Guantanamo naval base, ‘Gitmo’, covers forty five square miles of Cuba inside an area under a controversial ‘permanent lease’ to the United States. Since 2002, the base has become synonymous with its detainment facilities for suspected terrorists. Although Barack Obama has given orders for the detention camp to be closed, the facilities remain open to this day.

David Miller‘s quiet, powerful film is the result of three days the filmmaker spent touring the camps in May 2008 as part of a small group of media representatives allowed there.

Although the event was presented as a chance to ‘see inside’ the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images.

The film was produced in 2008/2009 in conjunction with Yvonne Ridley, PRSNL Pictures and the VODO team. Special thanks to Editor Luca Lucarini.

IN GUANTANAMO is released via VODO, FrostWire and other P2P related sites and networks under a Creative Commons Non-Commerical No-Derivs Attribution License. The filmmaker does not permit remixes but would like the work to be shared freely for non-commercial purposes.

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ABOUT VODO

VODO is founded by Jamie King, one of the figures behind STEAL THIS FILM. VODO brings filmmakers together with the distribution power of the filesharing community. It aims to offer fresh, quality films on a free-to-share basis, promoted and distributed through a ‘coalition’ of filesharing partners that includes big names like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, Miro, TorrentFreak, Isohunt, Plube, OneDDL Vuze and and Frostwire, amongst many others.

‘Together, the filesharing community has a distribution capacity that rivals and even exceeds that of the mainstream media,’

says Jamie King.

‘VODO aims to leverage that power for the benefit of filmmakers and other creators. By sharing films freely through the most popular and fastest growing filesharing sites, we’re building audiences in the hundreds of thousands for artists. That has material value for these filmmakers, through raised profile, donations and marketing. It’s a win-win situation and it’s the future of distributing media after copyright.’

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Followers of release groups like aXXo will be familiar with the model. But VODO is a release group with a twist. Not only are artists voluntarily sharing: downloaders can choose to make voluntary donations to creators. VODO lets creators manage their own donation links, with all donations going directly to the filmmaker. Regular supporters of the VODO project will receive access to all the films being considered for release.

VODO aims to release at least one film per month during the rest of 2009 and 2010. Forthcoming titles include the premiere of ‘In Guantanamo’, a documentary by first-time director David Miller that provides unprecedented access to the Guantanmo prison camps – but King says that fiction titles, animation and shorts will also be on the distribution list. ‘During 2010 VODO will build out a series of revenue opportunities for its creators, with the free-to-share model at their core,’ he explains.

ABOUT THE TEAM

VODO collaborators include Nils Hellberg of Piratbyran (Sweden, Design) and Rama Cosentino of BurnStation (Argentina, programming), with programming support by Dan O’ Huiginn (UK). Members of the advisory board include Ashwin Navin, ex-CEO of Bittorrent Inc., and Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay. VODO, which has been in development
since 2008, has been produced with the support of the Arts Council UK, Emerald Fund and the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation. VODO’s not hiring right now, but it is looking for voluntary collaborators to help out as it grows and takes shape. Just send an email to info@vodo.net to find out more.