{"id":17704,"date":"2022-12-09T10:47:35","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=17704"},"modified":"2022-12-09T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:50:13","slug":"showmax-the-south-african-whistleblower-at-the-centre-of-the-hollywood-sex-cult-hbo-docuseries-the-vow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2022\/12\/09\/showmax-the-south-african-whistleblower-at-the-centre-of-the-hollywood-sex-cult-hbo-docuseries-the-vow\/","title":{"rendered":"Showmax : The South African whistleblower at the centre of the Hollywood sex cult HBO docuseries The Vow"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Showmax_black.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Showmax_black.jpg?w=750&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3061\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>HBO docuseries <em>The Vow<\/em> <em>Part II<\/em>, now streaming first on Showmax, investigates American self-help company NXIVM and the soft-spoken \u201cVanguard\u201d at its heart, Keith Raniere. Thanks in part to the testimony of South African filmmaker and whistleblower Mark Vicente, Raniere is now serving a 120-year prison sentence for crimes from extortion and identity theft to forced labour and sex trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/TheVowS2-showmax.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/TheVowS2-showmax.jpg?resize=450%2C800&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17705\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/TheVowS2-showmax.jpg?w=450&amp;ssl=1 450w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/TheVowS2-showmax.jpg?resize=169%2C300&amp;ssl=1 169w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Directed by Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Egyptian Jehane Noujaim (<em>The Square<\/em>), <em>The Vow Part II <\/em>features chilling testimony from the trial, exclusive phone interviews with Raniere from prison and extensive access to co-founder Nancy Salzman, who wrestles with her role in the rise of NXIVM, her relationship with Raniere and her involvement in growing an organisation accused of fostering predatory behaviour and criminal activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Season 1 was #3 on <em>Entertainment Weekly<\/em>\u2019s round-up of the best TV of 2020 and was up for Best Docuseries at the 2021 Hollywood Critics Association Television Awards, among other honours. The critics are saying this season is even better. \u201cAs storytelling, this is crisper and cleaner than <em>The Vow<\/em>\u2019s first iteration; as psychological portrait, little in the nonfiction space of late matches it,\u201d says <em>Variety<\/em>, where Daniel D\u2019Addario just named it as one of his six best TV series of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Vow Part II | Official Trailer | HBO\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ctXck_xCtV4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Born and raised in Johannesburg, Vicente joined NXIVM in 2005. After working as a cinematographer on films like <em>Sarafina!<\/em>, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo and Miriam Makeba, and <em>Father Hood<\/em>, starring Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry, Vicente co-directed the sleeper-hit documentary film <em>What The Bleep Do We Know?! <\/em>and its follow-up, <em>What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole<\/em>, which brought him to the attention of NXIVM.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shortly after the release of <em>What the Bleep!?<\/em>, Vicente was contacted by Raniere\u2019s partner, Barbara Bouchey, who, along with Salzman, hopped on the company Learjet to meet Vicente. \u201cThey said they loved my film\u2026 What else did I want to do?\u2019\u201d Vicente says in Season 1 of <em>The Vow<\/em>. \u201cWhich, of course, was, \u2018I want to make movies. I want to change the world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe impression I got from them,\u201d he says, \u201cis, \u2018We will help you do all those things. We have the resources; we have the connections; we have the people.\u2019 Cause they have, like, billionaires in their group\u2026 There\u2019s an expression in Afrikaans: \u2018<em>Met jou gat in die botter geland.<\/em>\u2019 Which basically means, \u2018You landed with your ass in the butter.\u2019 And they said to me, \u2018Just come and take an intensive with us. Come and see what it is that we do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vicente travelled to the NXIVM headquarters in Albany, New York State. There, he says, \u201cNancy was in full force. This woman is sharp, and she\u2019s energetic, and she\u2019s warm, and she\u2019s connecting, but the thing that began to grow on me bit by bit is: everybody was so kind. It\u2019s this weird, incredible, idyllic type of society where everybody\u2019s rooting for everybody. I went into Nancy\u2019s office and I said, \u2018You guys have an ulterior motive. Something\u2019s not right here\u2026 Everybody is too nice, too kind. It\u2019s all full of sh*t.\u2019 And [Nancy] goes, \u2018Huh, really? What if it\u2019s you that\u2019s looking for that problem? What if it doesn\u2019t exist?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Vicente finally met Raniere in person, they talked for five hours. Raniere asked Vicente about his background, and he explained, \u201cThere were many, many problems in [South Africa] \u2013 apartheid and racial strife, and people doing some pretty terrible things to one another, that really got me thinking\u2026 \u2018Could the world be different? Could this country be different in some way?\u2019 One of the things I\u2019ve always wanted to do is to figure out how to help people to have a greater freedom of thought.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raniere\u2019s response, Vicente says, was, \u201c\u2018I think that you feel a deep responsibility for humanity. I think, because of your upbringing, and what you saw in your country, you wanna like, do something, that\u2019s really gonna help the world, and you\u2019re scared that you\u2019ll do damage\u2026 Is that why you\u2019re scared? Is that why you\u2019re afraid to hit hard?