• last month
A swashbuckling CNN combat camerawoman and trailblazing female icon; the unbelievable, yet entirely true, story of award-winning journalist, Margaret Moth, is brought to vivid light by acclaimed actress and activist, Lucy Lawless, in her directorial debut.An inspirational and unflinching biography, which includes both testimonials from the people who knew and worked with Moth, and dramatic footage from the war zones she covered, Never Look Away delves into the life and work of an incredible woman, a true pioneer known for her tireless work to capture catastrophic events and atrocities on film, no matter the risk.After her first assignment to cover the riots that followed Gandhi's assassination in India, she would go on to travel to the heart of the most dangerous conflicts in the world including the Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian War and the 2006 Lebanon War. However, underneath her fearless persona, candid interviews with colleagues and family reveal a self-destructive and emotionally fraught woman who would struggle when anything got in the way of her appetite for adrenaline and efforts to document the worst of humanity.
Transcript
00:01For better or for worse, war is an amazing feeling.
00:05Part of me wanted out.
00:07I was sick of it.
00:08But Margaret didn't seem to feel the same way.
00:13She was the first camera woman for television in New Zealand.
00:16She looked so rock and roll, 24-7.
00:19A female cameraman in a male-dominated world,
00:22that definitely gave her a charge.
00:24She did, she dressed, she said whatever she wanted,
00:27it was something that people were in awe of.
00:30It was my big ambition when I was a kid to be a paratrooper.
00:33She was just too cool for me, that's for sure.
00:36She got on so well with military people,
00:39because she was so ballsy.
00:41Margaret never made anything about being a female.
00:43She just did it.
00:44Look at me, here's the camera, this is what I do.
00:49The most valuable thing that she could imagine
00:52was being where history is being changed.
00:54At a certain point, sex, drugs and rock and roll
00:57just wasn't enough.
00:59War was the ultimate drug.
01:03I remember telling Margaret,
01:04there's only so much Russian roulette you can play.
01:08Margaret and Mark are seated in the back of the van,
01:11I'm seated in the front passenger seat.
01:14And I'm looking left and right, and all of a sudden...
01:16I saw some, like, flash.
01:20Yeah, Mum rang and told me
01:22that she'd been shot in the face by a sniper.
01:24Yeah.
01:26Even with her injuries,
01:27she was driven by some other fuel source
01:30than most people are.
01:31She said, I am going back
01:34and nobody is going to stand in my way.
01:40She was fearless.
01:41You could sense that behind all of that
01:44came from a place of anger and defiance.
01:48I'd ask her things about her past
01:49and she said, I don't remember.
01:50She was very empathetic with people.
01:53She liked filming people.
01:54That's the impression I have.
01:56Our stories and Margaret's pictures
01:59forced our democracies not to turn away.
02:05We were friends for 25 years
02:07and I would say soulmates.
02:16You felt better in her presence.
02:18You could sit with her
02:19and you felt like when you got up
02:21you took something already.
02:26It doesn't matter how close you come to death,
02:28today I'm just going to be having a lot of fun.