Alice Růžičková: Český dokumentární film v 80. letech: “Originální Videojournal” (2000) [Czech]

The diploma work of Alice Růžičková entitled The Czech Documentary Film in the 1980s: “Original Videojournal” analyses the origin and history of the Czech underground audiovisual periodical, produced between 1987 and 1989 by a group of Czech dissidents including Olga Havlová, Michal Hýbek, Pavel Kačírek, Jan Kašpar, Andrej Krob, Jan Ruml, Joska Skalník, Andrej Stankovič, and many others.

In the late 1987, an idea was born to not only send the video shots documenting the Czechoslovak dissident activities abroad, but also to produce a programme for the domestic audience. With the financial aid from the Czech exile centers abroad (Foundation of Charter 77, ČSDS – Czechoslovak Documentary Centre), the “Original Videojournal” editorial group acquired a video tape recorder Sony Video-8. This led to the production of video news from the dissident and alternative culture, covering political and ecological issues from the “unofficial” perspective.

The thesis first locates the origin of the journal among diverse groups in Prague, Brno and other places. Further, it contains an analysis of seven regular and two thematic programmes produced before November 1989, followed by nine special volumes made during and shortly after the 1989 revolution.

Attachments include a correspondence between Václav Havel and František Janouch, reflections about the Journal in printed underground zines, related historical texts, bibliography from the Libri Prohibiti database, script of the documentary film Zblízka Originální videojournal (dir. Alice Růžičková, 1998), and photographic documentation.

Master thesis
FAMU (Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts), Prague
Supervisor: Marie Šandová
78 pages

Czech TV programme series about Original Videojournal, 20 episodes, 26 min. each, 2011–2012
Original Videojournal at Monoskop wiki

PDF

Jeremy Scahill: Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013)

In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies. Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America’s global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government. As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk—we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

Publisher Nation Books, New York, 2013
ISBN 1568587279, 9781568587271
642 pages

Jeremy Scahill and Dirty Wars on Democracy Now! (interview, trailer for a documentary)

DirtyWars.org
publisher
google books

Download (removed on 2013-9-11 upon request of the publisher)

monochrom, 3-10 (1994-1998) [German]

The mouthpiece of an international art-technology-philosophy collective founded in 1993, with its headquarters at Museumsquartier in Vienna.

Editor-in-chief: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Publisher Monochrom, Vienna
ISSN 1024-6738

Authors
Monochrom on Wikipedia

PDF (No. 3: media dings, 1994/95, 68 pp)
PDF (No. 4-5: media art damage, 1995/96, 104 pp)
PDF (No. 6-7: 100% error free high-density druckwerk, 1997, 112 pp)
PDF (No. 8-10: gebenedeit unter den illustrierten, 1998, 180 pp)

Later issues