Anne Nivat

While at the Gardner, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Anne Nivat worked on her book, The Wake of War: Encounters in Iraq and Afghanistan, which focused on the ordinary men and women at the center of a devastating conflict. She also attended the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, as well as lectures and programs. Nivat returned to give a talk with Deborah Seward, the International Editor of the Associated Press, as part of the Gardner's The New Censorship lecture series. The talk, Going Global, touched on the gap between reality and the media coverage of the war on terror. The two experts discussed how many media outlets in the US and Europe accepted and followed government propaganda even when it was known to be fallacious, as it was in the case of Iraq or Chechnya.

Nivat has returned twice to the Gardner to speak about her current projects. In October 2005, Nivat was joined by Ellen Hume, Director of the New Center on Media and Society at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for an Eye of the Beholder lecture titled, The Wake of War: Encounters in Iraq. Nivat and Hume discussed Nivat's experiences in Iraq, the growing responsibilities of journalists on the ground, and how journalists act as bridges between cultures. In 2008, Nivat joined 2007 AIR Lida Abdul, for an Evening Conversation on creativity during wartime. In this program, the two focused on their personal experiences working in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan and the impact of artists and writers who help images of war cross the threshold of national and international consciousness.

Anne Nivat is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and a recognized expert on Russia, where she lived for ten years. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, and in 2001 received the SAIS-Novartis International Journalism Award at Johns Hopkins University. Nivat has written articles and editorials for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Libération, and Ouest-France; and has appeared on numerous radio and TV programs in France and as well as in the the US, including NPR's Fresh Air and the PBS NewsHour. Her daring undercover reporting from Chechnya disguised as a Chechen peasant resulted in the award-winning Chienne de guerre: Une femme reporter en Tchétchénie (Fayard 2000).

A prolific author, her other books include La Maison haute: Des Russes d'aujourd'hui ( 2002), a monograph about a multi-story building in Moscow constructed by political prisoners under Stalin; Lendemains de guerre en Afghanistan et en Irak (2004) which won the Prix Erwan Bergot from the French Ministry of Defense; and La République juive de Staline (2013), all published by Editions Fayard. Her recent books Dans quelle France on vit? (2017) and Un continent derrière Poutine (2018) have been adapted for French television. Currently Nivat is preparing a book and television sequel on current events in France.
 

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