Sam Farmar

This report is an edited version of an interview shot in a secret location in the Congolese jungle in 2006. It remains the first and only exclusive interview that Joseph Kony has ever given.

Kony is the most wanted man in Africa and the leader of the ‘Lords Resistance Army’. In his 25-year rebellion Joseph Kony has led a brutal insurgency in Northern Uganda and is accused of murdering 10,000 people and abducting 25,000, many of them children. He is wanted by the international criminal court on 33 charges including include murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement and rape.

It took nearly a year of negotiations for Kony to agree to this interview in which he claims the LRA have never been involved in any abductions, rapes or mutilations. That’s just Museveni’s propaganda.” Kony denies suggestions God told him to fight but admits to being guided by “very many spirits.”

Filmed, Reported, Directed and Produced by Sam Farmar

Co Directed and Produced by Mareike Schomerus

To use footage contact Journeyman pictures: info@journeyman.tv

Copyright: True Story

Related media

An article I wrote for the BBC:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5124762.stm

Two years ago I met Alex Rawlins, an enigmatic guitar playing platoon commander off to fight in Afghanistan. Inspired I pitch the idea to the BBC of telling the story of the conflict using videos shot by soldiers themselves. It was turned down but it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I bought Alex a camera, taught him to use it and off he went.

I wanted the platoon to tell their own story but to help them I sellotaped a mass of tiny post-it-notes all over the camera to prompt who ever was holding it to ask good questions and then for the next few months I sent them a number of encouraging and pestering emails (“quit using the night vision in the daytime”, “stop tromboning the zoom”….”tell me what an earth you are doing…”). It paid off as every week they sent me a new tape and now after two years of endless negotiations with the BBC and MOD I am pleased to say the footage makes up the majority of the second documentary in the award winning BBC series ‘Our War’ – The Invisible Enemy’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01175hg

The rough edit shown here is my initial cut of the footage that Alex Rawlins sent back from Afghanistan and lead to the BBC ‘Invisible Enemy’ documentary getting underway.

It’s the story of a young platoon from the Grenadier Guards and their terrifying struggle with land mines, also known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Captain Alex Rawlins filmed his men during a time when they lost of one their mates, 23-year-old Guardsman Jamie Janes, who stood on a land mine during a patrol. The final film (not shown here) shows how Jamie Janes’s death became a turning point in the British public’s awareness of the human cost of IEDs and how a misspelled letter turned into a political storm for the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011x1hl

If you need more original footage please contact me at

www.samfarmar.com

Nine days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Northern Japan a policeman heard a shout from a collapsed three story building close to the epicentre. Forty minutes later an 82 year old woman was bought out alive and moments later her 16 year old grandson was dragged out.

There haven’t been too many miracle stories coming out of Japan since the tsunami  but this certainly was one of them. An exciting day!

Reporter: Sam Farmar

I spent the night after the Japanese tsunami reporting for Al Jazeera, CBC News, ABC News and CBS News. When I was finished (which was a couple of  hours after the first wave hit Kona, Hawaii) I walked down to the beach to see what damage had been done and filmed this on my iphone. However, I didn’t fully anticipate the surges that followed – a little close for comfort.

Reporter: Sam Farmar

The Child Parliament is an extraordinary band of Congolese children who live in a town that has one of the highest counts of Child Prostitution in the world. With unique access to the town’s child brothels and against the odds they are taking a stand to protect children just like themselves.

I am so pleased that on making this film ‘World Vision’ have agreed to continue their support of the Child Parliament and have set aside a minimum of US $50,000 to support and mentor the children.

Sam Farmar: Reporter, Producer, Director and Camera.

The militias of the Democratic Republic of Congo are using rape as a weapon of war, even male rape and now they’re throwing kidnapping into the terrible mix.

One woman tells how she was kidnapped and raped for three days in front of her husband. ”They said they would behead my husband if I didn’t bring beer and $100 phone credit”. While the warring continues there appears to be no end in sight for the suffering people of the DR Congo

Sam Farmar: Reporter, Producer, Director and Camera.

Broadcast on BBC Newsnight

Sam Farmar reports on the unprecedented wave of elephant poaching taking place across Africa – spurred on by a doubling of the international ivory price and the worst drought in East Africa for more than a decade. Many now feel they have little option but to poach to survive.

After years in decline poaching is back and conversationalists are blaming the Chinese. China trade with Africa now stands at 100 billion US dollar annually a figure that is expected to increase by 80% in the coming year – with this level of investment African governments are reluctant to upset their fastest growing trading partner and clamp down on the illegal ivory trade to China.

