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War is Sell (DVD)Starring: John Stauber; Sheldon Rampton; Nancy Snow; Rahul Mahajan; Mary Carpenter; Neil Whitehead; Amy Goodman; Alexander Cockburn; Robert Fisk Director: Brian Standing |
| "War is Sell" dissects the strategies of war propagandists -- soldiers armed not with guns, but with words, pictures and commercial advertising techniques in their battle to win hearts and minds. How do you sell a war? How do the techniques of government propagandists, public relations consultants and commercial advertisers work, and why are they so effective? How did the United States become a master of domestic war propaganda over the course of the twentieth century? | |
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Last Letters Home - Voices of American Troops from the Battlefields of IraqStarring: Lloyd Byers, Mary Byers |
| Produced and directed by Oscar? and Emmy? Award winner Bill Couturi (HBO's Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam), this one-hour documentary is an intimate, deeply moving tribute to American soldiers recently killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Produced in association with LIFE books and the New York Times. HBO Video's net proceeds from this program will benefit the families of soldiers who have died in military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since September 11, 2001. | |
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Mission Accomplished (2004)Director: Sean Langan |
| Langan spent several months living in and travelling around Iraq, armed with nothing more deadly than a small video camera. The programme began with footage of a small boy smiling holding up a 'USA' poster saying 'Bush good'!, as if to demonstrate that at least some people still welcome the coalition presence (filmed late last year and early this). | |
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Rush To WarStarring: Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Mark Dayton |
| Robert Taicher began his film career working closely with critically acclaimed director Alejandro Jodorowsky as the producer of "The Holy Mountain" (1973). Through the years, Robert worked with Jodorowsky as a script and production consultant, most notably on "Santa Sangre" (1990) which was on Roger Ebert's top ten film list of 1990. He also worked alongside Jodorowsky rewriting the script and assisting actors with dialogue and performance for the English language version of "The Rainbow Thief" (1992) starring Peter O'Toole, Omar Shariff and Christopher Lee produced at Pinewood Shepperton Studios in England. | |
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BattleGround - 21 Days on the Empire's EdgeStarring: Sgt. Robert Hollis, Rana al Aiouby |
| In late 2003, two filmmakers from the Sundance award-winning Guerrilla News Network spent three weeks on the frontlines of the simmering guerrilla war in Iraq, gathering intelligence, dodging bullets, and capturing the untold stories of what has become the world's most covered, and misunderstood, conflict. BattleGround is an irreverent journey that will challenge the orthodoxies of Left and Right, and highlight the humanity of all sides of the conflict. BattleGround will be a critical film for anyone who wants to understand the powerful forces that are sucking America deeper and deeper into a Middle Eastern quagmire. Is Iraq our generation's "Bright Shining Lie," or is it the frontline in a global battle for national survival? Or is to some combination of both? | |
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The Dreams of SparrowsDirector: Haydar Daffar, Hayder Mousa Daffar |
| The Dreams of Sparrows follows first time Iraqi director Hayder Mousa Daffar and his team of contributing directors as they share their vision of life in Baghdad, post war and pre reconstruction. It is his attempt to reconcile the conflicting points of view among Iraqis regarding the war, Saddam Hussein and the occupation; the process of which ultimately changes him and his crew irrevocably. The Dreams of Sparrows is dedicated to Saad Fahker, Associate Producer who died during the production. In the first act we meet Hayder Jabbar, one of the several Iraqi directors chosen by Daffar to contribute to the documentary portrait. After explaining his involvement in the project, Jabbar insists on thanking his savior George Bush, who he loves. Jabbar's convictions at the beginning of the film, contrasted with the bleak and often painful subjects of interview, introduce the essential divide within Iraqi psychology that the movie follows as it develops from the aftermath of war, the capture of Saddam and the realization of occupation. The discourse is maintained through an inquiry into the arts and culture of Baghdad, drawing the viewer into intimate and powerful encounters with Iraqi painters, writers, filmmakers. As the production continues, the interviews increasingly veer towards the politics of occupation and resistance, concluding with the reclaiming of Falluja by local militias and the devastating killing of one of the crew members. In somber self interviews made following the production, the filmmakers reveal the dramatic changes in their characters and beliefs, changes caused not only by the situation in Iraq, but also by the process of documenting it. This movie is the first feature documentary project from the IraqEye Group, a collaboration between American producers and Iraqi filmmakers with the goal of revitalizing Iraqi cinema within the international cinema community. |