Saturday,
September 01, 2007
DePalma's
The
ANNOTICO Report
"Redacted", by
"Redacted",
is one of at least eight American films on the war in
"The
time has come for
Brian
De Palma's film about the rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by
From Reuters
August 31, 2007
"Redacted", by
Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in
Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the
conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.
De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar
tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal
he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he
found on the Internet.
"The movie is an attemp t to bring the
reality of what is happening in
"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images
will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote
against this war," he said.
Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped,
killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya,
south of
Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have
been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.
"IT'S ALL ON THE INTERNET"
Halfway between documentary and fiction, "Redacted" draws on
soldiers' home-made war videos, blogs and journals
and footage posted on YouTube, reflecting changes in
the way the media cover the war.
"In
"It's all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it,
but it's not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate
establishment," he said.
The film's title refers to how, according to De Palma, mainstream American
newspapers and television channels are failing to tell the true story of the
war by keeping the most graphic images of the conflict away from public
opinion.
"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the
pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers
he too had to "edit" the material.
"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that
actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note
from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get
sued," De Palma said.
"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually
real."
The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of
photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal
reasons.
"I think that's terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of
faces to this suffering people," De Palma said.
"The great irony about Redacted is that it was redacted."
Distributor Magnolia has planned a limited
"This is a harrowing experience you put the audience through. It is not
something you want to go to on a delightful Saturday evening but this message
must be put forward and hopefully the public will respond," De Palma said.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/
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