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| <back | home Special Film Review "Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories" a film by Mike Shiley (95 min.) “There is nothing more important than the media - it is more powerful than any bomb or missile and we have to take it back ... we need a media that is independent and honestly showing us the images, the hell, ugliness and brutality of war, not selling us war.” — Amy Goodman “Inside Iraq” shows us what a genuinely independent media can do, perhaps what US media could do if it had courage. The reporter analyzes what the camera records. He spends no film time taking sides or preaching beliefs. He visits a landmine hospital and shows people with their legs blown off, children with faces burned beyond recognition. He tells us, “I look at this as my story. This is what I saw.” Like a lot of us in December of 2003, Mike Shiley, self-described regular American guy, was frustrated trying to learn the facts about the war in Iraq from US network news. Shiley is a world traveler, the type of person compelled to find out what’s going on for himself. So although he is neither a journalist nor a professional filmmaker, Shiley gets himself credentialed through ABC News. Against his loved ones’ advice he packs his camera and embarks on a solo trip to Iraq. His travels culminate as he embeds himself with a US military unit that rolls straight into the heart of a village inside the Sunni triangle, a place so dangerous that professional journalists refused to go there. Shiley’s technique is simple and objective. As we tour through the streets of Bhagdad among merchants and mosques, the images and sounds are unmediated. The Bhagdad Technology College has been completely looted yet professors still teach computer science, with no computers. Merchants close shop at four in the afternoon, rushing home to avoid exposure to mortal danger because without Saddam Hussein’s military presence exerting total control, no one in Bhagdad is safe after dark. Pornography, prostitution and drug industries are thriving. We learn that on the black market $25 will buy a rocket propelled grenade launcher. Shiley tells us that Bhagdad is a city about the size of Chicago, yet at any given time it is operating on only about 25% of its energy. Disabled traffic lights create chaos daily. One Iraqi man, asked what he sees for the future of his country, answers with a question. “How much worse can it get?” Shiley tours a war memorial inside the ruins of a shelter where over 400 women and children were incinerated when a bomb, either allied or US, tore a hole through the 24-foot thick concrete and rebar roof. As his camera scans across their portraits now lining the walls Shiley wonders, “who are the real victims when two nations go to war?” “Inside Iraq” offers no easy answers. Saddam Hussein buried 30 million landmines in the land between the northern Kurdish territory and the rest of the country. “Mr. Bush is good,” is the overwhelming Kurdish sentiment. Shiley describes his visit to the landmine hospital as the most difficult time he spent during the making of this film. On the walls of the children’s playroom his camera lingers over the children’s art. Bombs dropping from planes,flaming buildings, dead and dying people. They draw images of war, he observes, because those are the pictures that are burned into their brains. At Christmas, Shiley stays with American troops stationed in Bahgdad. In the barracks they play a video game and suck on candy canes. They are heartbreakingly young. A soldier rants, “we built this place from the ground up,” with no trace of irony. We observe the enormous waste of resources created by Americans and left at the Anaconda dump north of Bhagdad. The dump is such a rich resource of food, building materials, electronics equipment and weapons that Iraqi children risk getting shot to scale its barbed wire fences. Shiley meets US Major Mark Shull, and we follow him on a routine visit to nearby schoolchildren. His compassionate exchange with hordes of Iraqi men desperate to find work and feed their families does not square with the ignorant “bring ‘em on” war stance. After receiving proper training and embedding with the unit inside the Sunni Triangle, Shiley films himself in the turret of an armored tank, participating in a “harass and intimidate” campaign designed to flush out and terrify the insurgents thought to be hiding in the village. The obvious high he gets from shooting the biggest gun available is disarming, disturbing and honest. In the aftermath, he reflects, “how will the Iraqis feel toward this invading army, the longer we stay in their world?” m “Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories” is presented courtesy of HopeDance FiLMS at the SLOIFF, 7 pm, Friday, March 10 at the Palm Theater, screening room 2. Go to www.slofilmfest.org for details. <back | top^ |