The Ask

In this episode of The Ask filmmakers Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger discuss their work on Totally Under Control.

About the film:

TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL – Official Trailer

Learn more here:

https://neonrated.com/films/totally-under-control

Our Episode Guests:

Filmmaker Alex Gibney

Filmmaker Alex Gibney won the Oscar in 2008 for Taxi to the Dark Side, an investigative documentary film that explored the American military’s use of torture in the War on Terror, by focusing on the unsolved murder of an Afghan taxi driver.

He was nominated for an Oscar in 2005 for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary that explores the fall of the Enron Corporation, one of the most shocking examples of modern corporate corruption in America.

And he has gone on to win multiple awards for films he has both directed and produced under the label of his production company, Jigsaw Productions. He has been called “the most important documentarian of our time” by Esquire Magazine and “one of America’s most successful and prolific documentary filmmakers” by The New York Times.

Filmmaker Ophelia Harutyunyan

Ophelia Harutyunyan is an Armenian filmmaker and longtime veteran of Jigsaw Productions. She served as the associate producer on the Emmy-nominated documentary for HBO, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley – and Citizen K for Amazon.

This year, in addition to her directing contributions to Totally Under Control, Ophelia produced Crazy Not Insane, a documentary for HBO that explores the work of psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, and her unique and controversial views on serial killers and the death penalty.

Filmmaker Suzanne Hillinger

Suzanne Hillinger is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on FX, Hulu, Discovery Channel, PBS, Viceland, CNN and MSNBC.  Among her intensive credits is the Emmy-nominated feature documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, which opened the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

More recently Suzanne directed episodes of the New York Times documentary series, The Weekly, for FX and Hulu, and her episode investigating the New York City taxi medallion bubble won a 2020 News and Documentary Emmy and was part of the series that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting.

Lastly, this episode would not have been possible without my neighbor here in Santa Fe, Baro Shalizi. Just prior to this interview, the internet went out in my area and Bero very generously invited me to conduct the interview from the dining room of his beautiful home. This interview would not have been possible without his help, I would like to thank Bero for his welcome assistance.

Lastly, I dedicate this episode, all past episodes and all future episodes to my mother, Khaleda Maiwand Azimi. This podcast would not have been possible without her love and encouragement and indeed, she never fails to comment on the YouTube uploads for this series – and I appreciate will forever treasure each of them.

This podcast series is for her.

In this episode of The Ask filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky discusses his work on Strange Cities Are Not Familiar and the South London Gallery Film School

You can watch the film for free here:

Learn more about the South London Gallery Film School here:

https://www.southlondongallery.org/education/recreative/

Our Episode Guest:

Filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky

Saeed Taji Farouky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and artist specializing in long-term human rights projects. His latest documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year won the Amnesty International Award and the Audience Choice Panorama Award at Berlinale 2015. In 2011, he was named a Senior TED Fellow, and he was previously named Artist-In-Residence at the British Museum and Tate Britain. He has been a regular human rights speaker and educator with Amnesty International for 10 years and has been teaching filmmaking and cinematography since 2009.

In this episode of The Ask filmmaker Nick Quested discusses his work on Blood on the Wall

About the film:

Blood On The Wall | Trailer

Learn more here:

https://films.nationalgeographic.com/blood-on-the-wall

Our Episode Guest:

Filmmaker Nick Quested

Nick Quested is executive director and owner of Goldcrest Films, where he has built one of the world’s premiere documentary brands and won two Emmy® Awards for his work. Quested has produced over 35 films, including Sebastian Junger’s “The Last Patrol,” “Korengal,” the PGA- and two-time Emmy-nominated “Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington” and the Oscar®-nominated “Restrepo.” Quested is also an award-winning music video director who has worked with such artists as Dr. Dre, Nas, Puffy, Sting, Master P, Cash Money and Trick Daddy.

In this episode of The Ask author Elliot Ackerman discusses his work on Green on Blue

About the Book:

Aziz and his older brother Ali live in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Their family is poor, but inside their mud-walled home, they have stability, love, and routine.

But when a convoy of armed men suddenly arrives in the village, their parents disappear and their world is shattered.

In order to ensure his and his brother’s survival, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar – a US-funded militia hungry for Afghan recruits. No longer a boy, but not yet a man, Aziz struggles to understand his place in a conflict both savage and entirely contrived.

Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother – and a young woman he comes to love – in jeopardy?

Green on Blue is a gripping debut novel, and an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination about boys caught in a deadly conflict.

Our Episode Guest:

Author Elliot Ackerman

Elliot Ackerman served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. A former White House Fellow, his essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone, among others. He currently lives in Istanbul where he writes on the Syrian Civil War. Green on Blue is his first published novel.

In this episode of The Ask author Michael Sullivan discusses his work on Not Our Day to Die: Testimony From the Guatemalan Jungle

About the Book:

In the farming communities of the Guatemalan jungle, the simple life was a good one, sustained by family, faith, community, and the pilots—like Mike Sullivan—who linked their isolated villages.

