Revelations in CITIZENFOUR film even cause Snowden to exclaim, “No F-ng Way!”
Several big bombshells were revealed tonight during the debut of Laura Poitras’ documentary on Edward Snowden, CITIZENFOUR. Edward Snowden’s girlfriend has moved to live with him in Russia and towards the end of the film–a huge revelation–something is revealed to Snowden which causes him to exclaim, “No f@#$ing way!”
In the key scene, journalist Glenn Greenwald visits Snowden at a hotel room in Moscow. Fearing they are being taped, Greenwald communicates with Snowden via pen and paper.
While some of the exchanges are blurred for the camera, it becomes clear that Greenwald wants to convey that another government whistleblower – higher in rank than Snowden – has come forward.
The revelation clearly shocks Snowden, whose mouth drops open when he reads the details of the informant’s leak. – Hollywood Reporter
UPDATE: Edward Snowden featured in a LIVE interview presented by The New Yorker:
CITIZENFOUR also reveals the fact that 1.2 million Americans are currently on a government watch-list–including the filmmaker, herself!
Something that caught everyone by surprise is the fact that Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, has been living with him since July. The film shows them cooking dinner together.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that the film received a rousing standing ovation. No word yet on how wide the distribution will be of this film in theaters. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Edward Snowden Revealed In Chilling ‘Citizenfour’: N.Y. Film Festival
By Jeremy Gerard
October 11, 2014 9:56am
Seamless and as darkly riveting as any John le Carré or Graham Greene thriller, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour puts an indelibly human face on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, while ripping away any mask of pretense that the most massive and sophisticated breach of privacy in American history had grounding in reality, let alone the law.
Almost defiantly avoiding most of the technological gimcrackery we’ve come to expect in advocacy filmmaking, and rushed to completion (though never looking it) in time for its world premiere last night at the 52nd New York Film Festival, Citizenfour is likely to open the eyes — not to say change the minds — of doubters who would like to see Snowden tried for treason.
It’s a devastating account of how 9/11 was used to justify the abrogation of civil liberties on an unimaginable, even global scale as the National Security Agency spread a metastasizing net to intercept and track the telephone calls and Internet activities of millions. Equally significant, it’s the compelling story of a quiet American moved to action by nothing more complicated than a determination to expose what he considered to be a lawless, immoral operation.
Poitras identifies Citizenfour as the final chapter in a trilogy that follows her previous My Country, My Country, about the Iraq war, and The Oath, about Guantánamo — celebrated investigations of wayward American policy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The new film — from RADiUS, in association with Participant Media and HBO Documentary Films — will be released on October 24. It begins in January 2013 with a voiceover, presumably Poitras herself, reading an encrypted email from “citizenfour” outlining some of the basics of the surveillance machinery and information gathering already in place.
Glenn Greenwald Presents His Book ‘No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State’Over the next several months, Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald get a more nuanced understanding of the astonishing parameters of Snowden’s documentation and arrange to meet him at a Hong Kong hotel. Over the course of several days in June they interview the on-the-lam analyst and begin releasing stories in The Guardian.
The news is, of course, explosive, and one of the film’s more intriguing points is that Snowden — slight, usually bespectacled and without any guile — makes it clear that he plans to be exposed and doesn’t want anyone else being blamed for his choice to come forward. And yet when the media frenzy begins (along with the inevitable Administration lies and denials and the calls for his head on a block) Snowden’s fear becomes palpable even as his determination remains unwavering — especially his determination that he himself not become the story. He isn’t angling for the cover of People.
Through it all, Poitras and her camera refuse to sensationalize (despite some forbidding background music by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), as the interviews unfold in seeming real-time. She introduces other key players in the story as well, notably William Binney, a crypto-mathmetician and former NSA director responsible until his own disillusionment for much of the technology used in wide surveillance. If there is a top villain, it is the President himself, signing off on secret orders to expand the surveillance while pretending in public to champion the sanctity of privacy. Tell it to Angela Merkel.
The final scenes record Snowden and his partner, Lindsay Mills, cooking a meal in their secluded Russian home, where they are living on a longterm visa. And in a stunning reveal, Snowden learns that Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, another journalist they’re working with, have begun talking to a whistleblower with an even higher level of access than Snowden’s. You can’t tell whether “citizenfour” is more shocked, relieved or devastated by his vindication. Doubtless all three in equal measure.
