Laura Poitras, Surveillance

Creative Time curator Nato Thompson speaks with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras about her trilogy of films addressing the War on Terror and the extreme risk involved in making them. Poitras' first film in the series, My Country, My Country (2006), was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Her next film, The Oath (2010), won Best Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival. Despite such accolades, Poitras has been detained for Homeland Security interrogations dozens of times while attempting to re-enter the United States, and her laptop, notebooks, cell phone and other belongings have been repeatedly seized and searched. Her next film, the final installment in her trilogy, focuses on the U.S. government's powers of surveillance. This program is part of a series entitled Forms of Life, hosted by Creative Times' Chief Curator Nato Thompson, and produced for their online magazine, Creative Time Reports, in partnership with ARTonAIR.org. Guests are culture makers whose work posits new ways of looking at political realities. By addressing a wide range of issues such as alternative economies, calcified political structures, new forms of collective living, or simply being a thorn in the side of normality, Forms of Life interviews provide an opportunity to think counterintuitively about social conditions people face around the world.

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