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Director: Juan Ravell
Awards: Emmy Award (finalist) - News & Documentary
Join us Monday, November 3rd at 3:30 p.m. for a screening of a powerful piece of investigative journalism produced by FRONTLINE and the independent Venezuelan news organization Armando.info
This event will include a Q&A discussion with director Juan Revell and OHIO Fulbright Scholar Patricia Marcano
Admission is FREE – Tickets are required
About the film
Three years after the death of Hugo Chávez and the presidential election of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela was in economic freefall and consumed by hunger. In 2016, President Maduro’s government responded with the CLAP program: a domestic aid initiative that was billed as providing high-quality, essential food items to Venezuelans impacted by the nation’s economic crisis — some of whom were at risk of
starvation.
This FRONTLINE documentary A Dangerous Assignment: Uncovering Corruption in Maduro’s Venezuela shows that, in fact, the CLAP program was not all that the government claimed it to be. Made in collaboration with the independent Venezuelan news site Armando.info, the documentary features groundbreaking reporting from investigative journalist Roberto Deniz and his colleagues. They revealed that the government was purchasing low-quality products for the CLAP program. The Armando.info journalists’ reporting ended up helping expose a vast corruption scandal that had benefited Maduro and other officials, spanning from Venezuela to Europe to the U.S. — and it ultimately made the journalists targets of the Maduro government.
A Dangerous Assignment: Uncovering Corruption in Maduro’s Venezuela was a finalist for the News & Documentary Emmy Award.
About the speakers
Juan Andres Ravell, director, is an audio producer and documentary director from Caracas Venezuela. In 2008, Juan co-founded El Chigüire Bipolar, a wildly popular political satire website that used humor to bypass government censorship in Venezuela. In 2018, Juan branched into investigative journalism collaborating in projects with reporters from Armando.Info, IDL Reporteros and Columbia Journalism School. Juan recently directed the investigative documentary feature “A Dangerous Assignment” for FRONTLINE PBS.
Patricia Marcano Meza is a Venezuelan editor and investigative reporter who has covered the corruption of the Maduro government for Armando.info. Her work includes covering corruption, money laundering, organized crime and human rights violations; coordinating the newsroom; and leading the Venezuelan chapter of the FinCEN Files and Pandora Papers projects. She is also an OHIO Fulbright Scholar pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Marcano’s studies are focused on the study of data journalism, and she plans to take what she learns at Ohio University back to Venezuela to train fellow journalists so they can all improve the investigative work they are doing.
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85 MIN
Kelly Hatas is the Executive Director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP), an antipoverty nonprofit organization headquartered in Athens County. She earned her BA in International Relations from Shawnee State University in 2007 and went on to serve as an AmeriCorps*VISTA for three years there. That experience led to her interest in the nonprofit sector, and she earned her Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service at Ohio University in 2012. She has spent the rest of her professional career with HAPCAP, one of 1,000 Community Action Agencies that were established across the country as part of then President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Kelly grew up in Southwest Ohio, and will talk about how her perspective shifted after moving to, and choosing to stay in Appalachia. She lives in Athens County with her wife and two dogs.
From legendary director Wim Wenders, this latest film is a perfect slice of peace in these tumultuous times. Japanese actor Koji Yokusho (who has won the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival) stars in the lead role alongside Tokio Emoto and Arisa Nakano. Perfect Days has been nominated for a Best International Feature Film Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards, and will surely be an unforgettable addition to Wender’s illustrious cinematic career.