'Restrepo' Filmmaker Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya

'Restrepo' Filmmaker Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya
 By *Brent Lang*
Created *04/20/2011 - 10:12*
Published: April 20, 2011 @ 10:12 am

"Restrepo" co-director Tim Hetherington has been killed while covering the
political uprising in Libya, his publicist confirmed to TheWrap.

He was 40, according to his publicist.

There are conflicting reports about the immediate circumstances surrounding
 Hetherington's death, but it is known that he was hit by an RPG round early
Thursday morning.

The Oscar-nominated documentarian's colleague Chris Hondros may also have
been killed, but some outlets are reporting that he remains alive,
albeit gravely
injured<http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/04/tim-hetherington-41-killed-in-libya.html>
[1].

Hetherington's friend, photographer Andre Liohn, broke the news via
Facebook:

"Sad news Tim Hetherington died in Misrata now when covering the front line.
Chris Hondros is in a serious status. Michel Brown and Guy are wounded but
fine."

*Also read:* 'Restrepo' Directors: Why It's All War ... No Politics
Allowed<http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/restrepo-all-war-no-politics-18936>
[2]

According to the Business
Insider<http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-hetherington-oscar-libya-restrepo-2011-4>
[3], Hetherington was tweeting from Misrata shortly before he was killed,
and described heavy fighting taking place outside the city.

"In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi
forces. No sign of NATO," Hetherington tweeted.

Hetherington regularly contributed his photo-journalism to "Vanity Fair."

Co-directed by author Sebastian Junger and released in 2010,
"Restrepo" chronicled the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed
at a remote Afghanistan outpost.

The film, his first as a director,  emerged from a Vanity Fair assignment.

In an interview with
TheWrap<http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/restrepo-all-war-no-politics-18936?page=0,0>
[4] last year, Hetherington said he did not want the film to have an overt
political message.

"This is a visceral, experiential war film. And we just think there’s a
massive need, at this critical juncture, for people to put their politics
aside in the lobby of the theater, and go into a dark room for 93 minutes to
experience and share what these guys go through, and in some ways digest it
and honor it," Hetherington said.

In a rave review in the New York
Observer<http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/it-won%E2%80%99t-make-you-feel-any-junger-%E2%80%A6#>
[5], Sara Vilkomerson wrote: "...a documentary so real and unflinching (and
at times deeply frightening) that it's hard to watch, but it is one of those
film experiences that you'll feel glad about getting through."

In addition to an Oscar nomination, "Restrepo" was awarded the Grand Jury
Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

Born in Liverpool, UK, Hetherington studied literature at Oxford University
and later returned to college to study photojournalism.

Throughout his career, Hetherington reported on international politics, war
and global poverty, living in West Africa for eight years.

He turned his experiences in Africa into a 2009 book, "Long Story Bit By
Bit: Liberia Retold," which drew on photographs and interviews to convey
Liberia's history.

Likewise, Hetherington turned the experience of being embedded with a
military unit for "Restrepo" into a book, "Infidel," that was released in
2010.

His move from straight photojournalism to a mixture of photos, video and
other media, Hetherington told TheWrap, came in response to a changing media
landscape.

"The media is changing now," he said. "The old media idea is very segmented,
but we're at a point now where people can move into different forms.
Sebastian has written a book, I have a book.  We had two Nightline pieces,
two Vanity Fair articles.  I have a set of images that go around the world
in an art gallery kind of installation piece. Each of them have different
audiences, and they kind of each elucidate the subject in a slightly
different way, and ping off of each other. We’re entering this new media
sphere where those things work, whereas in the past there wasn’t the
platform to do this kind of work.

"I think inevitably we’ve reached a point in the media where if you go
somewhere, it seems natural that you might take an array of different tools.
My kit bag is a field recorder, *and  *a video recorder, *and*  a still
camera."

In addition to his work on "Restrepo," Hetherington was a cameraman on
"Liberia: an Uncivil War" (2004) and "The Devil Came on Horseback" (2007).

In his conversation with TheWrap, he summed up his (and Junger's) approach
simply: "We have covered many, many stories in our time, doing our work.
Our job is to report."


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |*
*

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