REPORT ON PRODUCTION

The World Stopped Watching deals with the fate of a country so recently at the epicenter of world media attention, as the final battleground of the Cold War - Nicaragua.

Our documentary explores the fallout for a country and a people when the media spotlight turns away, in search of “hotter” news.

How, we ask, has this affected the economic and social development of the people and institutions of Nicaragua?

Are Nicaraguans happy to be “invisible” again, or do they miss the journalists, politicians, human rights observers, solidarity people and aid workers which media attention inevitably brings?

The World Stopped Watching will do more than offer viewers’ closure on one of the biggest news stories of the 1980's and a reflection on the limits of the foreign news business. By exposing the increasing misery of ordinary Nicaraguans, and exploring what happens to a people and a country when they slip into the shadows, this film raises serious questions about current neo-liberal prescriptions on which hang our hopes for world security and peace.

The film is complete and will be broadcast on TV Ontario, other educational broadcasts across Canada and by broadcasters worldwide.

As with our previous film The World Is Watching (1987) we expect The World Stopped Watching to be used widely in media literacy and development education.

The World Stopped Watching
Progress Report

Fourteen years ago, we made a one-hour documentary film, The World Is Watching. Shot in Nicaragua in the fall of 1987 - at the height of the Reagan administration's "Contra War" against Nicaragua's Sandinista revolutionary government - the film followed four international journalists at work.

Four young reporters who had missed Vietnam and four seasoned journalists alike, Nicaragua was a reasonably safe and exciting place to make their mark and build their careers. The sleepy Central American capital of Managua was suddenly the centre one of the hottest international "stories".

Our documentary asked provocative questions about the role and responsibility of First World journalists working in the Third World. How, we asked, is the complexity of this revolutionary movement and the impact it has on the lives of Nicaraguans, reflected in the news reports we watch and read back home?

The World Is Watching struck many cords. It was honoured with seven international awards, including a Genie for Best Documentary from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, a Gold Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and awards in Nyon, Switzerland and at the Berlin Film Festival. George Black of The Nation

described The World Is Watching as "a brilliant piece of work, documentary-making of the highest order"; distinguished Canadian broadcaster Peter Truman called it "one of the best things ever done about the crippling limitations of TV news"; and the Toronto Globe & Mail's John Haslett Cuff wrote that the documentary was "a disturbing and important film that not only deserves network exposure but should also be shown to all media literacy and current events classes in the country."

Cameraman Dan Holmberg and Director Peter Raymont
The World Is Watching, 1987 – Managua, Nicaragua

During our 10-day shoot in December, we followed U.S. journalists Bill Gentile and Randolph "Ry" Ryan on their quest to discover what had become of the Nicaraguan revolution (Ryan and Gentile were two of the journalists we filmed for the original documentary).

Gentile was Newsweek's, Managua-based photographer throughout the Sandinista period. Now a professor of Journalism at Kent State University, he also shoots, edits and produces occasional documentaries for ABC's Nightline and for Bill Moyers' PBS programme, NOW. In December, Gentile was producing an 8 minute segment for NOW to be aired in late March, 2003.

Boston Globe columnist and editorial writer, Ry Ryan was part of the Globe team that produced War & Peace in the Nuclear Age, a magazine special which won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In

the 1980s, Ryan made U.S. policy in Central America his major concern. Fired by the Globe in 1996, he worked in Bosnia for the UN High Commission for Refugees and as a political analyst for the International Crisis Group. He also helped train Yugoslav journalists for the International Research and Exchange Board.

Bill Gentile & Ry Ryan at a Coffee Finca

(Sadly, Ry died suddenly in Boston just one week after returning from our December shoot. The Boston Globe's obituary quotes Noam Chomsky, "Through the 1980s, Mr. Ryan's editorials and op-ed columns in the Globe constituted some of the most important work on Latin America.'')

Gentile and Ryan travel led hundreds of miles through Nicaragua in December, digging up their old contacts and exploring reports of severe malnutrition among unemployed coffee pickers. In Managua, they had revealing interviews with:

- Sandinista revolutionary leader and former president, Daniel Ortega, who has now lost 3 national elections;

- Carlos Fernando Chamorro, expelled as editor of the Sandinista newspaper Barricada in 1990, he is now Nicaragua's leading independent TV commentator and host of the popular current-affairs programme Esta Semana;

Ry Ryan with Carlos Chamorro

- former Nicaraguan Vice President and renowned author, Sergio Ramirez, now disaffected with the Sandinistas;

- former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D`Escoto;

- former FSLN press liaison Sofia Montenegro, now an independent journalist and committed feminist opposed to the Sandinistas;

- former US-based Sandinista spokesperson Alejandro Bendaña, whose ABC TV's Nightline appearances during the late 80s were outnumbered only by Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Jerry Falwell;

- Univision TV correspondent Tifani Roberts, a veteran of the Managua media scene going back to 1980s;

- Mario Arana Sevilla, current free trade negotiator for the Bolaño's government;

- former Sandinista consul and intelligence operative in Miami, Mario Gonzalez, today a prize-winning coffee grower seeking U.S. markets.

