thrillers and forensic crime shows. When Snowden does so here, it’s to find how badly the NSA is treating his girlfriend, to see how far down the rabbit hole he’s leapt. But in reaching out to Poitras and the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, in allowing her to film him passing along government secrets to Greenwald, he knew there’d be no clambering back up out of the hole. The film’s pivot point is Snowden’s coming out as the whistleblower. He does so in an iconic interview for Poitras’s camera. He’s in a gray shirt, seated at an angle, and framed so his reflection sits behind him in a mirror. Afterward, he can see his face all over the Internet and cable, and there’s some comedy in his trying to find the right way to change his appearance. It’s almost touching watching such an earnest person basically trying to figure out how Jason Bourne and Harrison Ford in The Fugitive manage to evade capture with just a shave and a baseball cap. Of course, optics play a role in whatever apprehension the general public has about Snowden. The news tended to make him bigger and more dangerous than the Big Brother scenario he laid out. Poitras restores the balance between the whistleblower and the whistled-upon.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/citizenfour-edward-snowden-dear-white-people-movie-review/

my favourite thing about this were the shots of the NSA facilities. i mean, the hotel stuff was good but i liked the ominousness.

expands today to Chicago, Cambridge, Philly, Seattle, Baltimore etc

https://citizenfourfilm.com/see-the-film

On a pure craft and narrative level, really enjoyed this.

And that scene where Greenwald gives a long speech in encrypted English is amazing.

Quite good. My friend had to duck out as soon as the credits came up, but I wanted to see who did the perfectly chosen closing music, so I said I'd catch up in a minute. Probably would have been happier not knowing it was Nine Inch Nails.

The only part I might have rethought was the last five minutes, where Greenwald shares his newest source (and the attendant revelations) with Snowden; Snowden's disbelief seemed a little staged. (Knowing all that he knew, surely none of it would have been all that surprising.) Otherwise, Snowden is as unassuming and as modest and as pure of motive as possible (unlike, say, Julian Assange, where I always get mixed signals). His ongoing reflections on his own role in the story--initially not wanting to reveal himself and shift the focus away from the documents, later wanting to step out defiantly--were perfect.

yeah. ES's arguments of principle with himself about how to handle the media were my favorite part of the movie

loled so hard at snowden discovering the sd card still slotted into greenwald's laptop. "uh, protip?"

(also "hey could you just type in your root password ... okay, uh, it looks like your root password's about four characters.")

the part where the fire alarm keeps going off in the hallway is just great.

Also the teens holding lil snowden masks

the part where the fire alarm keeps going off in the hallway is just great.

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, January 4, 2015 4:38 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah so wonderful
strong this is not a film vibes

yeah, the alarm was...yeah.

the tension in the hong kong hotel scenes was so heavy.

i was like one of two people in the screening i just saw to laugh nervously, otherwise it was dead silent

Poitras on Bill Maher's show tonight (along with Mel Brooks).

ended up seeing this a few times and the last ~20min are kind of rudderless and repetitive but yeah the HK scenes are like nothing else.

gukbe otm upthread about the ominous shots of facilities, tho; at least the last section had plenty of those.

Last Saturday I ennded up watching this in the afternoon, and in the evening saw a small theater's not-so-subtle play about America's complacency w/ rendition/NSA intrusion/etc. - made for a weird paranoid day. The next day I really fell down the youtube hole, watching Snowden 'remote camera' speaker events. I find him likable and sensible and I feel like he's being true to the fact that he doesn't want the individual attention. The doc has its ups and downs (yes, how to end ... how to end indeed), but I think that it's overall great that there is a doc to capture the subject matter.

the obama appearance in this film created waves of cognitive dissonance that were almost palpable

for whom?

Well, for anyone who legitimately care for public life as it is, as opposed to some pipe dream- which sure, go for that, why not, i'm sure that will prove to be as richly rewarding for you as it's always been

premieres on HBO on the 23rd

(day after it loses the Oscar to the gorilla doc)

he's doing a talkback via skype in NYC on thursday! kinda wish i could go.

for whom?

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 31 January 2015 15:41 (1 week ago) Permalink

for anyone who placed any hopes in Obama? who admires aspects of his governance? who thinks he is a "good person," whatever that means? I fit into all of those categories. I realize your protective shell of cynicism is too thick to empathize, though.

so some of you rich ppl w/ hbo have seen this now.

never heard of this lawsuit!

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/everything-about-the-edward-snowden--citizenfour-lawsuit-is-batshit-crazy

Saw it twice in the theater.

yea i watched on hbo, im a rich person

liked how snowden knew hed be prosecuted under wwi era relic laws, and then how the doc let the aclu lawyers acknowledge that the fight is 95% political

"Poitras is teaming with AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook to launch Field of Vision, a documentary unit that will commission and create 40 to 50 episodic and short-form nonfiction films each year.”

