debate

June 12, 2012 7:00 PM

Four Horsemen – The Debate

Revealing the fundamental flaws in the economic system, new documentary Four Horsemen argues that although change has never been more urgently needed the conditions for it have never been more favourable. Join us with the film’s director Ross Ashcroft, co-author of the accompanying book Four Horsemen: The Survival Manual, Mark Braund, contributors and others to map out the argument for change.


June 8, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED Insight with Nick Fraser – Why Documentaries Matter

Editor of BBC Storyville Nick Fraser will be discussing the evolution of documentary, its defining nature and the future for this form of storytelling.


June 7, 2012

Fifteen months and 15,000 dead: Syria’s tipping point?

By Merryn Johnson In a bloody coincidence with Frontline’s First Wednesday talk about the divisive issue of international intervention in Syria, yet another massacre of women, children, civilians has been charged at the Assad regime. Less than a fortnight after the Houla massacre in the Homs province of Syria, in which 108 people were killed, opposition […]


June 6, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED First Wednesday: Syria – Is this the tipping point?

Again Syria hits our front pages but will the massacre of more than 100 men, women and children in Houla be the final straw for the international community?

What are the options on the table for the international community, the Assad regime and the opposition forces? Join us as we ask whether the deepening crisis in Syria is reaching a tipping point.


June 1, 2012

India Rising?

By Nigel Wilson A lively audience gathered at the Frontline Club as a distinguished panel grappled with the factors driving change in India. Leaving the country’s recent growth wobble aside, the panellists unravelled the economic revolution that has thrust India to the front of the global stage. The discussion began on a positive note as […]


May 31, 2012 7:00 PM

India Rising: An entrepreneurial revolution?

Join us to discuss the rise of India and what the future might hold for he world’s largest democracy with a population of over 1.21 billion people.


May 17, 2012

Sri Lanka: reconciliation and justice

By Rosie Scammell View event here. View in iTunes Epitomising the troubled state of Sri Lanka post-conflict, an impassioned panel spent Wednesday night disputing the truth. Facing an equally ardent audience, they proved that the country has a long way to go before reconciliation will become a reality. Chaired by BBC Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur – who […]


May 16, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED Sri Lanka: reconciliation and justice

Nearly three years after the end of the 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka that reportedly left an estimated 80,000-100,000 dead, questions are still arising about alleged war crimes and how they will be addressed.

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the impact of Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields and the situation today in Sri Lanka.


May 15, 2012 7:00 PM

#FCBBCA with Timothy Garton Ash: Is it time for a global conversation on free speech?

As westerners face greater surveillance in the name of security, including threats of increased controls in the wake of the August 2011 riots, we will be joined by Timothy Garton Ash and a respected panel of experts to discuss what the historian and commentator has set out as the first principle of free speech: That all human beings must be free and able to express themselves, and to receive and impart information and ideas, regardless of frontiers.

Is it time to create a new global code that governs freedom of speech? We will be discussing this vital issue and examining what such a code would include.


May 11, 2012 7:00 PM

Screening: Uspomene 677

A documentary that looks at the 677 concentration camps, rape houses and prisons set up during the Bosnian war and their legacy today in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Director Mirko Pincelli addresses the complexity of post conflict society, where everyday life exists somewhere between past and present.


May 9, 2012 7:00 PM

Alan Cowell in conversation with Charles Glass – The Paris Correspondent

Join us at the Frontline Club for an evening with long time New York Times correspondent Alan Cowell who went from having the distinction of being the last correspondent to date to file by carrier pigeon to heading the New York Times web-based breaking news operation in Paris. It is this tradition that is documented in his new novel The Paris Correspondent and that he will be discussing with broadcaster, journalist and writer Charles Glass.


May 8, 2012

Launch of Frontline Club journalism safety initiative

Editors, producers, practitioners and others involved in the news industry will gather at the Frontline Club in early May to discuss issues of safety.


May 2, 2012 7:00 PM

First Wednesday: The press, politicians and power – What will we learn from Leveson?

The relationship between the press and politicians is what is now under scrutiny at the Leveson Inquiry and the long awaited testimony from Rupert and James Murdoch has unearthed a relationship that paints an uncomfortable picture for the government.

Following these latest revelations, hosted by BBC Radio 4’s Paddy O’Connell, we will be examining what we have heard and what the ramifications will be for politicians and the press.


April 26, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED In conversation with Lindsey Hilsum: Libya in the Time of Revolution

Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum will be joining us in conversation with BBC Arabic presenter Rasha Qandeel to discuss Libya and her new book charting the country’s history from the beginnings of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime to the dictator’s squalid end.


