NEW MOVIES!!!

OK, some of you have been waiting a long, long time for these for which I must apologize. First I would like to introduce a clip of the first movie I ever made, documenting London Schoolkids protesting the very start of the Iraq war.

Day-X here, article here

I was absolutely astounded by what kids did on their own. The whole experience set me on fire to start documenting "War on terror" related events in London. I was in Finsbury park within a week.

I'm going to put the full 36 minute version on DVD soon I hope.

secondly I'm pleased to have finally put together part 3 of my Finsbury park series

Infidels, Thrills and Spills

The second week after Abu Hamza's arrest the UBA were in Finsbury park protesting, a guy called Patrick Holland from IWC Media was with me to see if we couldn't secure Abu Abdullahs trust for a Channel 4 documentary.

This piece is in two parts. In the first I was pleased to capture the reality of the chasm between Barry, as a representative of "polite British society" and Abu Abdullah as a representative of British fundamental Islam. While Mr. Hamza was around, I never saw Barry ask him when things would be winding up. I know nothing of their prior communication.

Remember this was after over a year of the internal politics, personalities and workings of a British mosque taking place in the street with the Police actively participating by "mediating" media involvement with a religious service. I think this is historicaly unique and always felt that while open communication was happening in my country, I was safer. No doubt about it.

A lot of Muslim commentators were going on record saying that it showed Islam in a dissrespectful manner. I didn't see them there. I'm not a Muslim. I think what I saw predominately were a lot of Londoners. Conservative , maybe pious is the wrong word. Certainly humble but very, very London.


Anyway I also found myself right in the middle of what some newspapers said was "Rightwing extremists clashing with Hamza's supporters."

As you can see this is not true. I had one elbow holding one guy who admittedly wanted a scrap but a much bigger guy easily had hold of him from behind. I wish a Policeman had just shouted at him to be honest but you can see the surge forward. I wish the participants had an opportunity to continue what was becoming a very interesting discussion.

This sort of thing makes "My job" as I see it much easier. Filming two opposing view points trying to make sense of each other rather than supplying any "angle" of my own.

Due to something I said to the UBA in Finsbury park, by the time we all made it to the US embassy in part2 they seemed to think that I was the first facially pierced Islamic fundamentalist. We've sorted all that out since, and if you are here from the UBA, welcome. I know there are a few of you. Try not to crash my server.

I have had good comunication with the UBA since, sadly I have found no one willing to go on camera yet.

My Thanks to all involved.

Due to the Malung nature of all this I'm afraid you're probably going to need the transcripts. I hope my enthusiasm and approach outweigh my technical short comings. Mike and I both use the Matrox G450 dual head graphics card which is available second hand for next to nothing.

Two screens with our mouses running happily from one to the other is the most useful feature of computing I know. We can run the film on screen one and put up the transcript on the other. Unless you are running seriously advanced gaming software this card comes highly recommended. Neither of us could go back to a single screen computer. Anyway I'll stop geeking now.