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A documentary about the award-winning photographer Jason P Howe focuses on the motivation behind the seeming heroism of working on the frontlines

British-born freelance photographer Jason P Howe opens up to director Harold Monfils’s camera about the highs and lows of his career, shooting war zones and living large in this guts-and-glory work of non-fiction. Although his early years and background are only glancingly referred to (he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, which he claims stops him from fearing death; his brother Andrew is a soldier), this pacey documentary covers the main points, such as how he was inspired by the work of Vietnam war photographer Tim Page (also interviewed here) and ended up among the Farc rebels in Colombia. This is where he had a relationship with a local woman named Marilyn, who turned out to be a professional assassin, which led to a degree of fame after their story was published,...

In 1995 and 1997, Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. had Heat and Jackie Brown released into cinemas. Not his best films or his best performances, perhaps, but mesmerising work in excellent pictures directed by master filmmakers: the former saw him convince for Michael Mann as the cool, meticulous leader of a gang of career criminals; the latter had Quentin Tarantino give viewers a dim crim whose uncontrollable anger contributes to the unravelling of a heist.

For a whole generation of moviegoers who have grown up since, however, the adulation that's universally showered upon De Niro must be perplexing. Occasionally he summons up a portion of his old intensity – his turns in What Just Happened, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle are the (slim) picks of the last 15 years – but for anyone who got into movies from the late '90s on, he's the funny guy in Analyze This and Meet The Parents,...

This is a tough awards season! Lots of great movies to see, so little time! I'm catching up like crazy before we vote for the Critics' Choice Movie Awards for the Broadcast Film Critics Association. So I apologize if I haven't updated you with the latest on the awards season 2013-2014! And there were many award-giving bodies announcing nominations.

We already told you about the Rome Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards, now let's talk about the 2013 Gotham Awards, the Ida Documentary Awards, the Cinema Eye, and the Producers Guild announcing its best documentary choices.

First stop, we have the 2013 Gotham Awards where Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" topped the nominations with three nods including best feature, best actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor and breakthrough actor for Lupita Nyong'o.

Winners will be announced on Dec. 2nd where Richard Linklater, Forest Whitaker, and Katherine Oliver (head of the NYC...

There won't be a second season of Witness on HBO, at least for the forseeable future.

Produced by directors Michael Mann and David Frankham, the HBO series follows young combat photojournalists as they document conflicts in Brazil, Mexico, Libya, and Uganda.

At the TCA Summer Press Tour, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said there are no plans to make a second season of Witness right now. However, the cable channel may revisit the possibility once Mann is finished working on his current feature film.

Lombardo noted, "If he finds something interesting, exciting and fresh, we'll do it. If not we'll do something else with Michael."

What do you think? Did you enjoy Witness on HBO? Would you like to see the series return someday?...

HBO has developed some of the best content in the history of television. It happened to develop a series so incredible and powerful that I found myself engrossed in literally every second of every episode. That series was Witness, a 4-part documentary on conflict photographers all over the world.

Unquestionably, the series' most impressive photojournalist is Eros Hoagland, whose father was a photographer in South America. His father served as loose inspiration for the James Woods character in Oliver Stone's Salvador. Hoagland, like his father, found himself drawn to South America and Mexico, where his images tell the story of drugs, violence and the uglier side of the human condition.

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It seems it has been forever and then some since we last saw a film from Michael Mann. Since directing 2009's Public Enemies, Mann produced his daughter's film, Texas Killing Fields, the now canceled HBO show "Luck" and the HBO documentary series "Witness". A Blu-ray edition of his 1999 thriller The Insider recently debuted, but new work from Mann has been hard to find. That will change soon enough. Details on his upcoming cyber-thriller starring Chris Hemsworth (The Avengers) has recently emerged with The Hollywood Reporter saying it will revolve around a U.S.-China task force pursuing a hacker hailing from the Balkans and based in a Southeast Asian country. Rumor has it Mann has been scouting locations in Hong Kong and meeting with talent including the likes of Tang Wei (Lust, Caution), Shawn Yue Man-lok (Infernal Affairs) and Nick Cheung Ka-fai (Election). The film is being produced by Legendary...

DVD Release Date: May 7, 2013

Price: DVD $19.98

Studio: HBO/Warner

Witness: A World in Conflict Through A Lens

Witness: A World in Conflict Through A Lens is a four-part HBO Documentary Films TV miniseries that examines present-day conflict zones in Mexico, Libya, South Sudan and Brazil, as shown through the lenses of three war photographers.

