Adventures in freakdom.
November 21, 2004
What happens when two ex-MTV producers team up with a former Marine and distribute 150 digital video cameras to people of all walks of life — doctors, mothers, sheiks, even insurgents — in Iraq?
Pure magic.
The instructions delivered with the cameras were simple:
First, please use the camera and tapes provided to briefly videotape the physical world around you. Videotape your neighborhood, shopping area, where you live and work, pray, relax, and play.
Second, use the camera to videotape interviews of people who have the most meaning in your life. They could be people you wish you were most like, or you’d want your great grand children to meet. They may be in your family, religious leaders, artists, friends, teachers - anybody. Try to make them feel as comfortable as possible to share the details of their lives and thoughts.
If you and they feel comfortable with it, have the person tell the camera their relationship to you, their name and age, and where they live.
What is most important is that you have the person explain their greatest hopes and dreams for the future - for themselves and their people.
From early April, when the insurgency was building in Fallujah, until late September, these 150 cameras moved all over Iraq from person to person, creating hundreds of hours of footage of daily life in that country. The producers edited the footage down to 75 minutes, and called it Voices of Iraq. The only ways I’ve seen that you can currently get the movie (unless you happen to live in a city where it’s playing) is via rental from NetFlix (that’s how we got it) or purchase at MavGear (it’s $25 well-spent dollars).
After 24 years of being silenced under the Hussein regime, the people of Iraq are finally able to speak. What they have to say is moving — you’ll laugh, you’ll see the hope in everything they do, and you may even cry in a couple of places. Plenty of people discuss politics and the direction they’d like to see their country take, and now they’re able to do this without fear of reprisal.
There’s no Michael Moore-esque over-editing here; this film was created by and the narrative is driven by the voices of the Iraqi people. There are a few grueling scenes of torture by the Fedayeen, but they last less than a minute total. There’s open discussion of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (one man humorously says that Iraqis pray to be tortured by Americans instead of anyone else, because a woman soldier would take out his penis and play with it.), what life is like after Saddam Hussein (along with some harrowing stories of how life was under him), and numerous opinions on how America is perceived by the average Iraqi citizen.
I watched the movie last night, and was floored. Their story is fascinating.
Why not see what they have to say?
If you want to get notified whenever Fred writes a journal entry, this link will do the trick.
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Wow. Sounds amazing. Just a brief thank you for pointing me in the direction of this film, which I have not heard of at all. I am a Netflix customer, so I will go and put in at the top of my queue right away. Thanks, Fred!
I, too, saw this film and highly recommend it!!!!!
Thanks for letting the word out, Fred.
As luck would have it, my returns made it to Netflix today, and this one is now on the top of my queue to arrive Wednesday!
I never had any doubt that life is better for the average Iraqi, so I don’t think I will pay to see it for now….
I just recieved this movie from Netflix myself, and it is incredible.
I wish everyone could see it. I wish it could be put on network television. The documentary simply captures the personality of the Iraqi people so much better than any other news footage ever will.