Then the repression began, the random, violent government purges—aided by the U.S. military and CIA—that wiped out crops and villages and forced men, women, and children into desperate lives of hiding in the dense jungle—for sixteen long years.

When peace accords finally were signed, it was a story Sullivan knew had to be told. Returning once again, he talked with the people he’d known long before—giving us the fascinating, painful, but most of all, deeply human tales of strength and survival that fill this book.

Our Episode Guest:

Author Michael Sullivan

Born and raised in northwestern Illinois, Michael Sullivan studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado following a tour of duty in Vietnam. In 1972, he got a pilot’s license and traveled south, meeting Father Bill Woods in Guatemala, flying for the land reform project that was reshaping the Ixcan region, and meeting the people he later interviewed for this book.

Sometimes it’s said in the foreign service that one’s first overseas posting is the one that stays in the heart. For Sullivan, that has been true of the Ixcan; he’s been back time and time again. Though he has been called a pilot-anthropologist, he says instead that, “I was simply a good listener, interacting with the people of Ixcan who had become trusted friends over a period of forty years.”

Early in his flying days, he sought to become an airline pilot, and asked a friend working in the industry for a reference. The friend refused, saying he saw someone who would be driven crazy by the monotony of flying the same route over and over. Instead, Sullivan embraced his love of adventure and began exploring the world. He drove a small Honda motorcycle down to Guatemala, where he first began work as a bush pilot.

He has since taken his love of flying around the world, working throughout Central America, Alaska, Indonesia, and Africa—including many years with Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Cousteau Society.

He and his equally adventurous—and eternally patient—wife, Tina, have passed on their love of adventure and appreciation of different cultures to their five children. His work as a pilot, in addition to being something he loves, has also enabled him to bring positive change to the world as a humanitarian and environmentalist. He has quietly worked as a documentary photographer, videographer, and photojournalist throughout his life to protect and support the communities and environment of the places he’s come to love.

He is the author, with photojournalist Tony O’Brien, of Afghan Dreams, a book of haunting images and interviews with Afghan children talking about their lives, fears, and dreams.

Sullivan lives now in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In the inaugural episode of The Ask: Professor Thongchai Winichakul, Professor Clare Veal and journalist Teirra Kamolvattanavith come together to assess the history and consequences of the Thammasat University massacre through the lens of a Pulitzer prize winning photograph – and beyond.

Our Episode Guests:

Professor Thongchai Winichakul, Professor Emeritus, Department of History. University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Professor Thongchai Winichakul’sbook, Siam Mapped (1994) was awarded the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies (USA) and the Grand Prize from the Asian Affairs Research Council (Japan). Professor Winichakul was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Award in 1994 and elected the President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2013/14.

His research interests are in cultural and intellectual history of Siam including nationalism, modern geography and cartography, and historical knowledge, especially the intellectual foundation of modern Siam (1880 to 1930). He has published eight books and several articles in Thai, including many political and social commentaries.

This past March, 2020  Professor Winichakul published his latest book, titled Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok.

In this book he explores a 40 year old massacre (that he survived) ―its victims and how the Thai people coped when closure was unavailable in the wake of atrocity. Most of all, this provocative book makes clear the need to provide a place for past wrongs in the public memory. Please visit this link to preview this book and get your own copy in a number of formats:

Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok

Professor Clare Veal. Lecturer, MA Asian Art Histories, LaSalle College of the Arts.

A lecturer in the MA Asian Art Histories programme at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, Clare received her PhD from the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney for her thesis entitled, ‘Thainess Framed: Photography and Thai Identity, 1946-2010.’

She undertakes research on Southeast Asian photography, art and visual culture, with a particular focus on Thailand. Her more recent work is informed by questions of sexual difference, subjectivity and agency.

Clare was the sub-editor for Asian Art for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (2016) and is currently an editorial collective member for Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, a scholarly journal published by NUS Press.

She has contributed papers to publications including, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Afterall and Trans-Asia Photography Review. She has also co-curated exhibitions such as, ‘Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: Storytellers of the Town’, which was held at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, University of Sydney Gallery and Drill Hall Gallery in 2014.

From 2015-16, Clare was a participant in the Power Institute’s ‘Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art’ research program, funded by the Getty Foundation. Since 2017, Clare has been co-convener for a series of events and publications organized under the auspices of the Gender in Southeast Asian Art Research Network.

Teirra Kamolvattanavith, Journalist & Multimedia Producer at https://thisrupt.co/

AKA “Yam” Teirrais a multimedia journalist/ producer covering a wide range of topics including human rights, politics, culture and crime. In 2019, her video report on Thailand’s plastic pollution crisis was named the Best Single News Story in the country by the Asian Academy Creative Awards.

You can learn more about the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Neal Ulevich here:

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/colle…

You can check out the music video by RAP (Rap Against Dictatorship) here:

RAP AGAINST DICTATORSHIP – ประเทศกูมี

https://youtu.be/VZvzvLiGUtw