kony review
maybe Jason Russell's web-based film Kony 2012, calling for international action to stop the Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony, can't be considered great documentary-making. But as a piece of digital polemic and digital activism, it is quite simply brilliant. It's a slick, high-gloss piece of work, distributed on the Vimeo site, the upscale version of YouTube for serious film-makers. And its sensational, exponential popularity-growth on the web is already achieving one of its stated objectives: to make Kony famous, to publicise this psychopathic warlord's grotesque crimes: kidnapping thousands of children and turning them into mercenaries, butchers and rapists.
It does not stick to the conventions of impartial journalism, in the BBC style. It is partisan, tactless and very bold. But it could be seen as insufferably condescending, a way of making US college kids feel good about themselves. And is Russell scared to come out and admit that effective action entails an old-fashioned boots-on-soil invasion of a landlocked African country, with plenty of collateral damage and civilian death?
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