Hi everyone!
Here's my Top 5 list for this week. Enjoy!
1) Emad Burnat's incredibly moving documentary "Five Broken Cameras". This film was nominated for a 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It is extraordinary. Over the span of five years -- 2005-2010 -- Mr. Burnat used 5 videocameras to document his West Bank village Bil'in's weekly protests against Israeli settlement expansion. Each camera was destroyed by an Israeli soldier (bullet, tear gas canister, fist) but Mr. Burnat found another camera and continued to film. Unlike anything I've ever seen or read about the Palestinian protest movement, this film humanizes the conflict and distills it into everyday experience that anyone can appreciate if not relate to. What results is an incredible narrative of one man's/one village's fight for freedom, dignity, and survival. "Five Broken Cameras" is a tragic and visceral film but what emerges most is Mr. Burnat's inspiring resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. For anyone who follows and/or cares about what's going on in the Middle East, this film should be required viewing. For more information please click onto Mr. Burnat's website www.emadburnet.com.
2) And while we're on the subject of documentaries, Jeremy Scahill's just released in theaters and On Demand film "Dirty Wars" is another of my top picks for the week. I wrote about it at length the other day so I'll keep my commentary brief. "Dirty Wars" follows Mr. Scahill's journey to Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia to understand and document the covert underbelly of the US War on Terror. The film is riveting for the questions it asks and the footage it shows and Mr. Scahill, a journalist for The Nation, is an expert and compelling tour guide.
3) From the sublime to the slightly ridiculous, I just finished the last two of episodes of "Game of Thrones" Season Three. As a big (but rather critical) fan of George RR Martin's novels upon which the series remains impressively faithful, I found this season suffered from the same fundamental defect of its source material. We're getting to a point where there are simply too many characters and too much plot that the storytelling is getting too spread out and the pacing somewhat cumbersome. However...the infamous Blood Wedding sequence that closed out Episode Nine was as shocking and defining as it was in the book. And the final scene of Season Three with Daenarys Targarian (Khaleesi) being lifted into the collective arms of the liberated slaves of Junkai is one of the all-time great Game of Thrones moments, right up there with the Season One finale when Daenarys emerges naked from the ashes with the baby dragons. It is so ridiculous you have to laugh but at the same time so deliciously audacious. Other Season Three highlights: any and all of Arya (Maisie Williams) Stark's scenes. This little girl is a fantastic actress who seems to be really growing into the role; Peter Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister. We didn't get much of him this season but Mr. Dinklage's ironic line readings especially in response to his nephew, mad king Joffrey, are priceless. Best line of the season, also from the final episode: "Killed a few puppies today?"; Lena Headey's ice queen Cersei continues to steal every scene she's in as does her on-screen brother, Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) Lannister. As despicable as Jamie is, Mr. Coster-Waldau manages to bring out a strange kind of humanity in the guy that has you kind of cheering for him despite all his rather egregious nastiness. Since I know what's coming, having read the novels, Season 4 should be epic.
4) Philipp Meyers' novel "The Son". If you're a fan of Cormac McCarthy or "Lonesome Dove", you gotta read this novel. I'm about halfway through so I can't give a complete review, but I will say this will most assuredly be one of my top fiction picks for 2013. Three generations of one great Texas ranch family set in 1850, 1917, 1945, and 2012. Meyers's prose is understated, assured, and driven, a hybrid of "Little Big Man" and "Giant" but wholly original. It just hit the New York Times Hardcover Bestseller List at Number 10 and I can guarantee it'll be one of the most talked-about books of the summer if not of 2013.
5) The roofdeck bar of Trump's Sixteen in Chicago's Trump Tower: some of the best views in Chicago (if not some of the most expensive drinks!) I know it's summer in Chicago when the roof deck is open. Sure, the place is a bit overpriced but it's so perfect that you almost forgive the trumped-up price. And the Wagyu beef sliders ain't bad either. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Jeremy Scahill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeremy Scahill. Show all posts
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Friday, June 14, 2013
Free Speech in the Era of Pussy Riot, Wikileaks, and Drone Warfare
Hello everyone!
Today I want to tell you about 3 very important documentaries I had the pleasure of seeing this week. I'd originally only planned to write about two -- HBO's "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" and the Jemima Khan produced Wikipedia film "We Steal Secrets"--reflecting on the right of free speech and freedom of information in today's society, but then this evening I watched Jeremy Scahill's equally thought provoking film "Dirty Wars"about US JSOC covert killings and drone attacks in Afghanistan and Yemen, and knew I had to include it in today's post. All three do a good job of giving us an in-the-trenches perspective that takes us behind the scenes of the news we read about every day.
"Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" provides fascinating footage from inside the Moscow courtroom in August 2012 where three members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot were accused of blasphemy and essentially charged with being enemies of the Russian state, aka President Putin. Two are currently serving out their 2-year sentences in a labor camp while the third was released on appeal. The film sheds light on the origins of Pussy Riot as part of the burgeoning protest movement against Putin's re-election. It also shows--rather compellingly--the Russian legal system in action -- or inaction, as the whole proceeding is clearly trumped-up and rigged from the start. The problem I have however with the film, despite it's obviously noble intent, is that the women themselves are not particularly sympathetic. And while I certainly do not support the charges against them or the harshness of their subsequent punishment, what I didn't get from the film was any sort of context of what led these women to form the band in the first place. We never really get to know these women as anything more than symbols of injustice and repression. The film works in shedding light on the trial and Pussy Riot's past performances -- including the infamous Cathedral stunt -- but I never once found myself really sympathizing with them as individuals. I was certainly appalled by the trial, which clearly demonstrated that Russia under Putin is sliding dangerously back to an almost Stalinist state. Perhaps this alone was the filmmaker's intent? And if so, the film does a good job of showing how individual rights and freedoms are being blatantly abused. But beyond that, I was left wanting more.
Which brings me to "We Steal Secrets". I must confess I've always found Julian Assange to be rather distasteful. In all the articles I've read about him and the press footage I've seen, there's a remoteness and an arrogance about him that renders him a bit of a cipher, and therefore it's difficult for me to --again -- really get behind him. I do think this film does a better job than "Pussy Riot" of providing a broader, more detailed context for the story it tells. We receive an overview of Wikileaks, the extent of the information leaked to it by Bradley Manning, and a somewhat interesting character study of Mr. Assange himself. I also appreciated the fact that the filmmakers are balanced in their presentation. This isn't the love story to Julian Assange that I feared it might be. Comprised mainly of interviews with Assange and his former Wikileaks team, what we see is a man rather strangely remote from the world around him, whose convictions about the necessity for total disclosure of wartime secrets is driven less from a passionate belief in justice and more from a rather self-serving motivation to say "fuck you" to organized government and international security as a means of perpetuating his own celebrity. Regardless of the right or wrongfulness of his actions, at least as he is depicted in this film, there is nothing in the least heroic about Julian Assange. If anything, I find my sympathy goes to Bradley Manning, who is portrayed here as being a rather lost, desperate, and desperately sad young man, battling with his sexuality in a homophobic environment who is disgusted by what he witnesses in Afghanistan and feels he needs to somehow communicate what he's seen. His decision to divulge these secrets is presented as almost a form of psychiatric therapy. Ultimately, the filmmakers make the wise choice of leaving it up to the viewer to decide where they stand. The facts are presented and we are left to question our own beliefs. I appreciate this film because I feel I've gained some insight behind the headlines and I feel better informed from a contextual standpoint as I follow the latest NSA data-mining scandal and the evolving story of Edward Snowden.
And finally, we come to The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill's film "Dirty Wars", a companion to the same-titled book published earlier this year. The film traces Mr. Scahill's investigation of a covered-up massacre by US troops in Gardez Afghanistan of three women (two of them pregnant) and a man who served as a police commissioner trained by US forces. Scahill's investigation leads him from Gardez where he interviews Afghani villagers who provide eyewitness accounts of the massacre (and harrowing cell phone video of the aftermath) to Yemen, where he interviews the father and grandmother of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen and radical cleric who was killed in 2011 by a targeted drone attack, as part of a broader discussion about the Obama administration's increasing reliance on drone warfare and targeted assassinations of suspected al-Qaeda operatives in the Middle East and elsewhere. Of the three films, I feel "Dirty Wars" is probably the most successful. While some might criticize Mr. Scahill for putting himself front and center of the camera -- there's never really any doubt that this film is as much about Scahill as it is about the covert JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) activities he investigates -- I enjoyed his perspective. He's an engaging presence and I felt I was experiencing the horrors he uncovers through his eyes. There's a humanist quality to this film that I feel is lacking in "Pussy Riot" and "We Steal Secrets", both of which are rather dry and formal in their presentation.
"Dirty Wars" does an effective job of showing the difficulties journalists face when trying to delve beyond government-approved news bytes. And as such it is the more provocative of the three. We actually see Mr. Scahill being stonewalled by the US government in his attempts to uncover the truth about what happened in Gardez and we witness how certain personalities within the media openly ridicule and vilify his efforts to bring certain truths to light. These clips demonstrate better than anything in "We Steal Secrets" how there is definitely a conscious suppression of free speech in the United States and how the War on Terror is used just as much by the Obama administration (if not more so) than by Bush as a cover-all for unethical and unconstitutional activity in our wars overseas.
I commend all three films for their bravery and honesty. Collectively they present an effective portrayal of the uncertainty of the times we live in especially in regard to freedom of information and free speech.
"Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" is currently airing on HBO and HBO On Demand; "We Kill Secrets" and "Dirty Wars" are playing in limited release but are both available through Comcast On Demand.
Today I want to tell you about 3 very important documentaries I had the pleasure of seeing this week. I'd originally only planned to write about two -- HBO's "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" and the Jemima Khan produced Wikipedia film "We Steal Secrets"--reflecting on the right of free speech and freedom of information in today's society, but then this evening I watched Jeremy Scahill's equally thought provoking film "Dirty Wars"about US JSOC covert killings and drone attacks in Afghanistan and Yemen, and knew I had to include it in today's post. All three do a good job of giving us an in-the-trenches perspective that takes us behind the scenes of the news we read about every day.
"Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" provides fascinating footage from inside the Moscow courtroom in August 2012 where three members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot were accused of blasphemy and essentially charged with being enemies of the Russian state, aka President Putin. Two are currently serving out their 2-year sentences in a labor camp while the third was released on appeal. The film sheds light on the origins of Pussy Riot as part of the burgeoning protest movement against Putin's re-election. It also shows--rather compellingly--the Russian legal system in action -- or inaction, as the whole proceeding is clearly trumped-up and rigged from the start. The problem I have however with the film, despite it's obviously noble intent, is that the women themselves are not particularly sympathetic. And while I certainly do not support the charges against them or the harshness of their subsequent punishment, what I didn't get from the film was any sort of context of what led these women to form the band in the first place. We never really get to know these women as anything more than symbols of injustice and repression. The film works in shedding light on the trial and Pussy Riot's past performances -- including the infamous Cathedral stunt -- but I never once found myself really sympathizing with them as individuals. I was certainly appalled by the trial, which clearly demonstrated that Russia under Putin is sliding dangerously back to an almost Stalinist state. Perhaps this alone was the filmmaker's intent? And if so, the film does a good job of showing how individual rights and freedoms are being blatantly abused. But beyond that, I was left wanting more.
Which brings me to "We Steal Secrets". I must confess I've always found Julian Assange to be rather distasteful. In all the articles I've read about him and the press footage I've seen, there's a remoteness and an arrogance about him that renders him a bit of a cipher, and therefore it's difficult for me to --again -- really get behind him. I do think this film does a better job than "Pussy Riot" of providing a broader, more detailed context for the story it tells. We receive an overview of Wikileaks, the extent of the information leaked to it by Bradley Manning, and a somewhat interesting character study of Mr. Assange himself. I also appreciated the fact that the filmmakers are balanced in their presentation. This isn't the love story to Julian Assange that I feared it might be. Comprised mainly of interviews with Assange and his former Wikileaks team, what we see is a man rather strangely remote from the world around him, whose convictions about the necessity for total disclosure of wartime secrets is driven less from a passionate belief in justice and more from a rather self-serving motivation to say "fuck you" to organized government and international security as a means of perpetuating his own celebrity. Regardless of the right or wrongfulness of his actions, at least as he is depicted in this film, there is nothing in the least heroic about Julian Assange. If anything, I find my sympathy goes to Bradley Manning, who is portrayed here as being a rather lost, desperate, and desperately sad young man, battling with his sexuality in a homophobic environment who is disgusted by what he witnesses in Afghanistan and feels he needs to somehow communicate what he's seen. His decision to divulge these secrets is presented as almost a form of psychiatric therapy. Ultimately, the filmmakers make the wise choice of leaving it up to the viewer to decide where they stand. The facts are presented and we are left to question our own beliefs. I appreciate this film because I feel I've gained some insight behind the headlines and I feel better informed from a contextual standpoint as I follow the latest NSA data-mining scandal and the evolving story of Edward Snowden.
And finally, we come to The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill's film "Dirty Wars", a companion to the same-titled book published earlier this year. The film traces Mr. Scahill's investigation of a covered-up massacre by US troops in Gardez Afghanistan of three women (two of them pregnant) and a man who served as a police commissioner trained by US forces. Scahill's investigation leads him from Gardez where he interviews Afghani villagers who provide eyewitness accounts of the massacre (and harrowing cell phone video of the aftermath) to Yemen, where he interviews the father and grandmother of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen and radical cleric who was killed in 2011 by a targeted drone attack, as part of a broader discussion about the Obama administration's increasing reliance on drone warfare and targeted assassinations of suspected al-Qaeda operatives in the Middle East and elsewhere. Of the three films, I feel "Dirty Wars" is probably the most successful. While some might criticize Mr. Scahill for putting himself front and center of the camera -- there's never really any doubt that this film is as much about Scahill as it is about the covert JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) activities he investigates -- I enjoyed his perspective. He's an engaging presence and I felt I was experiencing the horrors he uncovers through his eyes. There's a humanist quality to this film that I feel is lacking in "Pussy Riot" and "We Steal Secrets", both of which are rather dry and formal in their presentation.
"Dirty Wars" does an effective job of showing the difficulties journalists face when trying to delve beyond government-approved news bytes. And as such it is the more provocative of the three. We actually see Mr. Scahill being stonewalled by the US government in his attempts to uncover the truth about what happened in Gardez and we witness how certain personalities within the media openly ridicule and vilify his efforts to bring certain truths to light. These clips demonstrate better than anything in "We Steal Secrets" how there is definitely a conscious suppression of free speech in the United States and how the War on Terror is used just as much by the Obama administration (if not more so) than by Bush as a cover-all for unethical and unconstitutional activity in our wars overseas.
I commend all three films for their bravery and honesty. Collectively they present an effective portrayal of the uncertainty of the times we live in especially in regard to freedom of information and free speech.
"Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" is currently airing on HBO and HBO On Demand; "We Kill Secrets" and "Dirty Wars" are playing in limited release but are both available through Comcast On Demand.
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