Q&A with Ami Horowitz

[Valin]

Q&A C-Span:

9/2/12

 

This week on Q&A, our guest is Ami Horowitz, director of a newly released documentary film entitled “U.N. Me.” The movie is a critical portrayal of the role the United Nations plays in global politics and peacekeeping. Horowitz uses the term “docutainment” to describe the type of movie he has produced and directed. He cites liberal film maker Michael Moore as a significant figure in the documentary film business, and credits Moore with motivating him to make “U.N. Me,” his first documentary. He calls his own political perspective “right of center,” and suggests that the documentary is a conservative point of view project which maintains that the United Nations has failed to serve the world in the manner it was chartered in 1945. He cites examples of murder and rape committed by U.N. troops in various countries where guilty parties have not been punished. He points to the lack of decisive U.N. action to stop the genocide in Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing in Sudan. He points to the selection of Iranian Prime Minister Mahmood Ahmadinijad as the keynote speaker at the U.N.’s human rights conference as something that outraged him. Horowitz describes how he gained access to the United Nations for filming, and talks about traveling the world for the production.

 

 

U.N. Me

 

[Valin]

“U.N. Me” Documentary Exposes the United Nations

Bronson Stocking

October 2, 2012

 

 

Most people are familiar with the U.N.’s notorious ineffectiveness, but viewers of the documentary U.N. Me will reach an inevitable conclusion: It’s even worse than we thought.

 

Managing to fit as many U.N. scandals into the short documentary as possible, filmmakers Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff rely on interviews with U.N. officials and live-video footage as they investigate the opaque institution. From “peacekeepers” sex abuses, the oil-for-food program, the Commission on Human Rights, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, to Rwanda and Darfur, the filmmakers cover some of the U.N.’s most colossal failures.

 

(Snip)

 

U.N. Me documents the incompetence of the Counter-Terrorism Committee. Formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the committee has failed to name a single terrorist, terrorist organization, or a state sponsor of terrorism. It can’t even define what terrorism is, since doing so would classify many U.N. member states as state sponsors of terrorism. The filmmakers suggest the committee start with a dictionary.

(Snip)