Some of the world’s most dangerous places are never declared war zones, but cities and regions where drug trafficking, poverty, gang violence, political corruption and ethnic warfare have combined to create the most violent hotspots on Earth. Only a handful of photojournalists remain in these zones major news organizations have left, armed with just their cameras, to document what’s happening and attempt to make sense of the complicated issues that perpetuate in these locations. Witness follows three young combat photographers—Eros Hoagland, who explores the gang-and-drug related violence in both Juarez, Mexico and Rio de Janeiro,...

Chicago – There are still a stunning number of films from the ’90s and ’00s not on Blu-ray but Bvhe recently corrected one of those oversights by releasing the stellar “The Insider,” one of the best films of arguably the best year for cinema in the last two decades — 1999. In a year that included “Magnolia,” “American Beauty,” “The Matrix,” “Three Kings,” “Fight Club,” “Toy Story 2,” “The Iron Giant.” “All About My Mother,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Election,” “Being John Malkovich,” and many more, “The Insider” went overlooked by too many people and certainly by history. With perfect technical elements, stunning performances, and perfect direction by the great Michael Mann, this is a spectacular film.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

The film has actually been digitally restored, not just transferred to the HD form, and it looks great. I forgot how detailed Dante Spinotti’s Oscar-nominated work was here or how tight William Goldenberg’s editing (he...

"Witness," HBO's recent documentary series about photojournalists working in conflict zones around the globe, premiered the final of its four installments on Monday, with an hour spent following photojournalist Eros Hoagland as he explored the battles between favela gangs, police and monied forces making land grabs in Rio de Janeiro. The series offers an unsettlingly beautiful and intriguingly subjective viewpoint on a set of complicated contemporary struggles, from the cartel-fueled violence in Ciudad Juárez to the battles with the Lord's Resistance Army in South Sudan and internecine warring in Libya. Executive produced by filmmakers Michael Mann and David Frankham (who directed three of the four episodes), the "Witness" docs are haunted by the death of the late photojournalist and "Restrepo" co-director Tim Hetherington, whom Mann met during the 2010 awards season and who was slated to direct and serve as the on-camera...

Another one of Meryl Streep’s daughters is heading for the small screen.

EW has confirmed that Grace Gummer, the third of four children Streep has with artist Don Gummer, has been cast on HBO’s Newsroom in a recurring role.

She will play a reporter embedded with Mitt Romney’s campaign in the second season of the show, which will also feature appearances from Patton Oswalt and Rosemarie DeWitt.

The second eldest Gummer, Mamie, is currently the star of CW’s Emily Owen M.D.

Related:

Aaron Sorkin, certified Internet hater, finally joins Twitter

Michael Mann, David Frankham talk...

The Internet may be taking its toll on print journalism, but war photography is alive and well. Last week, Michael Mann (The Insider, Ali, Heat) and documentary director David Frankham launched a four-part documentary series on HBO called Witness, which follows seasoned war photographers through some of the most dangerous conflict zones on earth. Eros Hoagland, whose father was killed during his own work as a war photographer, takes viewers to Juarez, Mexico, and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; French photojournalist Veronique de Viguerie, notorious for embedding with the Taliban, leads us through the jungles of South Sudan; and Michael Christopher Brown,...

The news media hasn't been in good shape in the past few years, particularly when it comes to on the ground, investigative journalism. Dwindling budgets, an audience shift from newspapers and television to the internet, and some would argue a lack of drive from the media themselves to do hard reporting, has made it a grim time to be involved in the industry. But as producer and director David Frankham told us recently, he hopes that the HBO series "Witness" (also produced by Michael Mann), is able to enact the kind of change that the classic reportage of "60 Minutes" managed to achieve. And while it doesn't quite go that far, "Witness" is an eye-opening, riveting look at conflicts raging around the world, and the complex and mostly ignored narratives that are unfolding. Airing this past Monday, "Juarez" was essentially the test model for the series, and it shows. It runs...

HBO’s four-part documentary series Witness, about combat photographers, is harrowing and ambitious. Executive produced by filmmaker Michael Mann (Heat, Miami Vice) and documentarian David Frankham (who helmed three of the four episodes), the series explores war-torn nations via striking images (both still and video) and sketches portraits of photographers. It’s powerful and illuminating in some ways and unsatisfying in others.Tonight’s premiere, “Juarez,” is unfortunately the weakest of the episodes. Its view of drug violence in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, feels both reportorial and impressionistic. The images, dialogue, location sound, and pop soundtrack merge into a trancelike whole. You know where you are, and yet you don’t know where you are. Then the episode’s subject, photographer Eros Hoagland, and various on-the-scene participants give you a few appalling tidbits: The war has claimed 100 Mexican soldiers and 19,000 civilians. The Mexican army may be responsible for the vast majority of killings,...