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s almost,\u201d Vicente says, \u201clike he\u2019s showing me the movie version of what I could be like. And at that point, he had me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Vicente followed NXIVM\u2019s \u201cstripe path\u201d, working his way up through the ranks of the company to become a Senior Proctor, he could see himself being part of NXIVM forever. \u201cWhat was cool about it was that people would come in so concerned about something in their life, and we would help them get clarity,\u201d says Vicente. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t so much like, \u2018Oh, I did it,\u2019 \u2018cause we were clear that that\u2019s not how it worked, but I do remember the deep sense of privilege that I could help people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2007, Vicente met Australian actress and singer Bonnie Piesse (Beru Lars in <em>Obi-Wan Kenobi<\/em> and <em>Star Wars Episode: II<\/em> and <em>III<\/em>), who would later become his wife. At the time, Piesse was thinking of giving up music. As Vicente tells it, \u201cI said to her, \u2018Give me five days of your life, and then, if you decide to give up music, go for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Piesse took her five-day intensive with NXIVM&#8217;s Executive Success Programme, known as ESP, in 2010, and soon embarked on the stripe path journey herself. The couple got married, and life, by Piesse\u2019s own account, got better and better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But over time, Piesse began to suspect that all was not as it seemed in the NXIVM dream. In 2017, Piesse, who had long mistrusted Raniere, found out about a female-only sect within NXIVM, DOS, a name derived from a quasi-Latin acronym meaning \u201cMaster of Obedient Women.\u201d Increasingly horrified by what she found, she decided to leave the organisation. But Vicente \u2013 who had by then been with the organisation for 12 years \u2013 took longer to come around. It almost cost the pair their marriage, but Vicente followed later the same year and the pair would become two of NXIVM\u2019s most vocal detractors, sounding the alarm about what was going on long before the press and, later, law enforcement, caught on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watching <em>The Vow Part II<\/em>, Vicente says in the <em>HBO &#8220;The VOW&#8221; (Season 2) Episode 1 &#8211; Debrief<\/em>, \u201cOne of the things that is very painful, watching <em>The Vow<\/em>, any time\u2026 is seeing the good times. It really hurts to see the good times, because we were sold a lie, and there was a kind of utopian paradise feeling that we were experiencing &#8211; and I think many people that are still loyal to Raniere are still holding on to that. Our hopes got dashed in many ways, and I don\u2019t see it the same way, but I do remember those times, and it\u2019s very painful watching that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"HBO &quot;The VOW&quot; (Season 2) Episode  1 - Debrief\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lxsrQ0YUzf4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But, as he puts it in episode 1 of <em>Part II<\/em>, \u201cIn order to free everybody, everything had to be burned. And that was hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of his own feelings during the trial, he says, \u201cI remember shaking and I remember saying to myself, \u2018I&#8217;m not going to look at [Raniere]. I&#8217;m not looking at the defence table.\u2019 But I had to say the defendant&#8217;s name, \u2018Keith Raniere\u2019. And then they said, \u2018Can you point to him?\u2019 So I pointed at him and I just held it. And the thing that was just f*cked up was that the way he looked at me when I pointed at him was sort of this, like, \u2018I&#8217;m here for you. I&#8217;m still on your side. I still love you.\u2019 And I made the decision like, \u2018F*ck you. You&#8217;re not getting in my head.\u2019 But later on, I had this sudden thought. It was bizarre. It just floated through and it was sort of like, \u2018What if he&#8217;s right? What if he actually is a good guy?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018What the f*ck is that thought doing there?\u2019 I was so horrified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Among those convicted alongside Raniere were <em>Smallville<\/em> actress Allison Mack \u2013 reportedly a founding member of DOS \u2013 who was sentenced to three years in prison for racketeering, and Seagrams heiress Clare Bronfman, who\u2019s serving a six-year jail term for conspiring to harbour an undocumented immigrant for financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watch <em>The Vow<\/em>, which is rated 18NL, firston Showmax: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.showmax.com\/eng\/tvseries\/hgqjn6vo-the-vow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.showmax.com\/eng\/tvseries\/hgqjn6vo-the-vow<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HBO docuseries The Vow Part II, now streaming first on Showmax, investigates American self-help company NXIVM and the soft-spoken \u201cVanguard\u201d at its heart, Keith Raniere. Thanks in part to the testimony of South African filmmaker and whistleblower Mark Vicente, Raniere is now serving a 120-year prison sentence for crimes from extortion and identity theft to&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2022\/12\/09\/showmax-the-south-african-whistleblower-at-the-centre-of-the-hollywood-sex-cult-hbo-docuseries-the-vow\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Showmax : The South African whistleblower at the centre of the Hollywood sex cult HBO docuseries The Vow<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[110],"class_list":["post-17704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-online","tag-showmax","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}