Several days ago we reported that actor Dan Radcliffe was possibly in line to portray the late photojournalist Dan Eldon in a new movie. Today, the Guardian has more on this, featuring an interview with Kathy Eldon, the mother of the photographer, who says Dan will be portraying her son in this new movie. Quotage:
The film, Journey, will see Radcliffe play Dan Eldon, a 22-year-old who was among four journalists stoned to death by a mob in Mogadishu in July 1993. The timing is right and the person is right and I couldn't ask for more,' said Kathy, a journalist, producer and activist. 'He has portrayed a magician for years and my Dan was a different kind of magician. There are parallels in the two Dans' lives. Daniel Radcliffe is a poet, he keeps journals and he's half Jewish. He has a puckishness, sense of humour and energy inside him which remind me of Dan...'Daniel Radcliffe is the first time we've found a young enough actor with a global following. We love the way he's a global soul. He's travelled the world and feels comfortable in the world and hasn't been corrupted by Hollywood.'
While this sounds very exciting, we are trying to obtain official confirmation from Dan's reps, and will update with more on that when we can. Also, if this proves certain, we do not know when this film will be made, as Dan is currently filming "Half-Blood Prince," that continues until early spring of 2008, and is also set to return to the stage when "Equus" opens on Broadway in the fall of 2008. The story of "Journey" focuses on 22 year old Dan Eldon, a photographer who was brutally murdered in Somalia in 1993, when he and his colleagues Hansi Krauss, Anthony Macharia of Reuters and Hos Maina of the Associated Press were surrounded then stoned and beaten to death after an angry mobbed turned on the journalists in the aftermath of a bombing in Mogadishu. You can read more about Dan Eldon and see some of his remarkable photographs via this link, as well as learn more about journalists who are killed each year while bringing the news, here. Thanks Helena!
Why take the energy to leave a comment if you have nothing nice to say? This sounds like a wonderful and worthwhile project, and right up Daniel Radcliffe’s alley, too. The quotes from Dan Eldon’s mother are very touching. This is definitely exciting news!!
I think the movie December boys was a great movie! It is not a big flop at all. I’m glad this has been confirmed finally! Good job Dan! I know you will do a great job in the movie.
I’ve been traying to figure out the real reason why western powers, media and ebven supposedly progressive forces were silent in the fact of death and destruction in Somalia in the hands of western backed mercenaries. I have always suspected it but now it is clear to me that the latest US sponsorship of the dearh and destruction of Somalia,including the mass rape of women and girls, has great deal to with revenge of the 18 US service men and the western journalist.s who were killed in Somalia . I have no problem with this film per se. But the timing of cannot be innocent.
Read my work and other accounts of what this US is doing to the people of Somalia
http://www.africaspeaks.com/somalia/130607.html
This is about bodies that matter v those that do not matter.
But we will remember and will write about the America’s aggression against the people of Somalia.
I mourn the loss of Daniel to his family but today, America has made one Million Somalis internationaly displaced and lay Somalia in ruination.
Now, this is political but this film is not political?
Amina, you have the right to say what you wish and I can hear your pain and sympathize. But if I understand it correctly, this journalist was there to document what was happening. First, such concern for others should be commended. Second, US citizens, and I include myself, are notoriously ignorant of international affairs. Our local news broadcasts are very quick summaries, if they touch upon foreign news at all. And although we should be more aware, I do think Hollywood films do provide a powerful way for us to learn about important issues. Movies such as Ghandi, the Killing Fields, provided a starting point for me to read more about colonialism, satygraha (or civil disobedience) and US involvement in other countries.
I wish we lived in a more peaceful world but we don’t. And we have an obligation to actively find the truth and do something about it. Making and watching a movie doesn’t sound like much, but in fact, movies do inform and can inspire greater things.
Ooh I hope this is confirmed. Finally Dan will be able to show his Jewishness on the big screen! That’s a reason i love Dan: he’s Jewish, and proud of it!
Amina Mire, I’m very sorry for your loss and pain, and you have the right to say what you want…But, this story is about an American journalist who was there to spread understanding of what was going on to the US. That’s what the movie’s about.
My intervention is informed by the fact the American people are being fed by one sided tragic saga about US involvement in Somalia. Hence, the 2001 Ridley Scott’s Hollywood’s film ‘Blackhawk Down’ based on Mark Bodwen’s Memoir of the same name had played up the Hollywood formula: ‘good guys’ - usually, white, heterosexual, viral and militaristic fighting the ‘bad guys’—weak, black, feminized, liars and cowards.
Second, I am an expert in the cultural production of "truth" and this film is a discursive production of specific truth of specific western[Jewish]journalist who was killed in Somalia.. I have never said that he did not come to Somalia to help the people of Somalia nor did say that his life does not deserve remembrance. the question is do western public know about death and destruction against the people of Somalia so that loss of Daniel to his family is placed within the context of great loss to the people of Somalia?