In their travels out of Managua, Ryan and Gentile drove to the remote farming community of El Juste in Chontales province. Here they met an 82-year-old woman, Carmela Requenes Martinez, who appeared in our original documentary. A survivor of a murderous contra attack on her Sandinista farming co-operative, her testimony to an ABC TV crew in October 1987, became the powerful core sequence of The

Producer/Director, Peter Raymont, our film crew, Ry Ryan and Carmela Requenes MartinezShe is watching our footage of herself in 1987, after the Contras burned down her co-op and killed several family members

World Is Watching. Gentile and Ryan also interviewed Carmela's grandchild Alexei, who lost a leg during the contra attack. Today, he dreams of studying computers, despite living in terrible poverty.

Through ads we placed in the national newspaper La Prensa, we also located several Nicaraguans Gentile had photographed in the 1980's. Their portraits make up his book Nicaragua. These people included a former Sandinista soldier in the Simon Bolivar Battalion "El Cacharro", who now operates his own bus in Managua; a former contra foot soldier, Javier

Bill Gentile & our camera man, John Westheuser filming “El Cacharro”at Managua Bus terminal

Quintero, who today manufactures cement blocks opposite a new Holiday Inn; and a former contra sniper, Roberto Robelo, who is now a bed-ridden quadriplegic.

Travelling north, Gentile and Ryan interviewed other former combatants. In the village of Muy Muy, Bill met with, the legendary Sandinista commander, Ochoa and Ochoa`s best friend, a former Contra commander. In the 1980's, they were bitter enemies, shooting at each other. Today they share a beer at the local cafe.

In the remote village of Mulukuku, near the northeast mining triangle, Gentile and Ryan encountered an elderly widow, Aurora, whose family disintegrated after her eldest son and sole means of support was killed serving in the Sandinista militia. And in Ciudad Antigua, Gentile and Ryan met with Ciriaco "Lucero" Pulido, former Contra soldier, now a peasant farmer, who was unexpectedly identified as being involved in the cold-blooded execution of 12 civilians.

En route back to Managua, Gentile and Ryan interviewed Senora Kuhl, owner of the Selva Negra coffee finca, and the crew filmed coffee workers in and around Matagalpa. In the town of Esteli, Ryan interviewed Merling Preza, head of a union that represents small coffee farmers (and several thousand workers) rendered desperate by the world market glut and expansion in Vietnamese production.

Apart from our December shoot in Nicaragua, we also conducted interviews with several seasoned journalists who reported from Nicaragua. In London we spoke with Jon Snow, Senior News Editor and Presenter for Britain ITN Television News (Jon was one of the journalists we followed in The World Is Watching). In Paris, we interviewed Edith Coron, former reporter for Liberation and The Sunday Times of London, (Coron has now left journalism to pursue a career in international conflict resolution). In Montreal, we interviewed the CBC's Bernard Drainville, one of the last North American correspondents based full-time in Latin America (He is Radio Canada's Bureau Chief in Mexico City). Drainville was the only North American reporter to cover the 2001 Nicaraguan elections. We spoke with Drainville about why the world stopped watching Nicaragua and the singular role of Daniel Ortega as an enduring, if tarnished, media symbol of the Sandinista revolution.

Our final production phase in Nicaragua took place the first week of February, 2003. This shoot focussed on Gilles Paquin, foreign editor of Montreal's La Presse, the world's third largest French language newspaper. Paquin interviewed such key political players Juana Mendez Perez, the prosecuting judge in the historic corruption case against former president, Arnoldo Aleman and 65 accomplices. Mendez began life as a young police officer under the dictator Somoza. During the Insurrection, she adopted the nome de guerre, Nicarao and fought on the barricades as a Sandinista. Aleman is the first Nicaraguan head of state to be indicted and put under house arrest for looting the public treasury.

We also filmed Paquin interviewing the maverick former Comptroller-General Augustin Jarquin Anaya. Imprisoned six times in the Sandinista era, Jarquin became Aleman's nemesis, exposing the spectacular corruption that has divided the ruling Liberal Party and driven the country more deeply into despair. Paquin also interviewed former Sandinista Minister of the Interior, Tomas Borge. Borge introduced Paquin to Maximino Rodriquez, a former Contra commander who sits across the aisle from him in the National Assembly - another sign of the extraordinary reconciliation that has made Nicaragua by far the least violent country in Central America.

