Emmy-nominated director shares film

Students, faculty and members of the Richmond community attended a screening of "Reporter," followed by a talk with the director, Eric Metzgar, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Alice Haynes Room.

Metzgar's film followed New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof through Eastern Congo during the summer of 2007 as Kristof searched for stories to portray human suffering of the war-stricken region.

The film documents Kristof's interviews with victims of war-clan violence, as he searches for the perfect subject to change what Kristof refers to as America's "indifference to the plight of strangers."

"Reporter" confronts the public's tendency to ignore the horrors of genocide because of distance from the action's epicenter.

"This film changed the way I see journalism, the way I read the paper and watch TV," Metzgar said.

"I think that's a bigger obstacle than what's happening in Congo, actually waking people up to the fact that these things can be fixed, but it takes a huge public outcry. And that doesn't mean another public, it means this public."

Early in the film, Metzgar explained the psychology of compassion. A study showed people were less likely to donate to the needy when they only read statistics without an image.

This study illustrates the "psychic numbing" that the public feels when it hears about large-scale human suffering. "Reporter" documents Kristof's effort to expose specific cases of human suffering, rather than simply statistics. This method is important, Metzgar said, because it doesn't allow people to "just throw money at the problem."

"The news is full of horrible stories everyday," Metzgar said. "I wanted to look at it in sort of a metaphysical sense."

Senior Ashley Overholser, one of the screening's attendees, said: "I'm a peace and conflict studies major, and I understand how difficult it can be to differentiate between the personal and the professional in whatever work you do in a conflict zone."

In one story, Kristof focused his columns on Yohanita, a 41-year-old woman he and his fellow travelers found dying of starvation. A student traveling with Kristof took special interest in Yohanita, who had been unable to marry after she was raped by clan soldiers. She weighed less than 60 pounds and needed medical attention, but people refused to pay attention to her or accompany her to the hospital.

Kristof never regrets intervening, Metzgar said. In the film, Kristof encounters hundreds of people in the same situation as Yohanita, but intervenes in this case because of a student's interest in her, Metzgar said. He intervened because Yohanita raised moral and journalistic questions, and represented the Congo so well, he said.

"Reporter" premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was shown on HBO in February 2010. Metzgar was nominated for an Emmy for his work in this film in 2011. When asked about his next projects, Metzgar said he was considering a documentary about poaching in South Africa and was also interested in doing a film on autism.

Contact staff writer Taylor Cloonan at taylor.cloonan@richmond.edu.