Balkans
The Search for Balkan War Criminals – Justice, Peace and Reconciliation
On Wednesday 9 March, the Guardian‘s world affairs editor Julian Borger was joined by a panel of experts to discuss the search for Balkan war criminals as detailed in his new book, The Butcher’s Trail – How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt.
The Great European Disaster Movie
By Francis Churchill “We are in an aeroplane, and we don’t know who is driving the aeroplane. We are in a storm and we don’t know what is happening to us…”. This was the idea that Annalisa Piras wanted to entertain in her new film, The Great European Disaster Movie, which previewed at the Frontline Club […]
Here Be Dragons: the “post-traumatic world” of Albania
By Phoebe Hall On Monday 27 January a large audience gathered at the Frontline Club for a screening of Mark Cousins’ contemplative essay-film Here Be Dragons, followed by a Q&A with the director, via Skype, and with producer Don Boyd, founder of HiBROW.
SMASH & GRAB: The Story of the Pink Panthers Q&A
By George Symonds “Only superhumans could be as good as them.” On Monday 8 July, the Frontline Club screened SMASH & GRAB: The Story of the Pink Panthers. With unprecedented access to the most successful diamond thieves in history, director Havana Marking took viewers on a candid journey into the minds of the Pink Panthers. […]
Screening: Smash & Grab – The Story of the Pink Panthers + Q&A
In Smash & Grab – The Story of the Pink Panthers, director Havana Marking gets some of the members to reveal the gang’s networks, history and approach. They talk about sealed-tight safes, robberies that are years in the making and constant physical transformations. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Havana Marking.
25 years of Panos Pictures: “It’s about who you’re working with and why”
By Helena Williams
For 25 years photo agency Panos Pictures has been covering stories the mainstream media won’t. The commercial arm of the development NGO the Panos Institute (now Panos London) has had photographers documenting history as it unfolds, with a focus on social and development stories globally.
Bosnia 20 years on – Part 2
By Ivana Davidovic It was a full house at the Frontline Club, the audience gathering to mark two decades since the ill-fated weekend in April 1992 when first shots were fired in Bosnia. The worst carnage in Europe since World War II was about to unfold. Over 100,000 people were killed, out of whom about […]
Bosnia 20 years on – Part 1
By Merryn Johnson Twenty years after the beginning of the Bosnian War, Ed Vulliamy still rages against the powers that failed to act, the perpetrators not held to account, and the international organisations continuing to profit from the fractured regions sufferings. “It’s not just about the war but about the peace after it… wars, and […]
Defending collaboration, with A. A. Gill and Tom Craig
View event here. By Alan Selby The advent of new media has seen an increasing pressure placed upon journalists to become multidisciplinary, but often to the detriment of each medium. During an evening moderated by David Campany, reader in photography at Westminster University, writer A. A. Gill and photographer Tom Craig mounted an impassioned defence […]
Russia: A Mafia State?
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch event here. By Thomas Lowe The panel painted a largely sombre picture of present-day Russia, overshadowed by a resurgent FSB secret service and their close allies, the oligarchs. Author of Mafia State and Guardian correspondent Luke Harding began by explaining what it is like to be considered an […]
Frontline volunteer opportunity for summer: FNTV Archive
This summer the Frontline Club Charitable Trust in Paddington is offering part-time volunteer positions on an Oral History project to a small number of bright individuals. If you’re interested in journalism, war or the history of the late 20th century perhaps this is the project for you.
10 years on: the unsettled, unsettling legacy of Slodoban Milosevic
By Sara Elizabeth Williams On 5 October 2000, Slobodan Milosevic was removed from power in a people’s revolution that ground to a halt 13 years of conflict. Watching half a million Serbians swarm the streets, the world had high hopes for Belgrade. But ten years on those hopes remain largely unfulfilled, journalists speaking at last […]
Balkans smouldering again
The Balkans are back in the news again – Kosovo is set to declare independence, Serbian paramilitaries are threatening to ‘protect’ the province, in Bosnia people are said to be stockpiling food in fear of a resurgence of violence. I recently went to Serbia soon after a fairly prolonged trip to Iraq and Afghanistan and […]
Are We There Yet? Travels with My Frontline Family
Rosie Whitehouse’s account of motherhood is about uneasy juxtapositions: “The sun is shining and it’s exceptionally warm. How can a war start today?” It’s about exploring identity: “Suddenly, I realise I have come to Berlin to find out what really matters when you fall in love with and have children with someone from a different […]
Man with four lungs
The Serbs have a particular way of describing someone who lives life to the full. They say: “He moves with four lungs.” Tom certainly moved with four lungs in Serbia, where he did a lot of his best work – but also had plenty of fun along the way. Milena, his wife, asked me to […]
Another bloody love letter
The Balkans international press corps in the nineties had its fair share of haunted characters. Sitting around in Sarajevo or Vitez of an evening as slivovitz melted inhibitions and loosened tongues it seemed that almost everyone present was on the run from something. Even among this slightly self-conscious Legion of the Damned Anthony Loyd stood […]