April 25, 2012

A criminal fate in North Korea

By Rosie Scammell Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only known person born in a North Korean prison camp to escape. On Tuesday night he told a packed audience that they must help the 200,000 remaining: “The first thing that I remember being told by the prison guard was that we were supposed to be dead a […]


April 25, 2012

Behind the wall of secrecy: Escape from Camp 14

View event here. View in iTunes By Jim Treadway A packed house heard the touching and frightening story of Shin Dong-hyuk at the Frontline Club, told in Blaine Harden’s recently published book Escape from Camp 14: One man’s remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West. Shin Dong-hyuk is one of only three known prisoners […]


April 24, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED Behind the wall of secrecy: Escape from Camp 14

Little is known about the prison camps of North Korea where it is estimated that 200,000 are imprisoned. Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only person born into one of these camps that has ever escaped.

He will be joining us at the Frontline Club with Blaine Harden whose book Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West recounts this extraordinary journey.


April 20, 2012 7:00 PM

THIRD PARTY SCREENING: From Cyrus to Ahmadinejad

From Cyrus to Ahmadinejad is a groundbreaking documentary about one of the most explosive conflicts in the world. For the first time on the record, an Israeli official, vice Prime Minister Moshe Yalon, implicitly, accepts the responsibility for the assassination of Iranian scientists, damaging Iranian nuclear centrifuges with a computer virus and destroying Iran’s military and nuclear facilities in the past few years.


April 18, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED Insight with Ahmed Rashid – Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan

As we approach the one year anniversary of the death of Osama Bin Laden, Ahmed Rashid will be joining senior BBC presenter and special correspondent Lyse Doucet to discuss the future for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States.


April 13, 2012

Bosnia 20 years on – Part 2

By Ivana Davidovic It was a full house at the Frontline Club, the audience gathering to mark two decades since the ill-fated weekend in April 1992 when first shots were fired in Bosnia. The worst carnage in Europe since World War II was about to unfold. Over 100,000 people were killed, out of whom about […]


April 13, 2012

Bosnia 20 years on – Part 1

By Merryn Johnson Twenty years after the beginning of the Bosnian War, Ed Vulliamy still rages against the powers that failed to act, the perpetrators not held to account, and the international organisations continuing to profit from the fractured regions sufferings. “It’s not just about the war but about the peace after it… wars, and […]


April 11, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED 20th anniversary of the Bosnian war

What has happened to the people of Bosnia in the aftermath of the Bosnian war which broke out 20 years ago?

Ed Vulliamy writer for the Guardian and Observer will be joining Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith in conversation to look back at the impact of the war both then and on people’s lives today.


April 5, 2012

Is Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign baloney?

With over one hundred million ‘views’ the Kony 2012 video has started a far-reaching debate on the aims and value of a production seen by many as an over-simplification of complex situation.


April 5, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED First Wednesday: KONY 2012 – A force for good?

The recent KONY 2012 campaign video has been met with strong criticism, but nobody can question its effectiveness in reaching a mass audience.

Despite its inaccuracies this campaign has created wider awareness about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) than any news report or campaign that has come before it, so what can be learned? Join us for April’s First Wednesday as we debate whether the KONY 2012 campaign is a force for good or a worrying development in campaigning.


March 27, 2012 7:00 PM

THIRD PARTY SCREENING: The Trouble with Girls

There’s a long tradition in Afghanistan of families with no sons choosing to bring up one of their daughters as a boy. For the girls this means growing up dressed in boy’s clothes, answering to a boy’s name and being allowed the freedoms and privileges Afghan boys enjoy both within the family and outside.

Tahir Qadiry’s film looks at the issue from a number of different perspectives. He spends time with a girl currently growing up as a boy, talks to a young woman who’s still coming to terms with her experience being raised as a boy, seeks the opinion of a mullah and hears from a human rights activist.


March 27, 2012

Putin, corruption and the Magnitsky case

It’s not easy to hear of how Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was killed.


March 27, 2012

What next for Putin’s Russia?

By Alan Selby Against a backdrop of growing discontent, and widespread allegations of fraud, Russia’s recent elections heralded Vladimir Putin’s re-election to the presidency. The man who many still saw as Russia’s de facto leader will now resume his tenure, four years after ostensibly ceding power to Dmitry Medvedev.  In light of these developments a […]


March 26, 2012 7:00 PM

FULLY BOOKED Russia: Another six years of Vladimir Putin?

Vladimir Putin is back in presidential office for a third term after four years as Russia’s Prime Minister. We will be asking what the people of Russia think of the man who has dominated the country’s politics for more than 12 years and will now be President for a new extended term of six years?

Tens of thousands of Muscovites have taken part in protests to demand free and fair elections. But how deep and how far does the disaffectedness go? Join us to discuss the outcome of the presidential elections in Russia and what they mean for the future of the people of Russia and its development on the world stage.


March 22, 2012

Nine years on is the UN still failing Darfur?

View event here. Download this episode View in iTunes By Nicky Armstrong  Last night’s event at the Frontline Club saw a heated debate between the expert panel and the audience on the UN’s presence in Darfur. Chaired by Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential, the discussion bought up many of the tangled complexities surrounding the […]


March 21, 2012 7:00 PM

Nine years on is the UN still failing Darfur?

Since the start of the 2003 conflict in Darfur, questions have been raised about the role played by the United Nations and the viability of its mandate.

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the actions of the UN and whether they are still failing Darfur.