that could be done you are just going to go but. i think the dole succeeded james long to find out about it by now but it was still the big. as a swedish filmmaker and journalist i always took the right of freedom of speech for granted. but i think came to learn it depends on the story you want to tell. in two thousand and nine i had made a film about a court case in los angeles where banana workers from nicaragua were suing old food company for the use of a banned pesticide that they claimed made them sterile along with other serious health effects and in november two thousand and seven the jury in the los angeles court delivered a groundbreaking verdict was found liable for malice and misconduct.

my hope was that this would bring about better conditions for the farm workers to produce by us today. ever the message was extremely unpleasant so to get a film out would prove to be a journey full of obstacles. out . in the beginning or made two dozen and nine were ready to launch my film by anonymous. one morning a huge package from the us was delivered to our office. only a few days earlier we had launched the film's website announcing that we would have our world premiere in competition at the los angeles film festival.

inside this package was a cease and desist letter from a law firm representing dold food company claimed that facts in my film were based on a fraud. that the banana workers were lying. i said what's going on here we're not out to get. him in the story convinced that this was a misunderstanding. as they see the film everything will fall into place. when the cease and desist letter came in from dole i was also mentioned and i guess in some way i was kind of flattered it was like wow ok nice i'm on the rich the radar for a dollar it's really nice to see but. my wife really sort of looked you know

brought me back to reality and said you know this is quite serious you know we could lose the house we could lot of things could happen doe decided to go after everybody so they could stop the film and so in doing so they threatened everybody threatened me they threatened los angeles film festival by going to all of the major sponsors including the l.a. times and i think it was important that we are how do you knighted friends. as we started to step towards you know the film screening at the festival. i wanted to tell the whole world what was going on but i didn't so when i was interviewed for a local swedish t.v. news i did not give the reporter to full story i didn't tell her about the letters from told that we might not be able to show our film. i was doing a segment on this film that was about to compete at the l.a. festival. all sound a few days later i received

a long letter any mail from dos b.r. agency in washington. that is to want to look at the documentary was based on false accusations and lies my initial reaction was here i think it's made me very uncomfortable i mean this was a tiny segment aired by a local news station how did they find it. if. i can talk to the agency that put me in touch with those vice president i have made it very clear to this producer and to the l.a. film festival given that there are no doors to the absolute basis on which they built this trial and they're going forward with it very well when they're going to get sued and two they're going to be exposed to chemical damages and they'll still remember when they asked him what exactly is faked. what lies are you throwing at. me just went on and on that made me angry the film is based on

a sham that's the point but have you seen the thriller sham or told you know. we didn't tell anybody to threats against a film. that created the first headline. front page. page of the. day this is. you see this this is the front page of the l.a. . despite. what. the writer has seen. i want to talk about pesticide use and its impact on workers. successfully shifted the focus away.

to appear. in the media. cuban immigrant chasing. a beloved american corporation and. swedish filmmaker is making this crook into hero. is afraid. that. it was such an insult who worked so hard to make this movie the fumes of the skin grew in the film's entire. i want to say. we feel like.

it's a very silly sensible. so we. it all very. clear to us there's anything. there. that will sit by joel guys or our early trying to be addressed. and especially likely to ask the. guys los angeles they're going to serve us are obvious surprise if a doctor gets. the same week to judge concluded the. case probably had committed fraud the conclusion was based on testimonies from witnesses stories. so what happens if the central premise that your documentary that's just about to

be released turns out to be a fraud. that. they're basically created in and. they sort of supportive people getting their piece of that. so have you finally seen the documentary and i have to admit i did not. and could not defend themselves publicly instead the journalist attacked me and my film with one question why don't you change your film. is found to be a fraud i told them that this was still an illegal fight and that i didn't believe decent usage. there. everything became personal it wasn't just about the film is really going after you

. and if you look back everything. was actually they moved it off of them because they couldn't get after him. the film because. to them is damaging because you know the c.e.o. from then had you know admitted his guilt right there you know in court did it occur to you mr rennes all that me just try to use d.c.p. until you were sure your workers wouldn't be affected just general waiting for the evidence to pile up. the first rule of pass but you still don't know if our film will be screened at all . the festival board calls us to an urgent crisis when they had received new letters from going. through they're not even on a plane. and they make it very clear to us they will no longer defend my from.

the call to my house this is chris. to modern media. just the bottom line. it's not really finished but they. think they will it's so hard to risk their own organization the fessor game up with different options but the options are never going to be in your favor in the options where i mean i was in the room with the options where they were going to show up next year when you can get distribution or why don't we just show clips and we can do a discussion around it but all along that was going to do anything for your for your show and then also we felt as you know on the publicity side all that said to dole was yes you're right so i'm just going to show clips so that i don't get in trouble. the festool

keeps changing the conditions we have to accept that the film has been taking on a competition another legal disclaimer defending those few of those films. it's going to be read before and. if we don't accept these terms there will be no world premiere. i've got to find a disclaimer text in my hand just as they are arrived to the theater the festival is given into pressure from don't publicly announcing that the banana workers are liars i tried not to read it because i knew i would get stuff so basically if you say the street is a microcosm coming around the watch achatz is just. the dole vice president michael counter and his lawyers are right the saudi guys have been putting pressure on us for over six weeks now to pull the film.