NYFF 2014: Edward Snowden documentary ‘Citizenfour’ jolts film world
By Steven Zeitchik
Many documentaries seek to kick-start environmental movements, reverse death row sentences or even change legislative policy..
But few come with the kind of ideological ambition of the Edward Snowden study “Citizenfour,” a movie of grand scope that also tells an intimate personal story.
The long-awaited documentary from Snowden chronicler Laura Poitras arrived with a bang at its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Friday night, receiving a rare festival standing ovation ahead of its theatrical release Oct. 24, when it could well jolt both the fall moviegoing season and the national conversation about privacy and security.
Poitras, as some may recall, shot the 12-minute video of Snowden that went viral in June 2013 and made the National Security Agency contractor, at 29, perhaps the most important and polarizing figure since Daniel Ellsberg. “Citizenfour” is, in effect, that original video effort writ very large — a look at how Snowden came to the decision to pull back the curtain on the NSA’s massive surveillance operation and what happened to him when he did.
It is also, needless to say, a portrait of that operation itself.
“It’s absolutely staggering and beyond what you can ever imagine,” Poitras said in an interview at the festival Saturday. “There’s the scope and desire of collecting all of this data, and also the mentality that if they have all communications they have these repositories they can query later. It’s shocking, really.”
Poitras is already well known as a foreign-affairs investigative journalist thanks to documentaries such as her Oscar-nominated “My Country, My Country.” Her new film begins with her voiceover describing how she had been contacted anonymously by a man identifying himself as “Citizenfour” who claimed to have proof of illegal government surveillance.
The source turns out to be Snowden, but before Poitras gets to him, she details the extensive national security apparatus that he will soon expose. The director has activists explain how the government uses so-called metadata to track phone calls and movements of ordinary citizens, and shows clips of James Clapper, director of national intelligence for the NSA, testifying before Congress that the government does not spy on millions of Americans.
The focus then shifts to Snowden, shot by Poitras over eight days in a now-famous Hong Kong hotel room with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill present, ready to break stories based on the classified documents Snowden is leaking them. (Greenwald would eventually write a book on the experience called “No Place To Hide.”) There is a kind of unfettered, up-close detail to these scenes that would be startling for any interesting documentary subject, let alone for the world’s most famous fugitive. “Citizenfour” is an examination of a larger-than-life personality in the most handmade manner imaginable.
Snowden has made the decision to come forward, he says in the film, because he feels there’s a great threat to the future of American free speech. “The elected and the electorate,” Snowden says, have become “the ruler and the ruled.”
Snowden shows the journalists documents that detail the surveillance efforts and the compilation of a massive database of information about U.S. citizens.
The greatest danger is that once this massive database exists, nothing can rebottle the genie. The only thing stopping massive leaks of personal data then would be a “policy switch” — and, as Snowden reminds, all it takes if shifting political winds for that switch to be flipped.
“This is not science fiction,” he tells Greenwald and Poitras. “This is happening right now.”
For all the gravity of his actions, Snowden comes off as cool and composed, looking unnerved on only one or two occasions when the full extent of the danger he is in begins to dawn on him. There is, occasionally, a sense of no-nonsense confidence — particularly on the technical side of things — but also of a kind of admirable selflessness. He is willing, he says, to put himself in jeopardy if it ensures others’ right to privacy and free speech.
Soft-spoken but resolute, Poitras plays down the sacrifice she herself made to tell the story, though it was significant — with the entirety of the U.S. government hunting Snowden and seeking his extradition even as Poitras is shooting, the film could easily have not seen the light of day.
“The film is made with enormous risks not just to myself,” she said, “but to Snowden, Glenn and William Binney [a former NSA worker who also appears] It’s easy to look at it in retrospect and say these stories and documents were going to get out, but there was a lot of fear and danger.”
The screws eventually do tighten on Snowden and he flees to Moscow, at which point his communication with Poitras reverts to encrypted emails, which Poitras shows on the screen, “War Games” style. (Apart from the quickest glimpse, Poitras herself is never seen in the film.)
With its focus on the ability of muckrakers and whistle-blowers to bring down powerful institutions, the film comes in the tradition of “All the President’s Men” as well as more recent, techno-centric tales as the Aaron Swartz documentary “The Internet’s Own Boy.”
