THE SONY INTERNATIONAL IMPACT AWARD
James Brabazon "A Journey Without Maps"
In June 2002, James Brabazon entered Liberia undercover with an assistant cameraman and sound engineer.
When they became ill and left, he was on his own. He then travelled for two months with the LURD rebels, walking over 300 miles through primary jungle.
Working alone, Brabazon filmed combat, executions, interrogations, torture and ritual cannibalism, providing documentary evidence that Charles Taylor was illegally importing weapons in contravention of a UN arms embargo.
Until A Journey Without Maps was made and broadcast, no journalists had filmed the LURD, travelled with them, met their leaders or even been able to prove their existence.
 | | | "A Journey Without Maps" |
James Brabazon's comments:
"My feelings while filming were complicated and changed as the shoot progressed… I felt that it was necessary to film the atrocities as they occurred in order to present as complete and objective an image of the rebels’ war as possible.
I found the nature of these incidents increasingly difficult to assimilate, and eventually impossible to document further.
At the end of the trip I was so physically weakened from walking and lack of food, and so consumed by the relentless violence around me that I was unable and unwilling to continue filming."
Ibrahim El Batout "Mass Graves in Iraq"
This footage shows the discovery of the mass graves in Iraq and the efforts of relatives to identify the victims.
In his pictures, Ibrahim El Batout has not only captured the terror of the Saddam regime, but also the grief and hope of the relatives of the missing family members as they search for any remains of their loved ones.
 | | | "Mass Graves in Iraq" |
Ibrahim El Batout's comments:
"When we shot this documentary it was relatively safe. For me it was a deja-vu of other mass graves I filmed before in Guatemala, Bosnia and Kosovo.
So it enhanced my idea about war where blood always looked red and bones always had the same colours, structures and smell, where suffering made no distinction of its victims age, colour, religion or ethnic background."
Phil Goodwin "Assassination Attempt on President Karzai"
Any thoughts that the situation in Afghanistan was stable were dispelled by an attempt to kill the recently appointed President.
Goodwin, filming as Karzai returned to his car, found himself about three feet away from the President’s attacker.
"My first thought was that it was a warning shot - a young man had gone right up to President Karzai‚s car window - and I thought a bodyguard was warning people away."
The young man was Azimullah, a plastic tray salesman, who reacted faster than anyone and struggled with the gunman – and died in the hail of bullets.
 | | | "Assassination Attempt on President Karzai" |
Phil Goodwin's comments:
"I was proud of the way I filmed the aftermath. Years of agency work in conflict situations kicked in and I knew that however tempting it is to film the blood and gore of an event, those are the shots which don’t get used for taste reasons. So I tried to film shots that could be broadcast."
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