she turned his lover into an amazon. a ballad been my dream for so long. but he couldn't hold on to their race such a thing as i was growing a teacher and now she runs her own amazon factory where they throw down a challenge to men there's no alcohol or smoking and even coffee is forbidden they worship the earth fire and water. and learn martial arts. will he ever be able to win her back man versus woman on r.t. . there's. a moment i want to. pick up something that is fights week this. place was no way oh. clearly they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. and sold to us and

turned over to the us for. the soul that could be buried alive. was saved with great effort. they wanted to turn me into a terrorist they wanted me to admit that i was a member of al qaeda the taliban but i fought with them. about time i didn't even know what al-qaeda is nevertheless there are people. who start of. something is going to be done that's going to be done by me and it's never short of money but it's going to impact me i'd be prosecuted but it's going to impact. the wife my daughter. the one time a trap. monarchy. the deepest lake in the world. usually then no more than fifteen thousand years old this one dates

back twenty five. spirits and buddhist gods live here. the pure clear water in the lake is helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the universe. i try to see by cal in its entirety. it's not that i have discovered something new here rather that i absorb everything that this place offers. the spirit of. this ok great thank you all i'm so sorry like that contingent there getting us going here. welcome to the fifteenth annual los angeles film festival presented by

the los angeles times i'm don hudson executive director of film independent and i also working tonight screening and case study of bananas the. screening is presented by film independent film and it is los angeles film festival and frederick burton the director and i want to introduce to you right now thank you. and i want to thank you first so. i want you to read the first you want to introduce the film yes i will but i want you to read this first i will i mean. you know. this was all i was told all right it was actually one of the most shocking things i've ever seen this sort of putting a documentary into a special ghetto of its own declassifying it and then. actually feeling like there was surveillance on me in the audience as we lined up and were forced to read

a document that disavowed this thing and i actually felt completely ashamed for the entire los angeles movie industry and the festival. it was beyond belief to think think that that could be done to to a participant in a film festival before you watch this film you need to know that serious questions have been raised about its credibility the judge specifically mentions in her ruling that the witnesses you will see in the film tonight from the trial lied under oath presented false employment records and presented fraudulent evidence of sterility none of this is reflected in the film you're about to see as a result there seems to be little question that the version of reality the that the film portrays does not match the reality that emerged in the courtroom. we are not eager to be sued that is why we are showing this film out of competition as a case study to eliminate a timely exploration of what makes and doesn't make

a responsible documentary the language was basically saying we're going to show this film as a test case we don't believe it's true we don't believe this filmmaker. and so just be warned that what you're about to see is a bunch of crap why would they show a film it's a bunch of crap at all it's it was just it was weird now let me introduce the director again frederick thank . everybody. sort for all this waiting it's be the very very special. time this. i have never experienced anything like this before in my life i believe in democracy and i believe in free word and i believe that there was a balancing to society between different voices and i think this role to be room

for independent films and i'm really happy to talk to all of you off to the film about the complexity of life and filmmaking and truth i mean all truth in the court but maybe also in filmmaking. lean back have a nice time thank you. kind of sad with the whole disclaimer thing it was really said it was exactly what dole wanted to do don't want to have a divide division between film independent and use a filmmaker you know it felt like those screens at the festival. the disclaimer and the panel discussion afterwards of colleagues and a lawyer i felt like they were punishing you and what i saw those really like

a power like it was almost like a shift like an effect for show just to make sure that they distance themselves and now from you so that we don't can come out and that just felt really really strange at that that they would do that because allison you became the pariah in the room not dull. the festival was nearly over and still no loss at all this pressure just been scattered. as i was preparing to leave los angeles i heard that dole had served a court order on distressed demanding all e-mails contracts recordings film footage relating to my movie. it seems like this is not over yet.

i came back to sweden early july i was totally exhausted after the turmoil in l.a. . so i was actually sitting at home one night on the internet looking for a whole day trips with my kids and i received a call from los angeles it's a journalist who wants to comment on a lawsuit being brought against me from don't dole foods is suing a swedish filmmaker for wanting to show a fraudulent documentary slamming the company mulm a theme i am now based filmmaker frederick garrett is being sued by a dollar the company claims the film as a fraud. we are suing to get in and he's colleagues because we think she produced a movie which is a clearly a dish much very against the company and against our employees. it's three different lawsuits they're seeing me frederick and. the way they doing this

what exactly is their strategy. really their main. their main object if. they have. become a part of our own film. is a trial and now the same forces are directed against us. have you considered accommodating them in any way with the film there is nothing to accommodate their demands include stopping the film shutting down the websites i won't discuss this issue in public in the future with a lawsuit on our shoulders we worked around the clock twenty four seventh's and we have no time to engage in new film projects. luckily we have a us insurance policy covering us against lawsuits and now we have the best lawyer working for us your film is wrapped up into a much bigger for their cause is to get rid of billions.