Radius, which acquired “Citizenfour” in the spring, has high awards hopes, particularly given the dearth of female directors in this year’s race. At an after party Friday, the conversation quickly turned to the Oscars, with most observers feeling it was an instant front-runner to win best documentary and some even speculating about whether it could make a run in other categories. That attention should help galvanize its run in theaters, where few documentaries have much commercial traction. (HBO Documentaries boarded the project more recently and aims for a television airing in the spring of 2015.)
Poitras said in the interview that she hoped to continue following the story, and in fact may release the dozens of hours of footage from the Hong Kong hotel — in which details of the classified documents are revealed — in another form after the movie’s release. “It’s part of the public record. They need to get out,” she said.
There are reveals toward the end of the film of both the personal and political kind. For example, viewers learn that Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, is now living with him in Moscow.
The documentary also shows a scene in which Greenwald, meeting with Snowden in Moscow after the noise has quieted down, suggests that the U.S. goverment’s “watch list” now numbers up to 1.2 million people. Snowden looks stunned by the revelation, and also somewhat gratified that others have stepped out of the shadows in his absence.
Indeed, his goal, he says, is to encourage others to come forward, and he seems to instinctively intuit throughout the film that his survival is important not just for personal reasons but because the longer he can remain at large, the more likely others will feel emboldened to step forward.
Or as Snowden’s father Lonnie said at the premiere Friday: “The truth is coming and it cannot be stopped. I believe there’s far more to come.”
I have never, ever, anticipated seeing a movie more. I. Simply. Can’t. Wait.
I am relatively stunned that it will be allowed in theaters, and even more so that HBO will show it. Maybe government-fuks aren’t as powerful as I thought?
Will listen to the hour long interview when Ms Freud is at work.
Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters
Privacy is the outer skin of the self.
Privacy is the space that defines the will of the individual, which sets the area which says, ‘this is mine, because this is me.’
I may wish to share my space to varying degrees with family, friends, and acquaintances. I may even wish to operate within my space in a continuing act of worship and companionship with my Creator. But that choice to conform myself to His will and open my thoughts and heart to Him, is mine. This is a gift that is hard to comprehend, but which makes us the objects of His love, rather than a puppet, or a mere object of His to be owned.
It is His most supreme condescension that He grants us the power to resist Him, to be other than Him if we so choose. He makes us the sovereigns of a portion of His being, and says, you are free, and in His caring for another grants us a soul of our own. This is the essence of our being.
What love is that which is in thrall to the beloved, which has no choice, no self identity that it may give, freely? What are we to an all-powerful God, except that which He has granted to us, forever, as ours alone?
A tyrannical State, which has no virtuous restraint, by its very definition wishes to insert itself into this space, not as a gracious God who grants me the will to either open or close my heart to Him, but rather to take by force that space that marks my individuality, and to be as a god on its own terms.
Surveillance on an indiscriminate and massive scale by an increasingly intrusive State is not a benign act in the cause of homeland protection.
It is an act of the will to power of the State over the individual, to claim that last bastion of privacy that marks the least amount of space that a person may occupy as their own.
It is the State’s way of asserting that all that we have, all that we are, all that we may do or think, belongs to them at their unquestioned discretion.
Jesse
Probably just to help get us ready for total 1984 realities…95% of people are mindless idiots and think it’s just all a fantasy anyway…
Please consider The Guardian article Citizenfour Review – Poitras’ Victorious Film Shows Snowden Vindicated.
Citizenfour must have been a maddening documentary to film. Its subject is pervasive global surveillance, an enveloping digital act that spreads without visibility, so its scenes unfold in courtrooms, hearing chambers and hotels. Yet the virtuosity of Laura Poitras, its director and architect, makes its 114 minutes crackle with the nervous energy of revelation.
At its heart, Citizenfour is the story of how Snowden’s disclosures unfolded through Poitras’ eyes, from the first communications Snowden sends Poitras, hinting at what is to come, until Snowden sees himself vindicated through emulation. (The film is named for a pseudonym Snowden used with Poitras.) The time before Poitras meets Snowden is symbolized by a car travelling through a pitch-black tunnel, barely illuminated by the glowing red lights on the ceiling, until sunlight bursts in when she and her colleagues Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill arrive in Hong Kong for their fateful encounter.
Accessibly explaining how surveillance works, and why it matters, only gets more challenging the deeper you dig into the NSA trove. At the Guardian, it consumed exhausting months’ worth of background reporting, verification and endless revisions.
