Slides to go with the LEvel 3 film studies lecture

1. 1
DOCUMENTING 21ST
CENTURY WARS
MAC323 | robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk

2. Afghanistan (2001-?) | Iraq (2003-
2
2011)

3. Structure
3
 Documentary aims
 Vietnam’s legacy
 Contemporary conflicts

4. The cost of war?
4
 Deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq?
 919,967 (Source)
 US military expenditure in decade since 9/11
 $1.36 trillion

5. Documenting ‘truth’?
5
 The power of documentary to reveal a ‘truth’
grants it special status
 To ‘document’ a subject implies keeping a
factual record for future reference

6. John Grierson (1930s-1940s)
6
 Education +
propaganda =
social reform?

7. The expositional mode
7
 See Bill Nichols (1991/2004)
 Tended to depict institutions,
communities and traditions
 Public mode of address:
 Highly formal
 Serious
 Educational
 Aimed at informing citizens in a mass
democracy.

8. The observational mode
8
 1950s onwards
 cinema vérité
 ‘cinema truth’
 ‘direct cinema’
 observe and record the reality of
everyday life as it happened without
the usual organisational planning
and structured direction
 ‘fly on the wall’

9. Critique
9
 ‘To be sure, some documentarists claim to be
objective – a term that seems to renounce an
interpretive role. The claim may be strategic, but it is
surely meaningless.
 The documentarists, like any communicator in any
medium makes endless choices. He (sic) selects
topics, people, vistas, angles, lens, juxtapositions,
sounds, words.
 Each selection is an expression of his point of view,
whether he is aware of it or not, whether he
acknowledges it or not.’
 Erik Barnouw (1993: 287)

10. Ideological construction
10

11. The participatory mode
11
 Welcomes direct engagement
between filmmaker and subject(s)
 Filmmaker:
 becomes part of the events being
recorded
 is acknowledged (even celebrated)
for their impact on events

12. The reflexive mode
12
 Acknowledges the constructed
nature of documentary
 Artifice is exposed
 Not ‘truth’ but a reconstruction of ‘a’
truth, not ‘the’ truth
 Frequently features the film-maker
making the documentary
 De-mystifying its processes

13. The performative mode
13
 Emphasizes the subjective
nature of the filmmaker
 Polemical, evocative and aiming
for affect

14. The golden age of
14 documentary?
 Afghanistan

15. The golden age of
15 documentary?
 Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death (2002, UK, Jamie
Doran)
 Commando: On the Front Line – TV series (2007, UK,
Christopher Terrill)
 Taxi to the Dark Side (2007, USA, Alex Gibney)
 Taking on the Taliban (2007, UK, BBC)
 Afghanistan: The Forgotten War (2008, USA, unknown)
 Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear (2008, Canada, Dominic
Morissette, Julian Sher, Andrea Thiel)
 Jack: A Soldier's Story (2008, UK Robin Barnwell, Nick
Norman-Butler)
 Tree Bloody Summers (2008, UK, Richard Grange)
 Armadillo (2010, Denmark, Janus Metz Pedersen)
 Restrepo (2010, USA, Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger)
 The Battle for Marjah (2010, USA, Anthony Wonke)

16. The golden age of
16 documentary?
 Iraq

17. The golden age of
17 documentary?
 In Shifting Sands (2001, USA, Scott Ritter)
 About Baghdad (2003, USA, Sinan Antoon, Bassam Haddad, Maya Mikdashi, Suzy
Salamy, Adam Shapiro)
 Baghdad or Bust (2004, Canada, Matt Frame)
 Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (2003, UK, Steve Connelly,
John Pilger)
 Control Room (2004, USA, Jehane Noujaim)
 Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, USA, Michael Moore)
 Gunner Palace (2004, USA, Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker)
 Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories (2004, USA, Mike Shiley)
 Last Letters Home: Voices of American Troops from the Battlefields of Iraq (2004,
USA, Bill Couturié)
 Soldiers Pay (2004, USA, Tricia Regan, David O. Russell, Juan Carlos Zaldívar)
 Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004, USA, Robert Greenwald)
 Voices of Iraq (2004, Iraq/USA, People of Iraq)
 War Feels Like War (2004, UK, Esteban Uyarra)
 We Iraqis (2004, France, Abbas Fahdel)
 WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (2004, USA, Danny Schecter)

