Audio & Video: Jacquie Soohen and Rick Rowley Discuss IraqJournal.org; Independent Media

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Jacqueline Soohen is an award winning documentary filmmaker with Big Noise Tactical Media. Her three feature films, Zapatista (1998), Black and Gold (1999) and This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), have won top honors at hundreds of film festivals from New York, Toronto and Los Angeles to Berlin, Seoul and Bogota. She has also produced television and video reports from the front lines of struggles around the globe. In 1999, as one of the founding members of the Independent Media Center, she collaborated in cutting daily satellite feeds from the WTO protests in Seattle. In 2001, she joined the Zapatistas' march from the Lacandon Rainforest to Mexico City, shooting and editing in the back of a schoolbus a one hour television show that went to satellite across the continent as the Zapatistas marched into the capital. In 2002 she has reported for Democracy Now! and FreeSpeech TV from Argentina, Afghanistan, South Africa and Palestine, where she was the only videographer to break the Israeli seige on the Church of the Nativity.

Rick Rowley is a veteran in the independent media movement, Rowley has shot, produced and directed several award winning feature documentaries and television shows. Cofounder of both Big Noise Films and the Independent Media Center Video Team, Rowley's work has been honored at festivals around the world including Cannes, BANFF, Toronto, IDFA, Rotterdam, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and Chicago Underground. More importantly, he has pioneered an underground distribution strategy that incorporates mass public screenings with internet distribution to reach much larger audiences than would be possible with corporate "art-house" or "independent" distribution. His last film, "This Is What Democracy Looks Like", premiered in over 50 cities on five continents to 300,000 people. Currently based out of NYC. 9.11 (2001), Storm From the Mountain (2001), This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), Breaking the Bank (2000), Black and Gold (1999), Showdown in Seattle (1999), Zapatista (1998).

Together, they co-founded Big Noise Films (www.bignoisefilms.com) and are part of the team that is producing IraqJournal (www.iraqjournal.org), a website of regular independent media reports direct from Iraq. They were featured in the Sept-Oct 2002 issue of the UTNE Reader as two of 30 young activists who are making a difference.