“I Enjoy Correcting Myself": An Interview with Author Laurent Binet
"The point isn’t to be objective; that’s not possible. The point is to not feign objectivity." -Laurent Binet
“Voices of the UFW in Texas”: A Documentary on the United Farm Worker Movement in Texas
"Our history has to be captured and it has to be told and retold and retold." -Crissy Rivas
In Memoriam: An Interview with the Late Amiri Baraka
"If you say something’s wrong and you know exactly who’s doing it, that’s political protest."--Amiri Baraka
A Kiss in the Right Direction: An Interview with Nima Dehghani and Behzad Tabibian
"These apparently superficial projects show that people living in these countries are no different from each other—the way they live, the way they work, and the way they dress are similar. These projects shift people’s perceptions." -Nima Dehghani
Freedom Chat: Iranian Marina Nemat, Author of Prisoner of Tehran
"To me writing is who I am. If you were to take away my arm I would probably be better and happier than if you told me I cannot write." -Marina Nemat
[Update] Rayma: The Cartoonist of a Faceless President
"Totalitarian regimes disguised as democracies always have a way to create fear and to make others retract their opinions. Sometimes it is difficult to express things, but the cartoonist’s commitment is always with the readers and with the facts." -Rayma Suprani
Armed with Words: Moroccan Poet Rachida Madani
“For a woman, just the act of writing or speaking in public is a political act.” -Rachida Madani
Unjuried and Uncensored: An Interview with AS220’s Bert Crenca
"Art has become class-oriented between the popular arts and elite notions of art. AS220 throws those conceptions out the window and replaces them with the notion that everybody is born creative and inquisitive." -Bert Crenca
"If I'm Not Speaking That Means I'm Dead": An Interview with Liao Yiwu
"The success of their tyranny is that they can say to the West, 'After killing our own citizens, our nation is still strong, we can do business with you. You should forget what happened like we have."--Liao Yiwu
"You Turn Yourself Into an Outsider": An Interview with Anita Desai
"I’m interested in people who live in a kind of exile; it may not be political exile, but in some sense it’s exile from the rest of society." -Anita Desai
This year, Sampsonia Way introduced The Freedom Chats, a new series that features interviews with journalists and other international media personalities who face censorship and repression in their home countries. Throughout the year, we conducted video interviews with journalists from Macedonia, Belarus, Cambodia, Mexico, and Burma — to name just a few — about press freedom, anti-free speech legislation, and exile.
Join us in reviewing the most viewed Freedom Chats from 2014. Click on the images above to go to the interview.
