There’s a new movie out on Netflix that made very little money at the box office (IMDB puts its theatrical gross at under $10,000) but is finding success on the free streaming site. That film is called “The Sacrament,” and it’s one of those found-footage style horror movies with the kind of faux-documentary style that’s been used and used again in the 15 years since “The Blair Witch Project.” But even though it relies on a style that some may see as cliché or even lazy, there’s an element to the film that sets it apart from similar shaky-cam efforts: From the very beginning, the movie claims to be a documentary released by VICE News.
Far from being some dreamt-up news site, VICE is very, very real. As a news service, it provides the kind of coverage that founder Shane Smith termed “Immersionism.” Journalists for VICE don’t sit in some news room waiting for stories to roll in from the AP. If there are bombs blasting, they go to the bombs. If there’s an active terrorist group, they find some way into the organization to observe its actions. Wherever there’s life-endangering peril, there’s a chance a VICE reporter will be there. And with a camera. Always a camera.
That notion of the totally embedded journalist – the cameraman who never stops recording – lends itself well to “The Sacrament,” since it’s about some journalists who decide to continue documenting their experience at a supposed religious community even when it turns out that the “parish” is in reality a violent cult with malicious designs on the scribes. Yet the reporters never turn off their cameras. Watching the movie, some people might be tempted to ask, “Really? Your life is in danger, and you’re worried about getting a good medium shot?” But as it turns out, the notion of always-rolling journalism is something real VICE reporters practice as well. Here are some of the more dangerous stories the service has released. A look at these pieces of immersive reporting suggests that perhaps the very role of the journalist is changing. It’s not about scooping something anymore. It’s about actually being there when it happens.
- Ghosts of Aleppo: The Syrian situation has been in the headlines since the civil war broke out three years ago, but VICE reporters did something other journalists weren’t prepared to do: They got in the thick of it. Part 5 of “Ghosts of Aleppo” – a look at the revolutionary situation in Syria’s largest city – opens with gunfire between the government and the rebels. The VICE cameraperson stands mere inches from one such rebel, who’s shooting a gun and then retreating into what appears to be a bombed-out building. True to its risk-embracing nature, VICE had its reporters travel around with these rebels, thereby facing the same danger that the rebels do on a daily basis. Stark and unadorned, the coverage is uniquely affecting because it brings the headlines down to a deeply human level, one in which a man points to a wounded, heavily bandaged child and asks, “They are children. How is it their fault?”
- The Fight Against Ebola: If there’s one thing the whole world knows about Ebola, it’s that it’s highly contagious. That’s why few people outside of the healthcare realm are clamoring to go to the disease’s epicenter – that is, except for some people from VICE. A trailer for the upcoming segment “The Fight Against Ebola: On the Front Lines in Liberia,” shows a VICE reporter – sans mask or any protective health gear – running up to a man lying prostrate on the street and asking him, “Excuse me sir, are you OK?” Two comments about that: First, that seems like a decidedly rhetorical question, and second, if he is not OK, what are you going to do about it? After all, you’re not a care provider, just a guy with a camera. That’s where the ethical dilemma arises: Exactly how immersed can you get before simply filming becomes exploitative? It’s a question to consider, but in the meantime, there’s definitely one thing that can be said about VICE coverage: It’s impossible to turn your eyes away.