“In his foreword to Mogadishu!: Heroism and Tragedy, Ross Perot wrote: ‘Read this book carefully. Never forget its contents as you watch the TV docu-dramas of smart bombs going down air shafts, where war is presented in a sterile, sanitized environment. Remember, war is fighting and dying.’1 Notable by its absence from the final sentence is the verb ‘killing’. Careful readers will find, for example, that U.S. helicopters fired off no fewer than 50,000 Alpha 165 and 63 rockets on 3 October 1993 in the course of the battle near the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu, in which eighteen U.S. soldiers died and one was captured. The book lauds ‘the world’s most highly trained and effective military “extraction unit”’, that gained more decorations than any other American flying unit in U.S. military history for a comparable size of operation.2 But there are only hints at the carnage among the Somali civilians who lived—and all too commonly died—in this closely packed residential quarter of the city.”U.S. War Crimes in Somalia
Published on: Feb 28, 2007
Printable VersionBy Alex de Waal
Tansey, that’s not true, December Boys is selling lots of DVDs which shows that if WB would have given it a proper distribution, that’s it: releasing it more than in 3 or 4 cinemas… it would have done lots of money. WB did a great damage to that movie, but I guess not many people know the true about that.
I don’t understand your frustration, why can not you just be happy for Dan?
He is a good boy who just love his work and put a lot of passion, energy, love, talent and work in it.
I watched MBJ and Dan was great in it, he was fantastic in DB too.
You are just a basher so the surprising thing is you’d write something positive I guess.
About your first comment, I’m sure you wouldn’t say that if the actor you like would be the one in it. Also, it shows you are writting a comment about a post you have not even read, what bashers usualy do… because the article explains this movie is not going to be like that, all the contrary.
Amina, Dan Eldon was a good young man, thanks to him the world knew for the first time what was happening in Somalia, and thanks to that many lives were saved with the food people sent there.
The dream of her mother is to make a movie about his son’s life so it can inspire other people to continue the work his son did.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.
If what you write it’s true, you should understand better than anyone else what it feels to lost someone you love, you should understand her.
I don’t really understand why you write about that here. But I think you should be happy they are going to film this movie because it’s a way to show to the world what happened, how many lives were taken that day. If this movie is not done, no-one will know about it.
For example, I didn’t know about what happened that day until I read the New York Times article the other day about Dan Eldon.
Thanks to him, his family and Mr Radcliffe, many young people like me are finding out about all what happened during those years, and still happens in Somalia.
If they would do a movie about all the people who are killed inSomalia, I’m sorry but the true is not many people would be interested in watching that.
But doing a movie like this, a lot of people will want to see it and then they will learn about it. Maybe you should look at it from that point of view.
You are criticizing the world doesn’t know about this, and atthe same time you are criticizing something which could tell the world about it.
You visit this site, so you are obviously a HP fan, but you don’t criticize all the money spent in the HP movies, or all the money Jo Rowling earns, instead of doing a movie about what’s happening there. From my point of view that’s hypocritical.
This film is way to show to the world how many journalist risk their lives everyday so the world can know what happens in places like Somalia, do you think that’s wrong too?
The work they do is really admirable.
How stunning that you think the very ontology of the suffering of people of Somalia need ed the gaze of western eyes for to it be receive d as real suffering!
Thanks for backing up my point!
Amina, before criticizing maybe you should inform yourself better.
Dan Eldon was nor American, he was British, but most part of his lif he lived in Kenya, so you can say he was African.
You have not seen this movie so you don’t really know from what point of view it will be told.
And you obviously haven’t even read the article before writting your opinion because if you would have read it you would know Kathy’s words contradict many of what you say. She doesn’t want people to see her son as an hero, she just want to tell his story, like he told it with his journals.
You don’t even know if this is an American production, because the producers have still not been announced.
And the scriptwriter is Australian btw.
Dan Eldon loved Africa, he lived there most of his life, you want a movie told from the point of view of Africans, this is a good opportunity to do it.
Have you seen Dan eldon’s diaries?
Please, read them, then tell me if he didn’t love Africa and African people.
There is no better eyes to tell a story like this than from Eldon’s eyes.
Ridley Scott’s Hollywood’s film ‘Blackhawk Down’??? how can you compare two movie if you haven’t even seen one of them?
If you think Dan Radcliffe would choose to be in a movie like Blackhawk Down, you don’t know Dan at all…
“How stunning that you think the very ontology of the suffering of people of Somalia need ed the gaze of western eyes for to it be receive d as real suffering! Thanks for backing up my point!”
Oh! So it would have been better to let 6 MILLIONS of Somalies dying?
And please, don’t change my words, because you know very well I’ve not said that. Actually, what I’ve said it’s all the contrary. I’ve said that because Dan Eldon lived most of his life in Africa, he was more African than British (you didn’t even know he was not American, you didn’t do great research before criticizing…) his story is not told from an Occidental poin of view, it’s told from an African point of view.
I am not the one who brought identity politics to thisstory or to thread! The “Jewishness “of Daniel as the reaosn reason why this specific actor might be chosen to play him is well reported in the media! I am only responding to it. I’ve read the thread very carefully. Perhaps you do not like my intervention of it is coming from the location of the other! My posts are interventions from the position of the discursively silenced voices of thousands of dead Somalis, killed by the USA war machine. This is not the narrative Hollywood want s to produce. I realise that. But people need to think through the factual merit of my links.
Why take the energy to leave a comment if you have nothing nice to say? This sounds like a wonderful and worthwhile project, and right up Daniel Radcliffe’s alley, too. The quotes from Dan Eldon’s mother are very touching. This is definitely exciting news!!