Visiting Filmmakers Series: (T)Error: Free screening and Q&A with filmmaker Lyric Cabral: 11/11 at 4:30pm JCC

Visiting Filmmakers Series: (T)Error: Free screening and Q&A with filmmaker Lyric Cabral: 11/11 at 4:30pm JCC

Who is watching the watchers?

 

(T)Error

Wednesday 11 November at 4:30pm

Johnson Center Cinema

Free screening and discussion with Lyric R. Cabral

  


(T)Error
is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of Saeed "Shariff" Torres, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them. Taut, stark, and controversial, (T)Error illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America, and asks who is watching the watchers?

(T)Error won the Special Jury Prize for Break Out First Feature at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Full Frame Documentary Festival.

The film has won the 2015 Emerging Filmmakers Award from the International Documentary Association. 

On November 4, the film was nominated for the International Documentary Association's ABC News VideoSource Award, which recognizes compelling use of news footage in documentary filmmaking. 

When the film began showing at festivals, it attracted attention from the FBI. According to the New York Times, following "a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, a man who identified himself as a counterterrorism agent for the F.B.I. introduced himself" to Lyric Cabral. “I asked him how he liked the film,” Ms. Cabral said. “He said ‘liked’ was not the best word but it was educational.” For a time, the FBI's "interest" not only "made it difficult [for the filmmakers] to obtain what’s known as errors and omissions insurance," but it also generated concern over that interest's "chilling effect." As Let the Fire Burn director and GMU Visiting Filmmakers Series alum Jason Osder writes, the effect is "not censorship per se, but a climate of fear, instilled by authoritarianism, bad policy and a lack of accountability, which can render filmmakers and distributors risk-averse. This needs to be discussed alongside [Laura] Poitras' recent lawsuit brought against the US government for a consistent pattern of detainment, searches and harassment when entering the country over the course of six years."

(T)Error did obtain insurance and opened at New York's IFC Theater in October. Still, the experience only underlines the film's essential question: who's watching the watchers? 


Lyric R. Cabral
is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker committed to reporting stories seldom seen. Cabral studied visual journalism at Rochester Institute of Technology and the International Center of Photography. Her documentary work has been supported by artist grants from the BBC, ITVS, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, Chicken and Egg Pictures, the Smithsonian Institution Photography Initiative, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund.

"One of the conversations that I hope (T)Error inspires is highlighting the personal nature of FBI surveillance. It is important to note that FBI informants are selectively paired with investigative targets based on shared commonalities... The FBI will hire Black informants to target Black people engaged in social movements, such as the national Say Her Name and Black Lives Matter movements." - Lyric Cabral (May 29, 2015) 

See MSNBC report on Lyric Cabral and the film here. 

 
Special guest Jason Osder will facilitate our Q&A. Jason is the director and producer of the award-winning documentary Let the Fire Burn, assistant professor at The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, and a partner at Amigo Media, a color-correction, postproduction, and training company. In August, he wrote an essay on journalistic freedom and legal challenges for documentary filmmakers, "WTF! Will '(T)ERROR' Be Seen?"
 
 

(T)Error and Lyric R. Cabral at GMU is sponsored by Film and Media Studies, Film and Video Studies, and African and African American Studies. Co-sponsored by Communication, Cultural Studies, DKA, English, Global Interdisciplinary Programs, History, Middle East Studies, ODIME, Photography, School of Art, Women and Gender Studies, and University Life.

This event is free and open to the public. 

 
Information: gmufams@gmail.com
or
Rebekah Mejorado
Phone : 703-993-5158
Email: rmejorad@gmu.edu