Since June 2013, Snowden has been a cipher to the world, often yielding paranoid reactions (Russian spy! Chinese dupe!) from people understandably curious about his motives. It may be too late to change people’s minds about Snowden, at least so soon after his leaks. But the Snowden who Poitras shows – hair tousled, resisting his attempts at styling it – is determined, sincere and human.
While often portrayed as arrogant, especially by self-interested surveillance bureaucrats, Snowden tells Poitras, Greenwald and MacAskill that he wants journalists and not himself to decide what ought to be public. He is possessed with an uncanny calm as he is about to become forever targeted. Yet Snowden’s eyes redden and his shoulders stoop when he grasps the burden he is placing on his family and girlfriend – with whom he is now reunited in Russia, a place in which he never intended to live.
Given the passions that the NSA disclosures have generated, it’s remarkable how tempered Citizenfour comes across. Reflecting a style Poitras seems to share with Snowden, it’s a quiet movie, its soundtrack a sinister digital throb, packed tight with questions about how we live freely in an unseen dragnet. One of its only boisterous moments comes when Snowden and Greenwald discuss the spirit animating both the reporting and Snowden’s decision to reveal himself. Greenwald describes it as “the fearlessness and the f*ck-you”.
That fearlessness attracted Snowden to Poitras, and it shows through her camera.
Citizenfour opens in US cinemas on 24 October.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#EBoVebuh6FYvYk8V.99
I’m glad she’s over there with him. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to give up your entire life to live in a foreign country where you don’t even speak the language.
Please note Second leaker in US intelligence, says Glenn Greenwald
The investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has found a second leaker inside the US intelligence agencies, according to a new documentary about Edward Snowden that premiered in New York on Friday night.
Towards the end of filmmaker Laura Poitras’s portrait of Snowden – titled Citizenfour, the label he used when he first contacted her – Greenwald is seen telling Snowden about a second source.
Snowden, at a meeting with Greenwald in Moscow, expresses surprise at the level of information apparently coming from this new source. Greenwald, fearing he will be overheard, writes the details on scraps of paper.
The specific information relates to the number of the people on the US government’s watchlist of people under surveillance as a potential threat or as a suspect. The figure is an astonishing 1.2 million.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#EBoVebuh6FYvYk8V.99
The Weinstein Company is involved in this project, I think as distributor, so it might make 900 screens initially, with hopefully more once it goes viral.
Personally, I would drive 50+ miles to see it. Snowden is a Patriot and hero for risking everything in order the people be told the truth. And his revelations not only add voice and texture to what Binney and others gave us, but Snowden brought the proof; physical documents the NSA can’t realistically deny.
I can’t wait to see the film.
While you are waiting for “Citizen Four” to come to theaters, I recommend “Kill the Messenger”, which I saw today. It’s the true story of Gary Webb who exposed the drug running by the CIA to raise money for the contras in Nicaragua since Congress would not fund the effort. Webb was found dead in 2004 of “suicide” (if you believe 2 shots to the head can be such a thing).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
blah, blah, blah.
So, what are any of you going to do about it? Nothing.
Anticipating fifty thumbs down. Don’t care, rage on.
Admin – thanks for always keeping Snowden up front and centre. You’re a good man! Can’t wait to see the film too.
I certainly admire and respect Snowden for what he’s done but he is way too optimistic for the conditions IMO. He says he’s encouraged that the White House has said that his (Snowden’s) revelations have sparked debate which is good. He’s encouraged that the Congress and the courts are involved in reviewing the level and legality of the various programs etc. It seems to me that he thinks this govt has gone a little off course and can be fixed. He seems to think that the alphabet soup agencies abusing our rights will just pack their equipment up and quit spying on us. I get the impression that he would be shocked by some of the things we discuss here on TBP. I’d love to submit a few questions for him to answer.
Apparently there was no surveillance of the girlfriend?
I always get the feeling that every one of these stories is like a fable, told on multiple levels. There’s the story for the children (big bad wolves) the story for those who think they understand the real story and the very subtle story that lies underneath it all- the one meant for the people who pose the only real threat to the way things are.
How did his girlfriend, on a US passport, make it to Russia? How are they financing their Moscow pied-a-terre.
That’s the part that sticks out like a sore thumb.
The whole thing seems so fabricated I get the feeling Vebal Kint is telling it.
Space, time and silence will be our last luxuries.