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/citizenfour-laura-poitras-documentary-unit-1201589083/

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/09/field-of-vision-interview-laura-poitras-aj-schnack-charlotte-cook/

Watched the DVD this week... Good supplements, including the Greenwald/Poitras/Snowden interview by David Carr a few hours before his death.

Poitras on her Whitney show and return to NYC

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-sleepless-nights-of-laura-poitras-the-snowden-collaborator-and-award-winner-on-her-return-to-new-york-8336016

i should watch this again, it was easily the most fun i had at the movies last year. (i missed a lot of stuff i'd probably have had fun at.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4

i had to recheck to see if Snowden's voice is as weird as JGL's in this trailer but nope it's just JGL.

Future poll: Most annoying JGL voice--SNOWDEN vs. THE WALK

This looks every bit as boring as I predicted; pity to see my fave actor of the last decade or so entering into the prestige-y biopic stage of his career. But who is the hottie who plays his friend (the one who calls him "Snow White")?

of course oliver stone had to direct this

JLG is a horrible actor

er, i mean JGL

ha

The Whitney show is terrible--Poitras should stay in her doc lane and not try to be a visual artist

JLG is a horrible actor

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, April 29, 2016 3

you're a horrible actor

Can't imagine this movie having anything more suspenseful than the hotel fire alarm going off in CitizenFour.

did snowden himself approve this?

just watched the trailer. before doing so, i had forgot that oliver stone has been a purveyor of left-wing kitsch for 30 years.

why the jame gumb voice, is my question

It puts the files on the USB pen
and it gets a Pulitzer for the Guardian

lol

The Whitney show is terrible--Poitras should stay in her doc lane and not try to be a visual artist

this. like the half the exhibition space is taken up with a cheeseball IR closed circuit gag that is on par with a children's museum

I mean, how many more worthy artists could have had that space. Gets an art world Razzie from me.

how many more worthy artists could have had that space

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18gw0zg0xka4qjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

The Whitney show is terrible--Poitras should stay in her doc lane and not try to be a visual artist

^^^^^ on this.

xp Ha ha Aimless. NY art critic Jerry Saltz is on record that he thinks GWB is a good painter. That how awful the NY art world is

His paintings look like the things they look like.

what exactly does her whitney show consist of? any fun reviews i can read.

tbh there are much worse amateur painters than bush. at least he offsets the basic sentimentality of his subjects with the muted colors.

good review of Whitney show http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/07/laura-poitras-on-target/

I liked the show although it does have weak points. It's a bit off the mark to dismiss it as Poitras' misguided attempt to remake herself as a visual artist—not, I think, what she tried to do at all

One element of the show I really liked was the hallway of redacted documents. I liked how the narrow viewing slits gave the feeling of peeking out through the black bars on a document.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxkZP6pjs0k

jesus fucking christ I could never be an actor

<3

if you're in a Stone movie, best to follow Tommy Lee Jones in NBK and pretend you're Daffy Duck

who is the audience for this movie?

(answer is probably nobody: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=fifthestate.htm)

so in this movie snowden has a manic pixie dream girl who turns him from a dumb ass stick in the mud conservative into a fun-loving NSA whistleblower?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/edward-snowdens-long-strange-journey-to-hollywood.html

this article starts out normally enough and then takes a really...bizarre turn towards the end

In the spring of 2014, Stone flew to Berlin and met with Poitras. The meeting did not go well. According to Poitras, Stone proposed that she delay the release of “Citizenfour,” which she was then in the middle of editing, to time up with his film. “Because his film would be the real movie — because it’s a Hollywood movie,” Poitras told me. “Obviously I wasn’t interested in doing that. To have another filmmaker ask me to delay the release of my film was — well, it was somewhat insulting.”

Stone was annoyed, but he stuck around for a few drinks. They discussed new movies, including “12 Years a Slave.” As Poitras recalls, Stone found the film too violent, while Poitras thought the brutality was appropriate given the subject matter. Stone was growing increasingly frustrated. “At some point, he reached over and had his hands around my neck,” Poitras said. “It was sort of in a joking way. I think he was a little bit drunk. But it was not a particularly pleasant evening.”

haha holy fuck what an asshole

"mine is the real movie!"

Poitras was being very charitable there.

yes

Ollie v much the opposite of classy

Snowden was really useless, it's just Citizenfour with prettier people. Far less compelling and not nearly as scary. No wonder Stone was pissed at Poitras.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/09/what_snowden_gets_wrong_about_its_hero.html

Lol @ zachary quinto's greenwald.

can't believe James Clapper's performance in this was forgotten yesterday

perhaps "not wittingly"

Just seen 5 minutes of the Stone movie, hadn't realised it was a spoof.