Running Time: 82 & 46 mins
Year: 2003

synopsis

Shot in Nicaragua in 2002 – 2003, The World Stopped Watching is a sequel to the award-winning documentary The World Is Watching (1987). Fifteen years later, filmmakers Peter Raymont and Harold Crooks return to Nicaragua with three journalists from the original film to discover what became of the first revolution to be conducted in the glare of the world media.

Travelling throughout the impoverished country, they encounter Nicaraguans from every level of society: from Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega to an 82-year-old peasant survivor of a Contra attack, Carmela Requenes Martinez; to the legendary Sandinista commander, Julio Ochoa, and two former Contra mercenaries who admit to killings that took place during the U.S.-funded Contra War.

The film also revisits the mothers and children in the barrios, the taxi drivers, and of course, the politicians. What has happened to their lives since 1987? How do they now feel about the Sandinista Revolution, the Contras, Ronald Reagan, and, most importantly, how do they feel about the sudden attention they then received from the international news media?

The journalists also question their and their employer’s roles and responsibilities in putting Nicaraguans under the media microscope before rushing off to the next global hot spot.

Credits

A film by Peter Raymont

Produced by White Pine Pictures in co-production with The National Film Board of Canada, in association with TVOntario A Canadian Co-Production,
in association with TVOntario, CFCF 12, Knowledge Network, SCN – Saskatchewan Communications Network, with the participation of The Government of Canada through the Canadian International Development Agency, Canadian Television Fund, Created by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Cable Industry CTF: License Fee Program, Rogers Documentary Fund,
Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit, Sundance Institute Documentary Fundnd