DEADLINE – 1091 Nabs ‘Ask No Questions’ Docu – Film Briefs
1091 has acquired rights to Ask No Questions, a journalistic true-crime documentary from Lofty Sky Pictures as well as filmmakers Jason Loftus and Eric Pedicelli. It slated to be released across all digital platforms throughout North America beginning on June 30. The doc, which premiered at the year’s Slamdance, examines the captivating story of a Chinese state TV insider who is held and forced to accept the state line on a fiery public suicide he believes was a government plot… Source: https://deadline.com/2020/05/ren-stimpy-documentary-gravitas-talent-managers-erika-monroe-williams-sherry-kayne-moxie-artists-1091-ask-no-questions-docu-film-briefs-1202935853/
UNSEEN FILMS – Ask No Questions (2020) Slamdance 2020
ASK NO QUESTIONS is a look at China’s treatment of the Falun Gong movement which it supported for a while before it’s exponential growth scared the ruling party and the cracked down on it. The film focuses on the incident in Tiananmen Square where several members of Falun Gong set themselves on fire in protest. It was a moment that the Chinese government seized upon as means of showing how dangerous the group was… Source: http://www.unseenfilms.net/2020/01/ask-no-questions-2020-slamdance-2020.html
SLUG Magazine on Slamdance: Ask No Questions
Viewers must approach Ask No Questions as a investigative documentary instead of another conspiracy-theory proposal. The film begins with the account of a CNN reporter who, with her cameraman, captures the scene of what is televised as a Falun Gong “religious public suicide” in Beijing at Tiananmen Square. After the government officials detain the reporters, CNN’s Lisa Weaver and her cameraman manage to smuggle the footage, details and clues are revealed about what really happened on Chinese New Year 2001 at Tiananmen Square. Source: https://www.slugmag.com/slugmag/slamdance-ask-no-questions/
FILM THREAT – Black Code pulls back the curtain of awful government intrusion in very immediate terms.
Imagine, if you will, a world in which the government tracks your every move, knows everything you’ve purchased online, and everything you’ve posted on the internet. If that description seems familiar, it is the government’s way of doing things in George Orwell’s classic 1984. While that novel is a work of fiction that can be read in a few different ways, the governments of some of the most populous countries on Earth seem to have taken the wrong lesson from it. These governments, including the US of A, Canada, Tibet, and China, are doing exactly what was described in Orwell’s cautionary tome. Black Code is a documentary about governments doing these morally unethical surveillance practices on their people, asking the question of what does it mean to be a private citizen in the internet age, and focusing on the way the internet can help mobilize activists for free speech. Throughout this exhaustively researched movie, there are interviews with persecuted Tibetan monks, who are wanted by the Chinese government. One of the monks uses seven different cell phones because if you call certain places or people from one number too often, it can get blacklisted. The filmmakers talk to activists fighting against the corrupt Brazilian police and how they ended up using a Japanese social media, Twitcasting, to live stream and instantly post to twitter videos of their rallies and protests. They discuss internet law and whether or not some degree of secrecy is necessary to ensure a functioning government body with lawyers and officials. Recapping the events of the movie might do it a bit of a disservice. The above paragraph fails to get across the stunning energy which director Nicholas de Pencier brings to the film. It is clear that these issues are close to his heart and he brings a sense of urgency to the proceedings. Utilizing a variety of styles from talking head interviews, to onscreen text recreations of email conversations, to use of actual footage from various events, and everything in-between the movie is visually pleasing. The editing brings forth several intense moments and sets a frantic pace which never lets up. Black Code pulls back the curtain of awful government intrusion in very immediate terms. Genuinely terrifying, because these things are happening to regular citizens all over the world, it comes from the heart and seeks ways to end this madness. Let’s all hope they figure out how. Source: https://filmthreat.com/reviews/black-code/
EYE FOR FILM – Examining the human rights pros and cons of the internet in terms of citizen journalism and global surveillance.
Its principal plus point is the degree to which it focuses on the importance of the internet in economically disadvantaged countries which are often ignored by such analyses. There’s an express recognition here that where the internet was once damaged by rich Western and Northern nations, it is having its most dramatic effect in the global South and East as access to information and the potential for mass communication reaches people who in many cases have previously enjoyed only a basic education and have had little chance to influence the world around them. Through the excitement of new opportunities brought about by this, De Pencier weaves cautionary tales. He endeavours to equip his viewers with tools through which to better protect their privacy, and he looks at the way cyber technologies have been exploited not just be governments but by political extremists. The internet has liberated minority groups by helping them to connect, but it has also made them vulnerable. It has given women the chance to assert themselves politically, but cultures of rampant misogyny have led, in some cases, to murder. Source: https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/black-code-2016-film-review-by-jennie-kermode
FILMS GONE WILD – VOD Reviews: Jason Loftus and Eric Pedicelli’s ASK NO QUESTIONS
At once both extremely personal and universal, this documentary about a potentially falsified self-immolation in 2001 in Tiananmen Square reflects all the best qualities of true crime and documentary. Ask No Questions feels like an intensely personal story as it focuses on directors Jason Loftus and Eric Pedicelli’s questioning of a self-immolation by members of the group Falun Gong. Despite his very personal investment (himself a practicing member of the Buddhist branch of religion) it maintains a slight air of objectivity as it examines this event to understand the Chinese propaganda and brainwashing state apparatus. Ask No Questions follows the personal account of a journalist held in brainwashing detention centers in China while Loftus and Pedicelli investigate the true nature of a self-immolation all culminating in a paranoid sensation that the Chinese government orchestrated the entire event. Source: http://filmsgonewild.com/vod-reviews-jason-loftus-ask-no-questions-looks-suspected-faked-immolation-suicides-by-the-chinese-government-by-balancing-a-personal-story-with-true-crime-deconstruction/
J.B. Spins – Slamdance ’20: Ask No Questions
The world should be horrified by the evidence of genocide emerging from East Turkestan, but we shouldn’t be so surprised. To a large extent, the Chinese Communist Party is merely repeating the game-plan they used to launch their wholesale crackdown on Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong). Today, Party propaganda tells the world they are simply rotting out terrorists. In the case, of Falun Gong, it was religious extremism. Filmmakers Jason Loftus & Eric Pedicelli ask the hard questions about the incident used to justify the anti-Falun Gong campaign that the Western media should have in the riveting expose documentary, Ask No Questions, which premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival, in Park City… Source: http://www.jbspins.com/2020/01/slamdance-20-ask-no-questions.html
SALT LAKE DIRT – An Interview with the Filmmakers of ASK NO QUESTIONS
One of the standouts at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival was the documentary Ask No Questions. We were fortunate enough to interview the filmmakers Jason Loftus and Eric Pedicelli during Slamdance and an excerpt from that interview can be found below. Ask No Questions was slated to play at the SF DocFest this year as well. Due to shelter-in-place restrictions the festival has been postponed indefinitely. However, the SF DocFest has partnered with the filmmakers of Ask No Questions to do a one-off online screening to experiment with a festival-style screening in VR. You can see Ask No Questions in this format at various times on April 28th… Source: https://saltlakedirt.com/f/an-interview-with-the-filmmakers-of-ask-no-questions
FILM DOO – real heart and a bleak honesty
It’s the universal message focusing on the dangers around personal information in our social media age that really resonates throughout a film that is as entertaining as it is thoroughly educational and enlightening.
FILM THREAT – Ask No Questions shows the deadly power of media.
Chinese officials arrest, detain and brainwash a former TV insider who believes a fiery public suicide was staged for political reasons. Co-Directors Eric Pedicelli and Jason Loftus investigate how fake news is created.