using chemicals so this is a cheap investment for them they are. very expensive. they're going to do but it's an investment in a bigger picture. yeah. it's just distressing i mean it's distressing and yeah it is but it's kind of the emotional roller coaster because i mean most of the time of it quite good but it's. it's of course extremely tiring and yeah this is my little bit that's the point and that's that's what they want to get trying to zap your confidence they try to make you cautious in what you say they're trying to essentially you and others to say you know it's not worth it to go after these corporations fight these sort of hop potato issues on the. hot seat soft so i don't feel that in.

the book. i worked as a foreign correspondent earlier on like in korea or chile or south africa and i always teamed up with american journalists and i have had respect of them but i kept wondering why did they keep telling the story from dole's perspective why didn't they dig deeper. the thing that was most surprising about the media coverage of the suit that came out against you was how easily you were a fraud and dole was wrong and the banana company was fighting for justice and. no reporters should ever take that at face value we have a astounding lack of curiosity on the part of the journalism community in the us. a lack of skepticism these journalists failed in their job they took

a press release and reprinted it basically they didn't do any due diligence and that is even more shameful than the film festival disavowing you we have a media that is corrupted by power mostly by corporate power you have corporate ownership from the top you have corporate advertising coming in from the side we have a media that is where advertising and money and corporate influence is really the mother's milk. the reality is that the media is much more willing to take down stories when a company comes to them and say listen. don't write that story now because you're going to look stupid and we will go on with a massive denial and we'll go all to your media organization as well i know all the global corporations in the us who have threatened to pull advertising from

the wall street journal the new york times because they don't like the editorial coverage so there isn't as much investment in investigative journalism as there was in the past journalism itself is under threat. spending a lot of money to story they have an american p.r. company journalists around the world to broker is one of the prominent public relations firms in washington they're located in the heart of downtown just about a block from the white house it's really hard to know what your parole tour is up to or who they even work for because they're not obligated to disclose any of that information. proctor used to work for the coalition provisional authority in iraq which the united states government set up shortly after the invasion that overthrew saddam hussein so he would have been involved in frequent strategy meetings about

how to sell the iraq war and part of selling that war would have also been to attack the critics and to make the critics look bad and if you look at the roster of any of the top lobbying in public relation firms in town they're filled with former members of congress for murder ministration officials former cia officials increasingly journalists are going the same route. and. we now occupy an era of extreme reputation anxiety among leading companies around the world because they're very aware that corporate reputation which they may have built over fifty years or so can be shredded in a matter of minutes so when

a company feels that it's on the potential attack you try and divert attention from the real story or you have a snow dump of good alternative information so they will go out there and say listen we've got this story about reputations being on the files by this disreputable swedish filmmaker acting for a lawyer who we think is fraudulent. we you can have this exclusively we'll give you all the background information and you plonk the story so if it's frederick's a bad guy if i can get that narrative into the newspapers first to make it sticky an appeal to people in a way that they'll want to tell their friends then that's the story that will go out. there was a swedish documentary maker who went to nicaragua he did a documentary on how pesticides have damaged the health of workers there the problem was that was not the case these workers were recruited by

a lawyer down there who wanted to make a case he wanted to he had a beef against dole basically and so he recruited a bunch of nicaraguan banana harvesters to lie and say that their health was damaged the swedish filmmaker made the documentary. he didn't find out it was a fraud until the film was done this guy still wants to show the film because he went through the process of making the. more than four hundred cities around the globe are hosting mass rallies. just. follow million mask march on our t. and our t. dot com.

one hundred twenty three days. through to. people or sixty thousand. in a record setting trip. on r t. one this it will. be. americans. indeed. and in a place i'm not that dictate that which is. about this. go ahead let's not forget that the arab spring is

a crisis moment in national politics it is the moment in which you can't put the genie back in the baltic because the people on the ground in those countries for example in egypt there is a nationalist swing towards. do we really think that sisi is going to be able to become an area without the people rising up again. imports came from illegal fishing. the european union is ironically taking fish from some of the poorest nations on earth so this is a very serious and very urgent problem that needs immediate international action. with the territorial waters the fish they load the fish into the ships and leave. the. illegal fishing just taking the bread out of our mouths.

terror tag the partner of the n.s.a. leaks reporter accused of espionage and terrorism in britain for trying to carry documents from edward snowden with him through an airport. digital discontent a big money n.s.a. facility set to open in utah drawing the anger of privacy activists. we're never going to be able to reverse this if we don't speak up protestors trying to bring attention to privacy concerns by picketing in front of the new data center which is said to be able to store enormous amounts of personal information. every single out of the day people are feeling unsafe to do anything in iraq as record high death toll over the last five years causes baghdad to ask the u.s. provisional aid to combat insurgent violence.