Educational Media Reviews Online

This documentary is a follow-up to the award winning film, The World Is Watching, which followed four journalists covering the Contra war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during the 1980s. It would be surprising if this heartfelt and comprehensive revisiting does not garner its own set of awards.

Nearly a decade and a half after the U.S. and European press left Nicaragua, two reporters, Bill Gentile and Randolph “Ry” Ryan return to the country where they made their marks as journalists. (Gentile, a Newsweek photographer and the author of the 1989 book, Nicaragua, is now a journalism professor; Ryan was a Boston Globe columnist). Cameras follow them as they visit the people and the stories that left indelible marks on their professional and personal lives.

In fact, they both say that covering the U.S. backed war, in which 30,000 Nicaraguans died, was the defining experience of their lives. To major news agencies, it became a non-story when conflicts ended; reporters were then called back from a land and a people they had become intimately involved with. But to Gentile, Ryan and other journalists profiled in the documentary, it remained an unfinished story.

The title explains the unifying theme of the film: How the press goes to the latest “hot spot,” covers the conflict, and then leaves, not reporting on the aftermath.

As Bill Gentile explains, “We visit these people on some of the worst days of their lives and when the worst days are over, we pack up our gear and go. Some of us. Not all of us.” The reporters’ emotional return seems to offer the closure they need.

Gentile and Ryan set out by car to locate people they photographed and interviewed years before. All these scenes are informative and poignant; many are disturbing. Seeking out a village that 14 years before had suffered a Contra massacre, they find a woman who appeared in ABC news footage after the massacre. She is living in the same house, its walls still pocked with bullet holes. The original tape, juxtaposed with present-day footage and interviews with survivors, provides powerful images. These people still suffer the emotional effects of their losses. Some of the film’s most moving scenes are when Gentile shows them the original video, images of their own lives which, although shown on international media, they’ve never seen.

A similar sequence shows Gentile’s reunion with the mother of a slain Sandinista soldier. Gentile first met the young soldier’s family during a wake, held in secret in a shack, hidden from the Contras. This mother’s pain, in seeing a photograph he took of the wake, is still fresh. He gives her a book which includes the photograph; she gingerly wraps it in cloth to preserve it.

In addition to the insights provided by reporters and photographers, which would be enough to keep a journalism class busy for a semester, the film is like a prism, allowing the viewer to see a number of different facets of the story, then weaving them together into a comprehensive whole. This is no easy task, and the end product is far-reaching, articulate and intelligent.

For instance, the film ties in the Reagan administration’s interference policies in the region. At one point, Reagan is shown giving a speech exhorting the media to work against the Sandinistas. The film points out the divergences between the values held by corporate news agencies (which often towed the administration lines), compared to those of individual journalists. The role of these journalists, as well as the role of the corporate media in sometimes appeasing the U.S. government, is well-examined throughout by the filmmakers.

The journalists profiled for this film – others include members of the European and Canadian press – lived and worked among the Nicaraguan people, witnessing massacres, even surviving ambushes by Contra forces. Calling it an imported war, these men and women, without talking about it here, must be cognizant of the fact that their reporting was done on a different level than is possible now with U.S. “embedded” reporters in Iraq. This could lead to excellent discussions in journalism classes.

Another portion of the film links the past and present. The filmmakers meet with Jan van Bilsen, a Belgian freelance reporter who stayed in Nicaragua. He tells about footage he shot of the aftermath of a massacre on a wedding party by Contra soldiers. (The footage, interspersed with his interview, is grisly and devastating.)

The following day, he says, he and his crew, along with a group of civilians, were ambushed by Contras, pulled off a bus, rifles aimed at them. He expected to be killed along with the civilians but kept his cameras rolling, interviewing the Contra leader who denied targeting civilians and convincing him that it would be bad press to harm them. He believes the presence of his news camera saved his crew and the civilians. Now, 14 years later, Jan discovers that this regiment leader has changed his name and is a member of the National Assembly. The man agrees to an interview, and the visual and audio juxtaposition -- of the man in power as a young man in his 20’s leading Contra soldiers and the present day elected official -- is striking.

An interview with former president Daniel Ortega echoes the filmmakers’ themes that during the war, Nicaragua was “X-rayed by the American and international press. But now that there is no war, there is no media.”

Some optimistic notes toward the end include an interview with ex soldiers - Sandinistas and Contras, who were once enemies, but are now friends. The nation’s capacity for forgiveness shows a society that has perhaps done well without our interference. (A sad footnote tells viewers in a dedication that Ryan died shortly upon returning to the U.S. after shooting this film in Nicaragua.)

Although billed as a sequel, this documentary stands by itself as a well-produced, articulate and intelligent film. It is essential for both journalism and media studies classrooms and an excellent supplement for classes in Latin American history and politics.