An evening with the Guerilla News Network (GNN)

Wednesday April 13th
7:30 pm
Station 40 (3030b 16th st. & Mission)
$5 (benefit for S40)

An evening with the Guerilla News Network (GNN)

producer and director Ian Inaba
and animation artist Anson Vogt (Mosh Eminem)

The evening will include a screening of GNN's first full length documentary, BattleGround: 21 Days at Empire's Edge, recent shorts and music videos followed by a discussion with those behind GNN.


BattleGround: 21 Days at Empire's Edge

In late 2003, two filmmakers from the Sundance award-winning Guerrilla News Network spent three weeks on the frontlines of the simmering guerrilla war in Iraq, gathering intelligence, dodging bullets, and capturing the untold stories of what has become the world’s most covered, and misunderstood, conflict.

BattleGround is an intensely emotional journey that will challenge the orthodoxies of Left and Right, and highlight the humanity of all sides of the conflict. BattleGround is a critical film for anyone who wants to understand the powerful forces that are sucking America deeper and deeper into a Middle Eastern quagmire.

BattleGround recently won t he Silver Hugo Award for documentaries at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Ian Inaba

Ian is a writer, producer and director. Ian has a wide range of experience in media creation, technology production as well as marketing and business development. He brings this wealth of experience to all of his productions, from music videos and documentary films, to investigative reports and next-generation technology projects. Over the past four years Ian has transformed from a strategic advisor and creative consultant to a director and producer of highly controversial and informative media projects. Most recently, he directed the music video for Eminem's "Mosh" and contributed to GNN's first book True Lies. His GNN blog, Earning Man, can be found here.

Ian has served as the CEO of Switch Technologies a technology and media development group in Berkeley, Ca. He was also previously a software executive for Check Point Software Technologies (NASD: CHKP) and an investment banker for Robertson, Stephens and Company. He is a graduate of the School of Engineering and Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

History of GNN

GNN was co-founded by Stephen Marshall and Josh Shore in the summer of 2000. The partners first joined forces at MTV (Josh had brought Stephen in to consult on some radical television ideas for the station) when they finally realized that the mainstream networks would never allow their hi-impact brand of television content and design to reach prime-time. GNN's inaugural project was a NewsVideo called The Diamond Life. Completed in the fall of 2000, the video features the music of Peter Gabriel and was produced in conjunction with his non-profit organization, WITNESS.

Shortly after, GNN rounded out the core partnership with reporter Anthony Lappé; and investment banker-turned-producer Ian Inaba. Since 2000, GNN has grown from its critical mass audience from approximately an initial 300 unique visitors/day to an average of 25,000 and a high of over 300,000. Their first DVD compilation, Ammo For The Info-Warrior (play trailer: broadband, mediumband) features NewsVideos that have received hundreds of thousands of views on the net and been shown in film festivals and on television networks around the world. Among them is the Sundance-award winning short, Crack The CIA and the 2003 Media That Matters Film Festival Media Activism Award winner, Copwatch. In 2003, they produced AfterMath, a 30-min. documentary investigating the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. Since its release, AfterMath has played in festivals and at public venues across the United States and Europe and has been translated into four languages.

GNN has also collaborated with and produced politicized music videos for artists such as Ad Rock (Beastie Boys), dead prez, Chronic Future, Eminem and 50 Cent.

GNN's music video for Eminem's politically-charged song, Mosh, hit number one on MTV's TRL the day it was released in October 2004. New York magazine called it "one of the most important pieces of mainstream dissent since the 60s."

GNN's first book, True Lies (Plume) hits the shelves in October 2004.




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