Paquin met with former President Violeta Chamorro, whose 1990 victory achieved the long sought after U.S. foreign policy goal of removing the Sandinistas from power. And at an event honouring U.S. boxing impresario Don King, Paquin interviewed the widely respected current President Enrique Bolanos, whose ruling coalition remains divided over his drive to clean up the pigsty of national politics and bring transparency and modern standards of governance to Nicaraguan political affairs.

As her husband languished under house arrest at his lavish farm outside Managua, we secured an exclusive interview with his American-educated wife, Maria Fernanda Flores de Aleman. She portrayed her husband's accusers as politically-motivated and asserted that he could never receive a fair trial in Nicaragua.

Eddie Perez & Gilles Paquin at the La Chureca garbage dump

At Managua's vast La Chureca garbage dump, we illustrate Nicaragua's descent into the most destitute country in Central America. Here, young children scavenge for scraps in a country where the head of the anti poverty office is paid $23,000/month, and where former-President Aleman

paid himself more than Bill Clinton. According to recent UNESCO reports, 26% of Nicaraguan children never set foot in a classroom, twice the Latin American average - just one of the many development challenges facing Nicaragua today.

Gilles Paquin is taken on a tour of the dump by Eddy Perez, who runs a drop-in centre for children who survive by living off the dump. This man is a saint.

Paquin also met with OXFAM Quebec’s Francisco Sanchez, who takes him to a OXFAM-funded project in Condega, north of Esteli. Here, ex-combatants from both sides of the bloody Sandinista/Contra War of the 1980’s, are working together on a host of farming projects. Gilles met Felipe Gonzales Herdandez, a multi-purpose farmer who grows papayas and also makes bricks for local construction use, supported by a mico-loan from OXFAM Quebec.

Francisco Sanchez, Gilles Paquin & Felize Gonzales Herdandez

Landmine Education Group Meeting Somoto

SUCO’s Linda Gagnon and Ginette Richard, both from Montreal, took Paquin to one of their most successful projects – a landmine education group in Somoto, near the Nicaraguan - Honduran border. Paquin attended a meeting of ex-combatants, disabled by the

war who now work at educating children about the dangers of landmines. Fifteen years after the end of hostilities, landmines are still found by the thousands in farmer’s fields throughout the countryside.

As part of his exploration of the remarkable reconciliation between the "compas" and contras. Paquin conducted an extraordinary interview with Fremio Altamirano, leader of the Nicaraguan Resistance Party and a National Assembly member for the ruling party coalition. During the Contra war, fighting under the nomme de guerre, Jimmy Leo, Altamirano is alleged to have taken part in several atrocities, including the infamous killing of nine members of an unarmed wedding party. The aftermath of this massacre was documented by freelance Belgian cameraman, Jan van Bilsen who also took part in our interview with Altamirano. Van Bilsen and Paquin confronted Altamirano with his notorious past.

Apart from a brief blip in foreign news coverage when Hurricane Mitch swept through the region, Nicaragua disappeared from TV screens and front pages in 1990 - when the electoral defeat of Daniel Ortega coincided with the end of the Cold War. Nicaragua has since been treated as sleepy backwater. The only news from the region is of natural disasters.

The World Stopped Watching is provocative and compelling television. Snow and Coron join Bill Gentile, Ry Ryan and Gilles Paquin in describing what they learned about their profession and its responsibilities to its subjects. Has their commitment and belief in the power of journalism increased or diminished? And what of the Nicaraguans left behind? What of the democracy they now live in? And why should it matter to us?

On January 2, 2003, two weeks after our return from the December shoot in Nicaragua, Ry Ryan died of a heart attack, at his home in Boston. It was a huge shock to his wife, children and all of us who knew him and had spent such an intimate time traveling together. Ry was a brave journalist and a good friend. He cared about Nicaragua. He had many Nicaraguan friends.

In early February, some of the men and women who knew and respected Ry, gathered at the Managua home of cameraman, Jan Van Bilsen to morn his passing and celebrate his life. They watched a nine-minute video, which we had edited - incorporating excerpts from "The World Is Watching" and from our shoot for "The World Stopped Watching".

Bill Gentile photographs ex-Contra mercenary, Ciriaco “Lucero” Pulido,
now a peasant farmer living in the village of Ciudad Antingua,
near the Nicaragua-Honduran border