Documentary

Showroom

Each year Sheffield’s Showroom cinema hosts the International Documentary Festival, which is a key event for the industry. There’s a photoblog and podcasts to accompany the event. So, anyway, as a result, it was our good fortune to spend Saturday night with Pratap Rughani, talking about his work and his inspiration to give voice to those in oppressive situations worldwide. Directing hard-edged documentaries seems a natural extension of his work as editor of the New Internationalist.

Pratap’s award-winning Playing Model Soldiers was an insightful account of young black men in the army. There’s more documentary work than I can comment on here, but I was particularly interested in the conflicting interests of globalization and state control in the series on satellite television in South Asia. Some of this is captured in this article.