Archive for January, 2007
Sundance documentary “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” will be given a limited theatrical release in the US, before its airing on HBO in February. The film features interviews with members of military intelligence, military police, as well as prison inmates on the legal and moral implications of torture. It was directed by Rory Kennedy (see photo) whose earlier, award-winning films have explored poverty, drug addiction, the AIDS pandemic, and domestic violence.
Here is what she said in an Indiewire interview:
“The greatest risk in making “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” was not one that I took personally, but taken by the people I interviewed, particularly the Iraqi detainees who were wrongfully imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. As the situation on the ground was too dangerous, the six prisoners interviewed could not be filmed in Iraq. Their stories, however, were too important to go unheard and they seemed to know this. As an alternative, we arranged for them to fly to Jordan, but they were stopped at the Baghdad Airport and turned back.”
Continue reading ‘“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” on US theatrical release’
One of Birmingham’s over 60 mosques has been exposed in a British documentary as a meeting place for extremist Muslims, and is now under police investigation. Channel Four’s Dispatches programme, broadcast last Monday, showed undercover footage of preacher Abu Usamah calling for gay people to be executed.
“If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should bemurdered, that’s my freedom of speech, isn’t it?” he told followers. While preaching at Birmingham’s Green Lane Mosque, the documentary also showed him mocking Christians and Jews.
The backbone of the film was made by an undercover reporter who filmed secretly for four months. The documentary was briefly available at YouTube but was later removed for copyright breach.
Fore more info, check out the film’s page at Channel Four.
Raindance, the largest British independent film festival, is now accepting submissions for its 15th anniversary edition. Shorts and features of all genres from anywhere in the world are accepted.
Submitted films must have been independently produced and not yet released in the UK. Submissions should be on DVD or VHS (PAL), either in English or subtitled into English. The festival will run between 26 September and 7 October 2007 and the deadline for submissions is 1 June. An early bird rate is available until 1 May.
For more info and a submission form, visit the Raindance Festival website.
MySpace launched its “MyMovie MashUp” in partnership with Vertigo Films to find the best short film director on MySpace. The winner will get to direct a feature film with a budget of over £1 million with the film scheduled for theatrical release in 2008.
Entries will be judged by a distinguished panel of filmmakers and actors who will select five finalists. The finalists then face a public vote by millions of MySpace users to decide the ultimate winner. The lucky winning director will immediately begin production on their feature film..
The deadline for submissions is 18 April, 2007.
Full details and competition rules are available at the MySpace competition page.
Organisers of the annual International Documentary Challenge will be holding the event on March 1-5 this year. The Challenge is a timed filmmaking competition in which filmmaking teams from around the world have 5 days to make a short non-fiction film of 4-8 minutes.
The final product will be presented at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in April. The film will also be sold to television, released on DVD and its creators will be promoted at festivals around the world.
The Challenge is sponsored by Hot Docs, SILVERDOCS, the International Documentary Association, the Documentary Organisation of Canada and the creators of the 48 Hour Film Project.
You can read more and register on the International Documentary Challenge website.
The Chinese government has reacted angrily to a Japanese documentary in production, which describes the massacre of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops as “a myth”. The highly politicised film is funded through public donations, and is directed by Satoru Mizushima, the head of a nationalist Japanese TV channel, Sakura.
The documentary apparently insist that the 1937 Nanjing massacre never took place, despite historical evidence that Japanese troops slaughtered at least 142,000 people when they invaded the city which was then capital of nationalist China. (Chinese historians have put the death toll at 300,000 men, women and children.)
“The Truth About Nanjing” is only one of the many films set for release this year, the 70th anniversary of the massacre. The Nanjing story also featured at Sundance this year, through a critically-acclaimed US production with Woody Harrelson. The Chinese government also plans to make its own version of the film, based on Iris Chang’s bestselling book, The Rape of Nanjing.
Read the entry on Nanjing in Wikipedia
James Longley’s documentary about ordinary lives in post-invasion Iraq has been released in UK cinemas. The stunning film draws a disturbing portrait of a country broken irreversibly into warring factions of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.
Longley captures on camera the Iraq we rarely see, the Iraq that is outside the frame of conventional news. In Baghdad, he finds an orphaned boy, whose sad fate becomes a metaphore for the mess that is Iraq today. The film is on the Oscars shortlist for Best Documentary, and hopefully it will soon be released in European cinemas soon too. Check IMBD for updates.
Read Longley’s pre-production notes on the Iraq in Fragments website.
