From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the handover of Hong Kong to China, Matt Frei has spent over two decades reporting across the globe. 

Newly-appointed to Channel 4 News as Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, will be in conversation with former BBC executive Vin Ray to look back over nearly two decades at the BBC before his move was announced in May last year.

The author of Only in America, Frei has covered numerous high profile stories and reported from Asia, Europe, America and Africa. He has been awarded, amongst others, the Prix Bayeux award for War Reporting for his coverage of the conflict in East Timor. He presented the BBC World News America broadcast and a weekly Radio 4 show, Americana. 

Image Credit: Channel 4 News

Darkhead tells the story of Austro-Iranian Rapper Nazar and his friends, Vahid and Musti.

A Schwarzkopf or "Darkhead" is the word a group of European born immigrants use to define themselves in Austria. Characterised by social exclusion, lack of economic opportunity, it is the word the 25-year-old rapper and his friends use to identify themselves. 

Digging deep into the issues faced by second generation immigrants in Vienna, the film explores issues of identity, immigration, violence and poverty in Europe through one of the greatest forces youth culture has for expressing itself - hip hop.

http://www.schwarzkopf-derfilm.com/

Directed by: Arman T. Riahi

Year: 2011

Duration: 90'

Enduring long separations from their children, and leaving their families to face the hardships of life in Europe's poorest country, the women hope to pave the way for a better future.

Director Ed Moschwitz follows the women from 2004-2007 in an attempt to shed light on the often ignored suffering of economic migrants.  

**Official Competion IDFA 2011**

Director: Ed Moshvitz 

Year: 2011

Length: 102'

Recent months have seen a rise in tension between Iran and the West; the storming of the UK embassy in Tehran in November led William Hague to order the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from the UK and the closure of the embassy in Tehran.

The latest flashpoint has been the strait of Hormuz, the narrowest point in the Gulf, through which a fifth of the world's traded oil passes. Iran has warned that if sanctions on the trade in Iranian oil come into effect they could respond by closing the strait. Recent Iranian and Israeli military activity in the region has only increased these tensions. 

Internally 2011 saw increased tensions in the country's political elite focusing on a power struggle between the spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

Join us at the Royal Institution of Great Britain where we will be discussing the growing tensions between Iran and the West, the impact of the power struggles at the heart of government and looking at the future of the pro-democracy movement. 

Panelists to confirmed. 

Picture credit: Daniella Zalcman

Increasingly pressured into self-censorship through intimidation, fear and legislation, journalists are facing increasingly dangerous times. Such danger are compounded by repressive governments and violent criminal groups.

Join us at the Frontline Club for the first in a series of events, screenings and workshops examining the challenges to safety faced by journalists around the world.

We will be discussing the dangers faced by journalists today and the impact on journalism of a world more and more people are demanding their rights to equality and justice. What more can be done to protect journalists in their work?

The event will also mark the launch of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Attacks on the Press report which will be presented by CPJ executive director Joel Simon.

Chaired by BBC special correspondent, Allan Little. 

With:

Joel Simon, executive director of the CPJ, under which they launched the 'Global Campaign Against Impunity' and established the 'Journalist Assistance program' which provides help to journalists in distress.

Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who was detained in Iran during the uprising following the 2009 disputed election. He is author of Then They Came for Me: A story of injustice and survival in Iran's most notorious prison.

(via Skype) Libyan construction worker turned fixer, Suliman Ali Zway who was recently awarded the Martin Adler prize alongside Osama Alfitory for their dedication and bravery in reporting the conflict in Libya. They are known to international journalists as 'The A-Team.'

Colin Pereira, head of safety and security at ITN, he is responsible for the security of ITN operations in high risk environments. Previously he was deputy head of the BBC High Risk Team. He has advised on thousands of deployments around the world, ranging from the London riots to deploying crews to downtown Mogadishu. He is also head of 1st Option Safety, specialising in small production and freelance safety.

Award-winning journalist and reporter, Jenny Kleeman, has been working with Channel 4's Unreported World since 2007, reporting from locations as diverse as the Amazon rainforest, the slums of Liberia and most recently Afghanistan. She writes regularly for the Guardian, Sunday Times and Independent.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with CPJ 

In 1980 when Zimbabwe became one of the last African countries to win independence, smart and charming Robert Mugabe seemed poised to lead the country through a smooth transition from white minority rule.

He impressed leaders and people around the world with his intelligence, articulate speeches, and was deemed one of the great African leaders.  

For the first 15 years the country enjoyed growing prospertity. 

Fast forward to 2012. Mugabe is a controversial figure known for his ruthless response to any oppositon and there is little trace of the leader that brought hope to an entire country and region. 

Director Simon Bright takes us on a journey through Mugabe's difficult childhood, his role in opposing the white-minority rule goverment of Ian Smith and his imprisonment for 10 years before his rise to power. The film asks why Mugabe is so reluctant to leave power and sets out to piece together the answer to the question..."what happened?"

http://mugabemovie.com/

Director: Simon Bright

Producer: Michael Auret

Year: 2011

Length: 84'

 What you will learn:

Narrative Storytelling

- Examples of successful projects

- Developing the best approach for creating effective multimedia stories

- Pros and cons of the various narrative approaches

 Reporting Approach

- Using the best tools for the story

- Integrating still images, audio and video

 The Business Model

- How to create a diverse model

- How to leverage the various distribution outlets

 About Brian Storm:

 Brian Storm is the founder and executive producer of MediaStorm (http://mediastorm.com), a multimedia production studio based in Brooklyn, New York.