18. The golden age of
18 documentary?
 In the Shadow of the Palms (2005, Australia, Wayne Coles-Janess)
 Occupation: Dreamland (2005, USA, Ian Olds, Garrett Scott)
 The Dreams of Sparrows (2005, Iraq/USA, Haydar Daffar, Haydar
Mousa Daffar)
 Why We Fight (2005, USA/France/UK/Canada/Denmark, Eugene
Jarecki)
 Alpha Company: Iraq Diary (2006, USA, Gordon Forbes III)
 Baghdad ER (2006, USA, Jon Alpert, Matthew O’Neill)
 Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006, USA, Robert Greenwald)
 Iraq in Fragments (2006, USA, James Longley)
 My Country, My Country (2006, USA, Laura Poitras)
 The Ground Truth (2006, USA, Patricia Foulkrod)
 The War Tapes (2006, USA, Deborah Scranton)
 When I Came Home (2006,USA, Dan Lohaus)

19. The golden age of
19 documentary?
 Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007, USA, Jon
Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent)
 Body of War (2007, USA, Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro)
 Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007, USA, Rory Kennedy)
 I Am an American Soldier (2007, UK/USA, John
Laurence)
 No End in Sight (2007, USA, Charles Ferguson)
 Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime
Experience (2007, USA, Richard Robbins)
 This Is War: Memories of Iraq (2007, USA, Gary
Mortensen)
 Three Soldiers (2007, USA, Shailly Agnihotri)
 Year at Danger (2007, USA, Steve Metze, Don
Swaynos)

20. The golden age of
20 documentary?
 Bad Voodoo's War (2008, USA, Deborah Scranton)
 Fighting for Life (2008, USA, Terry Sanders)
 My Vietnam, Your Iraq (2008, USA, Ron Osgood)
 Reserved to Fight (2008, USA, Chantelle Squires)
 The Corporal's Diary: 38 Days in Iraq (2008, USA,
Patricia Boiko, Lauren Spellman)
 Brothers at War (2009, USA, Jake Rademacher)
 Triangle of Death (2009, USA, Folleh Shar Tamba)
 The Unreturned (2010, USA/Canada, Nathan Fisher)
 The War You Don't See (2010, UK, Alan Lowrey, John
Pilger)
 The Tillman Story (2010, USA, Amir Bar-Lev)

21. The golden age of
21 documentary?

22. Legacy of Vietnam
22

23. Managing expectations
23

24. Embedding
24

25. CentCom
25

26. CentCom
26
• CentCom (Qatar)
• $1.5m briefing centre
• Plasma screens, mini studious, phone banks
• Designed by Hollywood set designer, George Allison
• Platform for truth (US General Tommy Franks)
• Seating arrangements reflected pecking order

27. Unilaterals
27

28. Restrepo
28
(2010, S. Junger & T. Hetherington )

29. Armchair critics
29

30. Fahrenheit 9/11
30
 $6 million budget
 Miramax (Disney)
 Lion’s Gate

31. WMD: Weapons of Mass
31 Deception
 Danny Schechter

32. Control Room
32
 Behind the scenes access to
Al Jazeera at CentCom
(Doha, Qatar)

33. ‘Grunt documentaries’
33
 ‘by privileging personal experience over
historical awareness, these accounts construct
a version of the war in which it becomes
impossible to apprehend such atrocities as
Haditha, Ramadi, Abu Ghraib’

34. Restrepo
34
 The Korengal Valley
 Embedded with Second
Platoon, B Company, 2nd
Battalion, 503rd Infantry
Regiment (airborne), 173rd
Airborne Brigade Combat Team
of the U.S. Army

35. Seminars
35
 Where does Restrepo fit?
 What kind of documentary is it?
 What function does it serve?

36. Sources and further reading:
36
 Jeffrey Chown (2008) ‘Documentary and the Iraq War: A New Genre
for New Realities’ in Peter C. Rollins & John E. O’Connor (2008)
Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History, Lexington:
The University Press of Kentucky.
 Tony Grajeda (2007) ‘The winning and losing of hearts and minds:
Vietnam, Iraq, and the claims of the war documentary’, Jump Cut,
No. 49,
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/Grajeda/text.html
 Douglas Kellner (2010) Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics
in the Bush-Cheney Era, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
 Sherry Ricchiardi (2007) ‘Obstructed View’, American Journalism
Review, April/May 2007, http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4301
 Peter C. Rollins & John E. O’Connor (2008) Why We Fought:
America’s Wars in Film and History, Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky.