Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
Eh, so the holidays are over and the long, hard winter really kicks in. And there I was, months away from POV's next doc slate, looking for something to inspire me... And just when the dust bunnies began to blow like tumbleweed in my apartment, I saw something that really moved me. I was working out at the gym, and the flat screen tv was turned to a BBC World documentary about child slavery. And I was floored.
This World: Child Slavery with Rageh Omaar is a heart-breaking portrait of a series of children from different parts of the world who are forced into labor. It's expertly shot and the access is disturbingly intimate — we see a 12-year-old African boy sold by his mother for about $50, and his introduction to his "master." It was sickening and painful to watch, but I couldn't tear my eyes away.
I was really intrigued by Omaar, who related his own personal history as a Somali/British filmmaker, connecting his roots to that of a boy herding goats in Somalia. I looked up Omaar and saw that he's a pretty big deal in the UK, having been a frontline reporter for the BBC in Iraq for many years. (The Washington Post apparently called him the "Scud Stud.")
He then left the BBC — which he called "a white man's club" —; and now works for Al Jazeera and writes for The New Statesman. He made a film for Al Jazeera celebrating the strengths of Iran. I don't know about the rest of his work, but the child slavery doc makes me an intrigued, if tentative, fan. I wonder if Omaar will ever make it to our shores with his provocative filmmaking. For now, interestingly, he's hardly made a dent over here in the States.
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