The Frontline Club

Our planet is going through the most rapid phase of urbanization in its history. Already more than half of humanity lives in urban areas. By 2050, that number will be closer to two thirds. Ninety 90 percent of this increase is expected to happen in Asia and Africa.

But rapid urban growth is a challenge for cities everywhere – from the effects of climate change and natural disasters to mass migration, urban sprawl, pollution and lack of affordable housing.

During an evening of film screenings and discussion, we explored these tensions and what solutions can be found to make cities places that leave no one behind and that are a joy to live in for everyone.

The evening began with the screening of two recent films made by PLACE, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s website covering land and property rights stories around the world.

Film 1 – Falling Freetown

“Falling Freetown” looks at Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in the wake of last year’s landslide that claimed the lives of about 1,000 people, a disaster many said was waiting to happen due to poor urban planning combined with rapid migration, deforestation, and freak weather events linked to climate change.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266505415/4f76fbd4df

Film 2 – Urban Nomads

“Urban Nomads” looks at the challenges facing Mongolia’s herding community and the mass migration from rural areas into the capital Ulaanbaatar as climate change and socio-economic changes force people into the city.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266537726

A panel discussion with urban experts explored the themes raised in the films and discuss solutions that turn these challenges into opportunities for cities.

Chair: Astrid Zweynert is an award-winning journalist, editor of PLACE and social media specialist. Astrid drives coverage and production of Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global news services covering humanitarian crises, human rights and social innovation for the foundation’s website and the Reuters global newswire.

Speakers: Sarah Colenbrander is a Senior Researcher on urban issues at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Her areas of expertise include financing urban infrastructure, urban governance for inclusion and sustainability, and climate and energy policy in urban areas. She is also Global Programme Lead and Senior Economist at the Coalition for Urban Transitions, a network of research, government and private sector organisations. In addition to academic publications, she has contributed to World Bank, New Climate Economy and UN Environment reports and is Associate Editor for the journal ‘Environment and Urbanization’. She is also a guest lecturer at the University of Oxford, University College London and University of Manchester.

Anna Locke – Head of Programme of Agricultural Development and Policy at ODI (The Overseas Development Institute). Her work focuses on land governance and large-scale investment, biofuels and food security.

Euphemia Sydney-Davies is a Sierra Leonean fashion designer and founder of the Sydney-Davies label who is passionate about ethical and sustainable fashion. Instead of outsourcing work to India or China, she set up a small tailoring workshop in Freetown, where she trains local men and women how to make garments for her clothing ranges. After the mudslide Sydney-Davies went home to help her people and raised funds in the UK, where she is based, to assist those most affected.

Charles Landry is an author, speaker and international adviser on the future of cities. He is best known for popularising the Creative City concept. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organisations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities.

“A Cambodian Spring” is an intimate and unique portrait of three people caught up in the chaotic and often violent development that is shaping modern-day Cambodia. Shot over 6 years, the film charts the growing wave of land-rights protests that led to the ‘Cambodian Spring’ and the tragic events that followed. This film is about the complexities – both political and personal, of fighting for what you believe in.

A Cambodian Spring won the Special Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs 2017 and Best Documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival 2017.

Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of Little Ease Films. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper and in 2014 produced an award-winning undercover investigation into slavery in the Thai fishing industry. His work has taken him as far afield as South Sudan, Burma, the Philippines, Laos and Thailand. He is currently developing an animated feature film about slavery in the Thai fishing industry, and a Virtual Reality computer game about slavery and migration.

Venerable Sovath

Venerable Sovath is a main protagonist in the film. He is a Buddhist monk from Chi Kreng commune, Siem Reap province, a human rights defender and a representative for the disenfranchised Chi Kreng community. He also writes and compiles documentaries, songs and poetry in order to promote human rights.

Juliana Ruhfus

Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and interactive producer. She currently works as the the senior reporter for Al Jazeera English’s “People & Power” strand. Juliana joined Al Jazeera English in early 2006 and was part of the team that launched and defined the new channel and the People & Power strand in particular. In November that year her film about Liberian ex-combatants was chosen to introduce the channel’s programming content the day the channel went on air. Nearly 40 films later she has gone undercover in Turkmenistan and in Cambodian orphanages, produced the five part “Corporations on Trial” series, and her two-part investigation into the trafficking of Nigerian women for the Italian sex-trade is one of the most-watched People & Power episodes ever. In 2013 Juliana was named as one of the top 100 journalists covering armed violence by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

Join Times war correspondent Anthony Loyd and journalist and writer Jon Swain as they explored Loyd’s two year investigation into tracking down the stories behind the Vietnam War veterans photographed by Sir Don McCullin in 1968, the turning point of the war.

The war in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian army has killed more than 10,000 people over four years, and peace remains a distant prospect. Despite the violence and poverty though, civilians in the war zone try to live as normal a life as possible. We explore how everyday living continues in the middle of a war zone by screening “Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery” followed by a Q&A with the film makers.

In the frontline town of Marinka, a new bakery has opened which brings some comfort and sustenance to war-weary locals. The film follows the people who run the bakery and the customers, as they struggle to gain a sense of normality among the rumble of war.

Chair

Roland Oliphant is a Senior Foreign correspondent to the Telegraph and until recently covered Russia and the former Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine.

