While SDFF 2020 may have been postponed, our commitment to encouraging nuanced analyses and public discussion of the current media environment and the relationship between truth and representation that has been focalized in popular discourse. To that end, we hope you’ll take a look at this a clear-eyed, sharp examination of the outbreak of disinformation that has accompanied and compounded the damage of COVID-19 worldwide, “Breaking Down The Disinformation Ecosystem Around Coronavirus.” The piece is the work of investigative journalist Robert Evans and Bellingcat, an international collective or researchers, investigators and citizen journalists that partnered with video news source, Newsy for the short piece. Evans has been slated to speak on citizen journalism at SDFF 2020, after a screening of the feature Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (Hans Pool, 2018), which tells the story of the collective’s rise and its truly revolutionary potential. The video we’ve posted here is just a small piece of Bellingcat’s diverse coverage of the pandemic.

Although the talk and screening are on-hold until we can reschedule the festival, we hope to continue to bolster the work of Bellingcat, Evans and other filmmakers and journalists affiliated with the festival who remain engaged in the rigorous processes of finding and representing truth, the life-or-death effects of which have been focalized over the past several years, and have been thrown into the sharpest possible relief by the spread of COVID-19 and the variegated responses to it.