Boots on the ground

After spending two weeks in Iraq in 1991, docmaker Ziri Rideaux knew she wanted to explore more of what was happening on the ground in areas of conflict. Rather than rely on overused officials to get stories, however, Rideaux wanted them from locals. That first trip to Iraq, she tagged along with a friend who'd gone there to report. "I realized that there is so much censorship going on that the stuff in the news or on TV about warfare is really crap. It's like they're making it for kids: this is the good guy, this is the bad guy," says Rideaux. "That just made me angry, so I thought, 'Okay, I want to go and see more firsthand.'" Over the next four years, Rideaux traveled everywhere from Bosnia to Afghanistan to film in countries impacted by war.

"You might go there with a certain idea of what you want to cover that's influenced by Western media, but when you get there it can be a totally different story," says Rideaux, who worked as a news and political reporter for ARD and ZDF in Germany from 1988 until 1992, and now runs Zirius Films in LA. "You realize what huge propaganda machinery we're exposed to with our media and how little of the stuff is actually true."

Rideaux also takes issue with the way material is edited. When she worked in the Johannesburg office of Reuters intermittently in 1993 and 1994, her unsettling job included editing raw footage into TV-friendly fare. Showing a dead body in the distance was fine, for example, but not a disembodied head. Rideaux believes shielding the public from graphic war images is a mistake. "If people saw what goes on in war areas there wouldn't be any wars," she says.

For docmakers on the ground, getting these stories often means talking with locals living in war zones as opposed to the military or government. Folke Rydén, a Stockholm-based director and producer who worked for SVT - both in Sweden and as its us correspondent - before starting his own prodco, FRP, admits that in his early days of shooting in warring areas, he'd spend more time listening to the authorities than to ordinary citizens. But for his recent doc, Full Cover Girl, which profiles aspiring female politicians in Iraq, Rydén found telling these civilians' stories more rewarding. "There are so many interesting people trying to live their lives out there in the world, many in unbearable situations, and those stories have to be told more. That's my mission," he furthers, "not to relay some spokespeople's message - we call that CNN journalism."

In the four years it took to make Full Cover Girl, Rydén and his team tried to stay out of the Green Zone in Baghdad since they couldn't meet Iraqi civilians there. There are two ways to film in war zones, says Rydén: high or low profile. "If you go high profile, you travel with a small army, you're visible and you're a target," he explains. "On the other hand, the deterrent factor is high - maybe you're not attacked because the people you're with are able to shoot back. If you go low profile, you go with one or two private security guards and you meld in."