Speakers

Albina Kovalyova (producer / director) – is an independent documentary producer/director, with extensive experience of covering the Ukrainian conflict from both sides of the line for major global television channels including NBC, Channel 4, BBC World and Al Jazeera. Her other documentary work includes films about the Belarus Free Theatre, Nenets Reindeer herders in Russia’s Arctic region, and Ukraine’s Aids Epidemic for the BBC, and an independent documentary about the Dau film set in Kharkiv. She is fully bilingual in Russian and English and has dual nationality.

Lucy Ash (presenter)– is an awarding-winning broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a BBC correspondent, presenter and senior producer. Her most recent work includes: Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery (Radio 4, World Service and BBC World TV) a radio documentary and film about a new bakery in the town of Marinka, Eastern Ukraine, which is bringing some comfort and sustenance to the local people amidst the trauma of war; The Red and the White (BBC World Service, BBC Russian) a three part radio series on the Allied Intervention in North Russia at the end of WWI;Russia’s Exit Dilemma (Radio 3, World Service) in which Ash meets emigres, exiles and staunch remainers in London and Berlin, Moscow and St Petersburg to weigh up the prospects for the young and ambitious in today’s Russia. Other works by Lucy Ash includes Putin’s Park, Rebooting Rural Russia and Extreme Selfies – Russian Style, amongst many others. Ash’s freelance work outside of the BBC, includes the Guardian, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. A half hour film When the West Invaded Russia, by Lucy Ash is due to be broadcast in March 2018.

Dr Anna Matveeva is a visiting research fellow at Kings College London. She is a member of the Russia and Eurasia Security research group. Her work specialises in conflict studies and developmental aspects of international peace building. The geographical remit of her interests covers conflicts in the Ukraine, the North and South Caucasus, and in Central Asia. Most recently, she has published a book, Through Times of Trouble: Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine Explained from Within (Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Politics) based on first hand accounts of participants themselves.

The Frontline Club hosted a Q&A after screening Land of Mine to discuss how landmine clearance allows countries to recover from war.

The film tells the little-known story of how Europe was cleared of landmines at the end of World War II. Its contemporary relevance is that today, across the globe, millions of people continue to suffer because of landmines that were planted in conflicts that ended 30 or 40 years ago.

We were joined by Mikael Christian Rieks, the Producer of Land of Mine, and James Cowan, CEO of the world’s largest humanitarian mine clearance organisation The HALO Trust. It was moderated by Thorold Barker, Editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa for the Wall Street Journal.

Where does decent patriotism end and ugly nationalism begin? Is any form of nationalism, however mild, an anachronism in an inter-connected world? Or is it part of the glue that holds society together? How do we fight the upswing in contemporary nationalism? Just how necessary is national fellow feeling in the twenty-first century?

To discuss these questions the Frontline Club hosted a discussion between the author and columnist, Zoe Williams, and Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London and author of the forthcoming book: Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. The debate was chaired by Toby Mundy, Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize.

Britain plays a central role in the global financial system, for good and ill. Our financial services are a major employer and tax-payer, but they also enable globalized corruption: according to the National Crime Agency, at least 100 billion pounds worth of illicit money flows through our institutions every year. Much of this money is corruptly acquired from some of the world’s poorest countries and, indeed, much of it ends up buying top end real estate, and luxury goods from the London’s finest brokers.

Kleptoscope 9 looked at what the government is doing about this, and what it should do next.

The Frontline Club welcomes you to a lively evening of discussion between Stanley Johnson and Rachel Johnson, focusing on Stanley’s latest political thriller, Kompromat.

Is truth stranger than fiction? Kompromat was originally conceived as a counter-factual, satirical work of fiction. However, in light of recent events, has Stanley in fact, pinpointed some of the glaring truths behind 2 of the biggest political earthquakes in recent history?

Kompromat explores, in a light-hearted way, the increasingly plausible possibility of Russian involvement in both the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States.

Stanley Johnson is a former MEP, environmental campaigner, journalist and author of twenty-five books. In the run-up to the EU Referendum 2016, he founded and co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe.

Rachel Johnson is a journalist, author and television presenter. Rachel is an author of seven books as well as currently a columnist for The Mail on Sunday. Over her career she has worked for the BBC, The Financial Times, The Evening Standard and several other publications.

When Chris Wylie disclosed the inner workings of Cambridge Analytica and its massive data breach of 50 million Facebook accounts to manipulate public opinion it became an international story.

Frontline and Byline’s coverage of the unfolding story now continues, as new disturbing whistleblower evidence has come to light suggesting the 2016 Brexit referendum was won by cheating.

Shahmir Sanni, a whistleblower working for Vote Leave/BeLeave came forward with material evidence pointing to foul play.

The whistleblower evidence suggests senior Vote Leave staff members – including some now working in No.10 – may have broken campaign coordination rules and overspent to the tune of up to £1 million, on top of their already £7 million limit. That extra money could have bought billions of extra online adverts in the final days of the election. With a result so close, any such cheating could have made the difference.

Shahmir Sanni, spoke with Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, and Byline’s Peter Jukes.

As part of the Frontlines Ethics in the News series, in partnership with the Ethical Journalism Network, the Frontline Club screened Another News Story followed by a Q&A. Another News Story is a documentary that takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis by following the journalists who covered the story. The film raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows. The Q&A was chaired by Dorothy Byrne, who is the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4 and featured director / producer Orban Wallace, producer Verity Wislocki, forced migration researcher Ahmad al-Rashid.