Zelenskyy at Cannes, Media on Shootings

“Hundreds of people are dying today. Is cinema going to stay out of it?” demanded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Sitting at a large desk clad in olive green military fatigues with the Ukrainian flag on screen left, Zelenskyy addressed the international crowd of film directors, actors, producers, publicists, and critics attending the May 17 opening night ceremony at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès at the 75th Annual Cannes Film Festival via live feed.

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Director Patricia Zimmermann dissects the convergences of Hollywood blockbusters with auteurist art cinema, business, arts, and politics, that occurs at world class film festivals such as Cannes.

This confection is less about the politics or positions of a film festival, but instead, about festivals as nodal points for the convergence of the local and global, commerce and art, political struggles and the narcissism of star culture.

This year Cannes was no exception to these boomerangs between politics and art, tentpoles and Zooms.

Read Zimmermann’s full commentary on The Edge.

On May 24, a shooter in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two adults, just 10 days after a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people and injured three others. Another mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killed five people including the shooter on June 1, the 20th since May 24.

A familiar news cycle has unfolded, rife with “the sickening mix of shock and familiarity that usually follows a mass shooting,” as Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop wrote, and independent news outlets have emphasized the deadly results of lax gun laws, widespread gun ownership, and belligerent politicians and media.

Read the full report on The Edge.

The National Rifle Association held its annual conference in Houston on Friday, just three days after and 300 miles away from the May 24 mass shooting of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Former President Donald Trump spoke at the convention, alongside other high-profile Republicans, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Several politicians slated to speak did not attend the convention, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Protesters gathered outside the convention center in what CNN called “the tale of two Americas.” The demonstrators chanted alongside Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke while holding anti-NRA signs and displaying photos of shooting victims.

Read the full report on The Edge.

Historian and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Thomas Zimmer posted a Twitter thread on May 28 in response to a piece published by Madison.com that covered Senator Ron Johnson’s comments on critical race theory and his believed connection between “wokeness” and gun violence in the United States.

“This perfectly captures the state of the political discourse on the Right,” Zimmer said. “It’s a massive problem that much of the established media will keep pretending these are serious people because they feel the need to uphold the myth that there are two roughly equivalent sides/parties.

“Since mainstream journalism is predicated on the idea that politics is a game between two teams that are essentially the same and journalists aspire to ‘neutrality,’ which they define as equidistance from either side, whatever comes from the GOP has to be elevated to credibility.”

Read more from Zimmer here.

On April 26, 2022, the Park Center for Independent Media hosted the 14th annual Izzy Award ceremony. This year’s award, named after legendary dissident journalist I.F. Stone, honored five news organizations and journalists that represent outstanding achievement in independent media from 2021.

Jeff Cohen, founding director of PCIM, introduced reporter Greg B. Smith of THE CITY. Smith’s investigations uncovered the negligence of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which has led to a long history of dangerous living conditions, disrepair, and lead poisoning. Smith said “One of the major issues I ran into while poking into this story was the issue of lead paint” in apartments that were considered to be lead free.

Smith said, “If I continued to stay in mainstream media — what I call hedge-fund media — I would have never been able to write that story. The nonprofit entity that I now work for is a phenomenal platform to get this news out there.” He later talked about gaining the trust of his sources, saying, “Marginalized people who don’t have a huge megaphone to get their voices heard — talking to them, you realize they’ve been dying to talk to somebody because nobody listens to them.”

Watch Smith’s remarks at the Izzy Award here.

As ticket sales for “Top Gun: Maverick” rocketed over Memorial Day weekend, the Los Angeles Times published an Op-Ed by filmmaker Roger Stahl, who laid out the premise for his new documentary “Theaters of War.”

“In the past five years,” Stahl writes, “my small group of researchers has acquired 30,000 pages of internal Defense Department documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and newly available archives at Georgetown University, which show that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions about the government’s reach at a time when deciphering propaganda from fact has become increasingly difficult.”

Stahl concludes: “If we’re to truly honor the ideals veterans fought and died for, we shouldn’t allow the military to wage a stealth propaganda campaign on an unsuspecting public by commandeering the world’s largest entertainment industry.”

1. The rise of the AR-15: Why America is defending a ‘weapon of war’ | The Independent

2. Our Narrative of Mass Shootings Is Killing Us | The Atlantic

3. Senators See ‘Growing Momentum’ For Bipartisan Deal On Gun Legislation | HuffPost

4. Oklahoma hospital shooting: Four dead after gunman targets doctor | BBC

5. Global heating is turning white Alps green, study finds | The Guardian