UNTV

My first port of call is to revisit the work produced by United Nations Television (UNTV), during the war in the former Yugoslavia, where I worked as a lighting cameraman in 1994/5.

UNTV produced hours of documentary film for the local broadcast TV networks across the former Yugoslavia and also supplied material to the international networks. The archive, which now sits in the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London, has been used in documentaries (notably in Death of Yugoslavia by Brooke Lapping for the BBC) and some of the work been presented as evidence in the Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Interestingly though, according to Paul Sargent, Head Curator of the Film Archive at the IWM, recently told me that the archive has never been examined by academics and the films are only now being catalogued.

While the UN mission (UNPROFOR) took a bit of a critical pasting (both during the war and since), I think it's time to have a look at UNTV and try and figure out what the project was all about and whether it made a difference.

Did you ever see UNTV?

I'd love to hear from anyone who watched one of UNTV's shows when they were transmitted live and of course form any of my former colleagues who worked on the project.

You can leave comments and thoughts on the blog. If you have access to any video, please stick it on YouTube and send us the link!

What am I up to?

Currently reading Forging war (1993) by Mark Thompson which looks at the extent to which the media was responsible for whipping up nationalist sentiment before and during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

What am I watching?

I have just been watching The love of Books - a Sarajevo Story which has just been screened as part of the Storyville strand on BBC4. If you are in the UK you can still see the film here: http://is.gd/nIcOEt

Made by Oxford Film & TV http://www.oftv.co.uk/

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