Documentary Film Telephone Pre-Interview?

Rebecca Wexler
Information Society Project
Yale Law School
P.O. Box 208215
New Haven, CT 06520
Email r.wexler@yale.edu
Tel. 1 203 710 8562

27 June 2011

Dear Mr. Brown,

My name is Rebecca Wexler. I am a documentary filmmaker and Fellow at the Yale University Law School Information Society Project where I teach visual advocacy. I am beginning work with Oscar-nominated PBS Frontline Producer/Director Helen Whitney on a documentary film about civil liberties and civil disobedience on the Internet.

You may already be acquainted with Helens work. She has been making films for network television over the last thirty years. In the last decade, she has produced a series of PBS specials: John Paul II: the Millennial Pope, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, and the four hour series, The Mormons. Her films have won Peabodys, DuPonts and Emmys. Most recently, Helen and I worked together completing a three hour PBS special, Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate, about forgiveness, transitional justice, and global reconciliation after genocide, which aired in April. That film introduced us to the ongoing risks of post-9/11 abuses of justice, and is an intimate part of our wanting to make this film about civil liberties and Internet governance. More specifically, I became particularly interested in Anonymous in December when I wrote this article about Operation Payback: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/post-wiki-world-part-ii

Ive read some of your interesting writing about Anonymous activities. While I understand that you are no longer directly associated with any Anonymous initiatives, I would like the opportunity to speak with you about your opinions about these actions and the recent LulzSec contributions. What are the possibilities, the limitations, and the symbolic complexities of using DDoS attacks and other technical exploits as forms of protest?

On a somewhat unrelated note, Im also curious about the science & journalism project initiative of Project PM. After studying history and philosophy of science and becoming aware of some of the failures of the scientific press (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18761279) I began working in doc film with the personal mission of creating better science and technology documentaries. One of my former mentors, Jon Beckwith at Harvard Medical School, is a longtime activist with Science for the People and runs an organization of scientists in the Boston area who work towards improving science content in media. Perhaps he would be interested in your initiative. In any case, I am curious to hear more about your work in this area as well.

Might it be possible to arrange a phone conversation at your earliest possible convenience? I would like to conduct a telephone pre-interview with you, and discuss the possibility of your appearing in our film.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Wexler
Fellow, Yale University Law School Information Society Project
Producer/Director, Helen Whitney Productions

HELEN WHITNEY
Producer and Director
Helen Whitney has worked as a producer, director and writer for documentaries and feature films for over 30 years. Her documentary work has appeared on ABC's Closeup and on the PBS series, American Masters, Frontline and American Experience. Her documentaries have extended across a variety of subjects, among them: youth gangs, presidential candidates, the mentally ill, a Trappist Monastery, Pope John Paul II, the class structure of Great Britain, the aftershocks of 9/11, and the photographer Richard Avedon. Whitney's documentaries and features have received many honors, including an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, an Oscar nomination, the Humanitas Award and the prestigious duPont-Columbia Journalism Award.

REBECCA WEXLER
Producer and Director
Rebecca Wexler is a Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. She holds an M.Phil in history of science from Cambridge University (Gates-Cambridge Fellow) and a B.A. from Harvard College (summa cum laude). She has worked with filmmakers Richard Leacock, Alex Gibney, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Helen Whitney, and Michael Epstein on documentaries distributed by PBS/American Experience, PBS/WETA,HBO, VH1, and Verve. She has produced and directed documentaries for the Yale Art Gallery, La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and the Long Wharf Theatre. She currently teaches a Yale Law School practicum on visual advocacy and the intersection of law and film.