Film Screening: 500 Miles to Babylon

Event Description:

"Life in occupied Iraq"

(2008, 60 minutes, video)

Filmed over the course of three trips to Iraq as an independent videographer, this is a documentary not about soldiers, not about governments, but about Iraqi civilians and a handful of independent journalists in a country being turned into hell. A cinema verite narrative of daily life, disintegration, and the humor that ordinary people adapt when living in a warzone.

Narrated by the filmmaker, it addresses the current war not simply as a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company's coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project. Through impromptu interviews, glimpses of daily life, still photographs, and footage of car-bombs, demonstrations, night-time graffiti artists, Sufi rituals, and the celebrations following Saddam's capture, 500 Miles To Babylon charts the early days of the U.S. occupation as it blundered its way and Iraqi society began to collapse.

The story includes rare footage from inside besieged Fallujah, where the filmmaker went in April 2004 with a group of volunteers to deliver medical aid to the town's inhabitants and subsequently reported to the world about the conditions of civilians during the fighting. With a soundtrack of Iraqi Choubi songs compiled by Sublime Frequencies.

Event Sponsor:
Sedition Collective

Event Phone Contact Information:
7135230807

Event Email Address:
escramble('seditioncollective','yahoo.com');">

Event Website:
www.seditionbooks.com