The number of elephants killed in East Africa has doubled in the last year and experts predict the extinction of elephants outside of protected parks as early as 2020. Currently the elephant death rate from poaching throughout Africa is higher than the annual death rate that led to the international ivory trade ban 20 years ago.

Conservationists blame a decision to relax the law and allow the legal sales of stockpiled ivory, which they claim has reignited interest in ivory across the Far East.

Broadcast on 7.30 report ABC
Filmed, Produced / Directed by Sam Farmar
Copyright:: Sam Farmar
Duration: 6 minutes 50 seconds
Contact: samfarmar@gmail.com

The fishermen of Malindi are celebrating and it’s all thanks to the Somali pirates. Since piracy has scared away the international trawlers who were ravaging Kenya’s fish stocks, local fishing is thriving again. These fishermen are used to earning less than £5 a day but over the last few months they’ve been netting huge catches, increasing their wages by over 50 times.

Filmed, Produced and Directed by Sam Farmar

Broadcast on Channel Four News and CNN International

Haiti has become a failed state where it seems the only growth industry is kidnapping. Millions live in fear of thuggish gangs who carry out the dirty work of the country’s politicians. With eighty percent of the population unemployed for many crime is the only way to make a living. One former public servant admits ‘It is very well known that members of the interim government are very, very steeply involved in kidnapping”.

Filmed, Produced / Directed by Sam Farmar

Broadcast on BBC Newsnight, ABC Foreign Correspondent

The world’s most valuable aphrodisiac; ‘Yarchagumba’ – a mushroom that grows out of the head of caterpillars has led to a modern day gold rush with more than fifty thousand people making the dangerous journey up the Nepalese mountains in search of the mysterious parasite, worth half the price of gold.

“The main property it gives you is energy – like a Viagra”, Raaj Waiba, owner of a tea shop in Kathmandu, told reporter Sam Farmar, “So I call it Viagra from the Himalaya. Man, it gets you really sexy”. Eventually Yarchagumba ends up in places like Japan, where a bowl of soup containing just three caterpillars costs a hundred dollars.

The worlds best ‘Himalayan Viagra’ comes from Dolpa – the poorest and least developed region of Nepal – with no roads, few jobs and reliant on food aid. Much of the region is now under the control of the Maoists rebels who dominate two thirds of the country and have been fighting a war killing 12,000 people in the past nine years. Yarchagumba is now providing millions of dollars towards the Maoist rebellion.

British journalist Sam Farmar travelled by foot across the roof of the world in pursuit of this story.

Broadcast on BBC Newsnight, ABC Foreign Correspondent, NHK, CNN
Filmed, Produced and Directed by Sam Farmar

‘Unreported World’ visits a world of unimaginable lawlessness where disappearances, death and torture have become part of the daily routine. Reporter Ramita Navai and director Sam Farmar present a shocking exposé of the rampant violence that afflicts areas of Guatemala City, as vigilante groups, street gangs and the beleaguered security forces battle for control; A film full of shocking and disturbing imagery.

Series: Unreported World, Channel 4
Filmed, Produced / Directed by Sam Farmar
Copyright:: Quick Silver Media

‘Powerful, if gruesome stuff, acquired at no small risk.’ – The Guardian

‘…superb reportage…’ – The Daily Telegraph

Travelling to China’s remote border with North Korea, where few journalists have ever set foot, reporter Oliver Steeds and director Sam Farmar report on the plight of thousands of North Korean women who have been forced into prostitution or sold as brides after fleeing persecution and starvation in one of the world’s most secretive and repressive regimes.

Series: Unreported World, Channel 4
Filmed, Produced / Directed by Sam Farmar
Reported by Olly Steeds
Copyright: Quick Silver Media
Duration – 24 mins

In October 2011 all 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly will gather in New York to sign a Resolution declaring their commitment to “pursue initiatives for peace and reconciliation in the spirit of the Ancient Olympic Games. In the past everyone has signed it but no one has ever implemented it.

Lord Bates a former British Government Minister and member of the House of Lords feels this is a missed opportunity. He wants to see the Resolution brought into reality so has decided to walk over 3000 miles in the hope that he can persuade all the signatories to the Truce to do just one thing to implement it.

Not only would this bring the flame of hope into conflict zones around the world it would mean that we would rediscover the central purpose of the Ancient Olympic Games which was to provide a pause in the endless cycle of violence through the observance of the Sacred Truce. If they could do it 3000 years ago, then surely we can do it now.