Everyday, from the around the world, we receive images in our newspapers, magazines, inboxes and online articles dispatched from some of the most dangerous places on Earth. Usually accompanied by an article or text giving an overview of the situation from whatever far flung place the pictures are coming from, we're usually on to the rest of our day before that image has a chance to linger. And given that the media tends to work in cycles, while situations in places that made headlines months ago may still be evolving, reporters in general are on to the next thing. But that's where "Witness" comes in. The four-part series starting this week on HBO is executive produced by Michael Mann and David Frankham, and it takes viewers right on the ground with three seasoned photojournalists: Eros Hoagland ("Juarez" and "Rio"), Michael Christopher Brown ("Libya") and Veronique de Viguerie ("South Sudan"). Immersive and powerful,...

The historically significant work of groundbreaking war photographers like Roger Fenton, Alexander Gardner, Robert Capa and Joe Rosenthal has been widely documented, but the names of their modern-day counterparts are less well-known. The exceptions tend to be photoreporters killed in action, like Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who lost their lives in a 2011 attack in Misrata, Libya. That incident provides the background for one of the four episodes in Witness, a visceral HBO Documentary miniseries executive produced by Michael Mann and David Frankham. Directed by Abdallah Omeish, Witness: Libya premiered and was reviewed this summer at the

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HBO Documentary Films has sent us along the trailer, poster as well as images from Witness: Juarez, a four-part documentary series from award-winning filmmaker Michael Mann. The film follows combat photographer Eros Hoagland as he explores Juarez, Mexico, the "murder capital of the world" where drug violence has left over 10,000 dead. Presented in four parts – Juarez, Libya, South Sudan and Rio – Witness focuses on three determined photojournalists: Eros Hoagland, who explores the gang- and drug-related violence in both Juarez, Mexico and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Michael Christopher Brown, who chronicles escalating ethnic tensions in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster last year in Libya; and Véronique de Viguerie, who follows the “Arrow Boys” and their struggle against General Kony in South Sudan. Between these three, their photos have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Paris Match, The Guardian and many other publications.

HBO Documentary Films has sent us along the trailer, poster as well as images from Witness: Juarez, a four-part documentary series from award-winning filmmaker Michael Mann. The film follows combat photographer Eros Hoagland as he explores Juarez, Mexico, the "murder capital of the world" where drug violence has left over 10,000 dead. Presented in four parts – Juarez, Libya, South Sudan and Rio – Witness focuses on three determined photojournalists: Eros Hoagland, who explores the gang- and drug-related violence in both Juarez, Mexico and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Michael Christopher Brown, who chronicles escalating ethnic tensions in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster last year in Libya; and Véronique de Viguerie, who follows the “Arrow Boys” and their struggle against General Kony in South Sudan. Between these three, their photos have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Paris Match, The Guardian and many other publications.

HBO is exploring drugs wars, ethnic tensions, gang violence and more with “Witness,” a four-part documentary series from award-winning filmmaker Michael Mann. The first part of the series, “Witness: Juarez,” debuts Monday, November 5 at 9/8c. Combat photographer Eros Hoagland takes on Juarez, Mexico, known as the “murder capital of the world,” a place where drug violence has caused over 10,000 deaths. The other three parts of the documentary focus on Libya, South Sudan and Rio. Including Hoagland, who also takes on gang- and drug-related violence in Rio de Janiero, other photojournalists are exploring some of the most dangerous places to uncover the truth behind the violence. Michael Christopher Brown [ Read More ]

The post Learn About Some Of The World’s Dangerous Hotspots With HBO’s Witness appeared first on Shockya.com.

Witness brings together Michael Mann and documentary filmmaker David Frankham. Luck executive producer man is set to collaborate on the new series which looks at the role of photographers in zones of conflict like Uganda, Libya, Mexico and Brazil. Variety reports that Mann teamed with documentarian David Frankham on the project, which has so far shot one episode in Juarez Mexico, with the other three in production. Mann stated that he and Frankham "share an admiration for combat photography that captures the universal -- and sometimes the indescribable -- in a single frame in the midst of chaos and danger."...