CBC The Passionate Eye - Point and Shoot (2015)

Armed with a motorcycle and a video camera, American Matt VanDyke heads to the Middle East for a “crash course in manhood”. Embedding with US soldiers and fighting beside rebels in Libya, he learns the difference between reality and the movie fantasy of war. Point and Shoot, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival is directed by Academy Award nominated Marshall Curry.

Matt VanDyke was a shy and sheltered young man with a privileged Baltimore upbringing. Raised on action movies, in college he studied the Middle East, but had never travelled there. “All my adventures were virtual,” he says.

In 2006, the 26-year-old bought a motorcycle and a video camera and set off on a three-year, 35,000-mile journey of personal discovery through Northern Africa and the Middle East. With a gun in one hand and a camera in the other, Matt embeds with US troops in Iraq as a freelance war correspondent, shooting the war and gaining military training from American soldiers who are eager to be filmed in action.

During his travels Matt reaches Libya and develops an unlikely friendship with a Libyan hippie. When revolution breaks out, he joins his friend in the fight against dictator Muammar Gaddafi until he is captured by Gaddafi forces and held in solitary confinement. “I wanted to be shaping events around me and having an impact. Now here was the Arab Spring,” he says. “I spent 5 and a half months in 2 different prisons and it absolutely transformed me.”

Full Version Available Upon Request