Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum opens at VIFF Centre June 14.<\/i><\/p>\n
Jacob Appelbaum was an influential internet freedom, privacy and free speech activist. He collaborated with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, which Assange founded in 2006 to publish leaked documents and information. He helped the journalists with whom whistleblower Edward Snowden shared documents make the stories public. And he was prominent in the TOR Project (aka \u201cthe dark web\u201d). Then, suddenly, Appelbaum took himself out of the spotlight.<\/p>\n
Writer, director and producer Jamie Kastner wanted to know why. He also wanted to know more about this well-known yet little-known \u201chacktivist\u201d and the subculture in which Appelbaum operated. The result is the documentary Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum<\/i>, which screens at VIFF Centre June 14-17 and June 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cI first saw Appelbaum in another documentary about WikiLeaks, in which he was playing a supporting role,\u201d Kastner told the Independent<\/i>. \u201cHe jumped off the screen both for his charisma and his clear-eyed and apparently fearless political commitment. I learned about the broad strokes of the scandal in which he was later involved, became intrigued not only by what had happened with him, but by this whole activist community about which I had known little.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being accused of sexual abuse in 2016, Appelbaum left the United States for Germany. It is there, reads the documentary\u2019s PR material, that Kastner \u201cfinds him, adamant that he is the victim of government black ops, \u2018canceled\u2019 without legal process or recourse, punished for who he is, and for what he represents.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThough I\u2019m sure even he would not claim that all the work he has done has been flawless,\u201d said Kastner, \u201cto me there remains at least an aspect to the work he\u2019s done, regardless of what may or may not have come later, that represents a fearless standing up to authority, taking significant personal risks to expose abuses of power and to help improve people\u2019s lives by making them better informed about governments and surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cAs lawyer Margaret Ratner Kunstler explains in the film, in an era in which journalism has shrunk and become ever more controlled by government and\/or large corporations, the significance of so-called leakers and hackers has grown to become one of our last sources of unfiltered news and information.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kastner gave the examples of WikiLeaks having \u201creleased Chelsea Manning\u2019s leaks, including the \u2018Collateral Murder\u2019 video of American drones killing civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007, and a trove of Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails in 2016, among many other controversial releases.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2013, Snowden, \u201ca former contractor for the National Security Agency, America\u2019s cyber-intelligence gathering service \u2026 leaked a vast trove of documents revealing the information gathering practices of the US and its \u2018Five Eyes\u2019 allies countries, including how data was gathered covertly on their own citizens,\u201d said Kastner.<\/p>\n
With Snowden, the filmmaker added, Appelbaum \u201chelped the journalists to whom Snowden leaked his documents both manage the technology involved, and investigate and disseminate stories arising from Snowden\u2019s leaks, including penning a cover story in German newsmagazine Der Speigel revealing that the US was spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s cellphone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum<\/i> was about five years in the making.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was a slow and wary process, once contact was made, of gaining access to Appelbaum and establishing trust on both sides,\u201d explained Kastner. \u201cI knew he was a controversial, brilliant and at times troubled figure, but I approached the story with an open mind. It struck me as a fascinating story in which one person\u2019s trajectory tracked the rise and fall of a movement that, for a time, was rocking the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI worked with a team of researchers to gain necessary context and try to build relationships within this very wary community. I worked extensively \u2013 features, in my experience, take six months or so in editing \u2013 with my collaborator Michael Hannan in the edit suite, to try to craft a film that would make the audience experience the real-life spy quality I experienced in entering into Appelbaum\u2019s world, in which things, at times, seem too fantastical to be true \u2013 but sufficient evidence is there to suggest they are not false.\u201d<\/p>\n Kastner\u2019s many credits \u2013 through his and wife Laura Baron Kastner\u2019s Cave 7 Productions \u2013 include The Skyjacker\u2019s Tale<\/i> (2016), There Are No Fakes<\/i> (2019) and Charlotte\u2019s Castle<\/i> (2023). Cave 7 documentaries have not only garnered award recognition but inspired action. There Are No Fakes<\/i>, for example, helped launch \u201ca criminal investigation into widespread fraudulent production of and distribution of Indigenous art,\u201d leading to \u201ceight arrests, 40 charges laid and 1,000 paintings seized,\u201d notes the company.<\/p>\n As a documentarian, Kastner is especially aware of the evasiveness of \u201cthe truth\u201d and its often-subjective nature. While he said, \u201cI still admire the same qualities about Appelbaum that first drew me to the subject, his political spirit and work,\u201d the making of the documentary took him to all sorts of places he hadn\u2019t expected.<\/p>\n \u201cLearning about the community from which he and Assange sprung made me realize the film was about a larger story, larger issues which the narrative of Appelbaum\u2019s life raises,\u201d said Kastner. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to like him, the film is not an apologia or a hagiography. I investigate the accusations as extensively as possible. Ultimately, as the title suggests, the film equally became about the people who don\u2019t want to talk about him, and the many reasons for that. I don\u2019t think I had fixed ideas about the \u2018truth\u2019 going into this film. I don\u2019t pretend the film leaves with any one conclusion, but rather hopefully, is the jumping-off point for further discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n For tickets to a screening, visit viff.org\/whats-on\/nobody-talk-jacob-appelbaum<\/a>. The documentary will start streaming on CBC Gem<\/a> on June 26.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum opens at VIFF Centre June 14. Jacob Appelbaum was an influential internet freedom, privacy and free speech activist. He collaborated with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, which Assange founded in 2006 to publish leaked documents and information. He helped the journalists with whom whistleblower Edward Snowden shared documents make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6967,23288,23285,23286,23287],"class_list":["post-44477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-documentaries","tag-hacktivism","tag-jacob-appelbaum","tag-jamie-kastner","tag-wikileaks"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}