Attention New Yorkers: one of the films I am most eager to see is screening in New York now for a limited engagement, and I forgot to write this up before I left (as you've already missed a chance yesterday to see it with the filmmakers with a Q&A - we're a day ahead here in Australia right now). Here's where you can get tickets and info and showtimes at the Cinema Village. I've been anxious to see it ever since this Vanity Fair article about the film and its history and how it came to be hit awhile back. If you don't find the five pages written there to be moving on some deep level, you're heartless.
Michael Tucker and Petra Ebberlin's The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair has been the recipient of rave reviews. But more than that the essential story sounds undeniably fascinating - a real life slice of Kafka or Camus. They previously made what I consider the most objective documentary about the Iraq - American war, Gunner Palace. Mostly because it just simply lets the soldiers speak for themselves without offering any opinionated voice of its own.
But something that's been amiss in this entire war is an entire subset of narrative that's been empty or missing: the story of the Iraqi people. These are the people who we are supposedly liberating but how many of you can name an Iraqi individual whose life has been changed by the conflict? I'm sure a few of you can, including some of the readers of this blog (my dear and wonderful friend Ruth and her husband Jason, who has served in Iraq, and she often sets me straight about my assumptions in either direction sitting on my ass with a laptop). But for the most part the general public doesn't seem to be embracing a flood of Iraqi immigrants to this country who we have saved from tyrrany, nor do we generally know their stories. If that's why we're there, then why not? Furthermore, it also sounds like the story of an exceptional US soldier, one who had to work in Abu Ghraib after the scandal broke, and approached it with dignity and selflessness and kindness.
The articles I've linked to above tell the story far better than I could, but to break it down it's the story of a secular, middle class Iraqi journalist who did camera work for Britain's Channel 4 news, until he was arrested in the middle of the night along with his brothers for an attempted plot to assasinate Tony Blair - the raid on his house turned up a case that was supposed to contain intel proof that only had shampoo bottles. While shooting Gunner Palace Tucker happened to capture this arrest on film which led to him digging further. And then he came across the story of Yunis, imprisoned for 8 months for no reason, detained at a part of Abu Ghraib for individuals with no intel value, and released with an "I'm sorry". Likewise it's the story of Benjamin Thompson, the soldier who became close friends with Yunis while serving as his jailor and spent two years trying to find him afterwards. Yunis lived in one oppressive reigme only to be liberated into a beauracratical nightmare of its own oppression, but it sounds like he still managed to retain his humanity, and just as importantly so did the U.S. soldier. If I was in New York right now this is the one thing I'd be rushing out to see. I think it may even be available from Netflix soon.
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As for me, I've still just been swimming in the ocean a lot. It's fixed my insomnia. Though I had an unreal nightmare last night that woke me up, gasping for breath. I'm headed out to the Outback tomorrow for a few days, so no blogging for awhile.
Groan inducing moment: while eating some steak with a table full of Aussies, I realize I'm trying to cut it with a butter knife. And there's a steak knife sitting in the middle of the table. Forgive me for saying "That's not a knife. This... Is a knife." But I had context.
Michael Tucker and Petra Ebberlin's The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair has been the recipient of rave reviews. But more than that the essential story sounds undeniably fascinating - a real life slice of Kafka or Camus. They previously made what I consider the most objective documentary about the Iraq - American war, Gunner Palace. Mostly because it just simply lets the soldiers speak for themselves without offering any opinionated voice of its own.
But something that's been amiss in this entire war is an entire subset of narrative that's been empty or missing: the story of the Iraqi people. These are the people who we are supposedly liberating but how many of you can name an Iraqi individual whose life has been changed by the conflict? I'm sure a few of you can, including some of the readers of this blog (my dear and wonderful friend Ruth and her husband Jason, who has served in Iraq, and she often sets me straight about my assumptions in either direction sitting on my ass with a laptop). But for the most part the general public doesn't seem to be embracing a flood of Iraqi immigrants to this country who we have saved from tyrrany, nor do we generally know their stories. If that's why we're there, then why not? Furthermore, it also sounds like the story of an exceptional US soldier, one who had to work in Abu Ghraib after the scandal broke, and approached it with dignity and selflessness and kindness.
The articles I've linked to above tell the story far better than I could, but to break it down it's the story of a secular, middle class Iraqi journalist who did camera work for Britain's Channel 4 news, until he was arrested in the middle of the night along with his brothers for an attempted plot to assasinate Tony Blair - the raid on his house turned up a case that was supposed to contain intel proof that only had shampoo bottles. While shooting Gunner Palace Tucker happened to capture this arrest on film which led to him digging further. And then he came across the story of Yunis, imprisoned for 8 months for no reason, detained at a part of Abu Ghraib for individuals with no intel value, and released with an "I'm sorry". Likewise it's the story of Benjamin Thompson, the soldier who became close friends with Yunis while serving as his jailor and spent two years trying to find him afterwards. Yunis lived in one oppressive reigme only to be liberated into a beauracratical nightmare of its own oppression, but it sounds like he still managed to retain his humanity, and just as importantly so did the U.S. soldier. If I was in New York right now this is the one thing I'd be rushing out to see. I think it may even be available from Netflix soon.
-
As for me, I've still just been swimming in the ocean a lot. It's fixed my insomnia. Though I had an unreal nightmare last night that woke me up, gasping for breath. I'm headed out to the Outback tomorrow for a few days, so no blogging for awhile.
Groan inducing moment: while eating some steak with a table full of Aussies, I realize I'm trying to cut it with a butter knife. And there's a steak knife sitting in the middle of the table. Forgive me for saying "That's not a knife. This... Is a knife." But I had context.
1 Comments:
'Open your eyes , mate!' ;)
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