MediaStorm's principal aim is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media.

Prior to launching MediaStorm in 2005, Storm spent two years as vice president of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis, a digital media agency founded and owned by Bill Gates. From 1995 to 2002 he was director of multimedia at MSNBC.com. 

The 19th of 23 children born to a member of the Soviet backed parliament who was killed when she was four years old by the Mujahedeen, she has lost brothers and her husband to the country’s successive wars.

Elected as Member of Parliament for the Badakshan province in 2005, Fawzia Koofi has spent her life fighting prejudice and injustice 

She was the first woman to be elected as Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament in the history of Afghanistan.

Despite receiving regular death threats and assassination attempts she continues her struggle to improve human rights in Afghanistan, especially for women and children and plans to run for President of Afghanistan in 2014.

Join us at the Frontline Club with Fawzia Koofi and Nadene Ghouri, the co-author of the book that tells her story The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future.

They clashed with Gaddafi's security forces who responded with brutal violence. What followed was a civil war that cost the lives of an estimated 30,000 people and ended eight months later with Gaddafi's death in his birthplace of Sirte. 

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the task of rebuilding Libya a year after the uprising began. We will be looking at the work of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the tensions that remain. What are the prospects of a peaceful future?

Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor for Channel 4 News and author of Sandstorm.

With: 

Ahmed Gebreel, deputy head of the Libyan embassy in London, he was a political advisor to the chairman of the NTC and the spokesperson for the MOFA during the revolution.

Dr Faraj Najem, Libyan writer and historian.

Rana Jawad, of British-Lebanese nationality, she is married to a Libyan and resident in Tripoli where she has been reporting for the BBC for seven years. Author of Tripoli Witness.

Khaeri Aboushagor, media researcher, political activist, and human rights defender; calling for the establishment of a secular state in Libya.

Carsten Jurgensen, Libya researcher for Amnesty International.

Picture credit: B.R.Q's photostream

Who is this man? And how has he consolidated the Revolution?

BBC Persian's ground-breaking documentary, The Ayatollah's Seal, charts the Ayatollah's reign and, through a number of interviews with relatives, biographers and politicians, builds a profile of Iran's most powerful man.

A year ago Cairo's "Twitterati" tweeted their revolution for 18 days in and around Tahrir Square. Young, urbane and highly motivated, their tweets revealed the truth of the scale of the uprising which Egypt's state media sought to hide. It gave a street-level minute-by-minute account of the bravery and persistence of the Egyptian people which resulted in the downfall of a dictator. A year later Al Jazeera talks to some of those who posted on twitter to hear in more than 140 characters what they thought then, and what they feel now about developments since the heady days of February 2011. The film film is based on a book by Alex Nunns and Nadia Idle of the same name and published by OR books. For more information on the book see: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/tweets-from-tahrir/ 

Screenings from the Frontline with Al Jazeera is a new initiative to contextualize the news and working experiences of journalists and filmmakers reporting out of the political hotspots of our time. It aims to bridge the gap between the British audience and the biggest events taking place in modern history by showing a pre-broadcast special report with the presence of people involved in making them. Each screening pays homage to the groundbreaking work of filmmakers and journalists that risk their lives to provide in-depth reports to people across the globe as and when the events occur. 

Director: Damian Clarke

Length: 48'

Year: 2012

Position Among the Stars completes director Leonard Retel Helmrich's multi award-winning trilogy capturing complexities of religion, politics, and now economics, following the lives of one family in a Jakarta slum.

Helmrich follows Tari, the only educated child of the family, as she struggles with the impulses of becoming a teenager with their expectations of her as their hope for a better future.

Filmed over 12 years using Helmich's own ingenious technique dubbed "single-shot cinema", each of the three films - Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon and Position Among the Stars - stands alone in its message and time, while providing both a microscopic look into the changing Indonesian life and into globalisation.

Position Among the Stars will be released in UK theatres on 17 February. 

 **Winner, Sundance World Cinema Special Jury prize – Best Documentary 2011**

**Winner, IDFA Award - Best Feature-Length Documentary 2010**

 Directed by: Leonard Retel Helmrich

Year: 2010

Length: 115' 

You can enter as an individual or as a team of up to six. All money raised will go to the Fixers Fund which raised money for families of fixers around the world killed or injured while working with the international media.

This event is open to everyone.

Dickinson is a historical crime writer and former editor of Newsnight. The quiz will be general knowledge with a historical bias.

A unique exploration of the psychological and emotional toll of covering wars and the risks journalists take in order to cover them.

Shortlisted for the Academy Award nomination for best documentary, Under Fire: Journalists in Combat is co-produced by Dr. Anthony Feinstein, who works as a psychiatrist for CNN, CBS, BBC, Reuters and other international news outfits.

The documentary features the experiences and insights of award winning journalists such as Chris Hedges, Jeremy B Owen, Christina Lamb, Paul Watson, Ian Stuart, Finbarr O' Reilly, Jon Steele and many more. Among those interviewed are prominent war journalists from the New York Times; BBC, Times of London and many others.

Directed by: Martyn Burke

Year: 2011

Duration: 89'

**The London Premiere of Under Fire: Journalists in Combat is part of a series of events, screenings and workshops examining the challenges to safety faced by journalists around the world.**