Every Step You Take

Every Step You Take is a documentary film on CCTV in the United Kingdom. It deals with the omnipresent phenomenon of video surveillance in the United Kingdom and asks the question why Britain is by far the most surveilled country on earth. The situation in Britain is briefly compared to Austria, where video surveillance is still much less prevalent.

The film mainly consists of interviews with various British and Austrian experts on surveillance.

Interviews
The film features interviews with the following people:

* Prof. Clive Norris
(University of Sheffield, Department of Sociological Studies, Deputy Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, author of "The Maximum Surveillance Society" as well as many other scientific works on CCTV)

* Barry Hugill
(spokesman for )â€¨

* Andy Trotter
(Deputy Chief Constable, British Transport Police)â€¨â€¨

* Prof. Lars Mosesson
(Southampton Solent University, Law Institute)

* Mark Smith
(Public CCTV Manager, Southampton City Council)

* Dr. Hans Zeger
(chairman of Austria's largest data protection agency ARGE Daten)

* Robert Rotfier
(Austrian journalist and musician, living in the UK since 1997)

* Paul Smith
(Chairman of the the Safe Speed Campaign)

* James Morris
(CEO of Shoreditch Digital Bridge, offers residents of the London Borough of Hackney access to public CCTV cameras in the area via their TVs)

* Robert Gifford
(Executive Director of the UK's Parliamentary â€¨Advisory Council for Transport Safety, PACTS)

* Prof. Dr. Clive Bloom
(Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies, Adjunct Professor, University of Notre Dame (London), author of "Violent London" and other best-selling books)

Specific Criticisms
Age of interview partners
Soon after the premiere in Austria in March 2006, the newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten noted in an article about the film festival Diagonale that the documentary "solemly makes use of surveillance experts close to the pension age, as if the discussion about surveillance culture was only a topic for elderly male people and would die with them".

Public CCTV request scene
In the film, there is a scene in which the filmmakers' unsuccessful attempt to assert their legal right to gain access to public CCTV footage is being shown. It has been criticised that the scene suggests that bureaucratic traps hinder the public from gaining access to surveillance footage that has been shot of themselves. The experimental film 'faceless' consists entirely of CCTV footage that was received through similar ways.

Screenings
The film's first public screening was at the Diagonale film festival in Graz, Austria.

Here is a complete list of the film festivals the film has been screened at so far:
*Diagonale (Graz, Austria)
* (Dubrovnik, Croatia)
*Cambridge Film Festival (Cambridge, UK)
*Portobello Film Festival (London, UK)
* (Osnabrück, Germany)
*São Paulo International Film Festival (São Paulo, Brazil)
* (Salzburg, Austria)

Every Step You Take is the first feature-length film from Austrian-born director Nino Leitner.

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