"What did it feel like, to keep so many secrets?"
On 11 November 2015, Veteran's Day, the GMU Visiting Filmmakers Series hosted a screening of (T)Error, a documentary by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe. Cabral, a photojournalist and first-time documentary filmmaker, was on hand for a Q&A following the film, which was facilitated by Jason Osder, assistant professor at American University, director of Let the Fire Burn, and a veteran of the Visiting Filmmakers Series.
Over 320 people attended the event in the Johnson Cinema Center, with some viewers standing in the back of the theater in order to see this fascinating film. Lyric Cabral also visited GMU classes on November 12 and was interviewed for Studio A on Friday, November 13.
As Jason Osder remarked at the start of the discussion, (T)Error is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. It takes up at least two perspectives, beginning with that of Saeed "Shariff" Torres, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary and Muslim turned informant, and leading to his assigned target, Khalifah al-Akili, a Muslim American living in the Pittsburgh area. Both subjects share their stories with the filmmakers, neither knowing the other is talking to them.
The film shows the various costs of working for the US government, and moreover, the costs of being targeted by that government. Saeed, a onetime Harlem neighbor of Cabral, had confessed his role as an informant some years before (a revelation that made Cabral realize that her time spent in his apartment, as a friend, was recorded by the FBI, and beyond that, the agency had a file on her). He agreed to reveal his identity and his investigation even as the latter was crumbling due to lack of evidence. Khalifah, arrested days after he emails the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to report he believed he was the focus of an FBI "entrapment" sting, is currently in prison, after taking a plea in order to serve a lesser sentence.
Osder -- who wrote an essay on journalistic freedom and legal challenges for documentary filmmakers, "WTF! Will '(T)ERROR' Be Seen?" -- opened the discussion by asking about the challenges of keeping secrets, as an artist and as a journalist.
As Cabral shared her filmmaking process, it became clear that keeping such secrets was at once necessary and complicated. Working with an FBI informant without working with the FBI per se raised all kinds of questions. "We were cautious about our communications," Cabral recalled. She and Sutcliffe consulted with Citizenfour director Laura Poitras in order to discuss encryption and other legal matters, and were careful never to tamper with the investigation.
Their own secrecy was of a piece with the object of their film, namely, the FBI. Cabral said the agency "has an incredible lack of transparency," typically not allowing defendants -- and inevitably, when the FBI brings cases, it creates defendants access to evidence against them and so making choices to go to trial something of a gamble.
When the film was completed and headed to festivals, Cabral said, the FBI requested a copy of it. She and Sutcliffe invited a response, but didn't hear back from the agency. When she was approached by an agent at the Sundance Film Festival, where the documentary premiered, she asked whether he liked it. "We wouldn't say that," he answered. Rather, he told her, "It was 'educational.'"
Asked whether she was still in touch with her subjects, Cabral said yes, noting that her access to Saeed was "unusual," not being "the type of journalist to drop in and drop out." Instead, she cultivated a friendship that began when she was studying photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and maintained for a decade. For Cabral, documentary filmmaking and journalism are both processes of building and sustaining relationships, developing trust that allows understanding and communication. In this way, she feels able to access stories that are "seldom seen," the name she's given her production company.
Both Saeed's and Kalifah's stories are seldom seen, and in making them visible, she hopes to reduce the fear of difference that keeps individuals and communities apart. Cabral's sense of what journalism can do emerges from an understanding of civic and ethical responsibilities, how people might better understand one another. Asked what she believes anyone might do in reaction to government overreach and cover-ups, she said, "Educate yourself." She went on, "Most Americans don't feel the impact of surveillance the way that Muslim Americans do." Finding out about how that impact can create change, in expectations and experience.
For Cabral, the story of (T)Error has to do with this impact on Saeed and Khalifah, their lives now forever connected. Saeed, her friend, she noted, spent his life as an informant over two decades cultivating personalities that were not his own. In the process, she said, "I think he lost himself." She hopes the film might help him find his way back. At least it makes visible the difficult journey he's undertaken.
(T)Error has won the 2015 Emerging Filmmakers Award from the International Documentary Association. On November 4, it was nominated for the International Documentary Association's ABC News VideoSource Award, which recognizes compelling use of news footage in documentary filmmaking. The film is scheduled to air as part of PBS' Independent Lens series in February 2016.
(T)Error and Lyric R. Cabral at GMU was sponsored by Film and Media Studies, Film and Video Studies, and African and African American Studies. It was co-sponsored by Communication, Cultural Studies, DKA, English, the Global Affairs Program, History, Middle East Studies, ODIME, Photography, School of Art, Women and Gender Studies, and University Life.
Photos: Logan Brown, FAVS
November 16, 2015
