Really enjoyed working with Nana D to grade his video. There were some challenges working with 5D h264 footage and matching the locations (shot in Spain and Norbury South London would you believe), especially since I was limited to working evenings on this personal project.
Anyway here’s the link: Enjoy
I will be doing some more work with Nana in 2012 so watch out!
It is perceived as a truism that 9/11 changed the world. Yet while the savagery and shock value of those attacks cannot be denied it is worth asking whether the world, or to be more precise, US/NATO foreign policy changed as a result of the attacks.
Such a question is not only worthwhile, it is perhaps urgent, especially as we are still embroiled in two wars: Iraq and Afghanisthan which are commonly justified in light of the 9/11 attacks. Indeed Noah Feldman in a 2003 Ted talk stated, “No-9/11, no war in Iraq”.
It might therefore be useful to examine the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan prior to 9/11.
Between the first Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 Iraq was held under sanctions and the enforcement of No-Fly-Zones involved the regular bombing by Britain, the US and France (France withdrew support after the extension of the No-Fly-Zones beyond their original remit) of Iraqi military and infrastructure. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/crisis_in_the_gulf/forces_and_firepower/244364.stm
Far more deadly were the sanctions which led the United Nation Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq to resign his post in 1998 with the subsequent explanation:
“ I often have to explain why I resigned from the United Nations after a 30 year career, why I took on the all powerful states of the UN Security Council; and why after five years I continue to serve the well being of the people of Iraq. In reality there was no choice, and there remains no choice. You all would have done the same had you been occupying my seat as head of the UN Humanitarian Program in Iraq.
I was driven to resignation because I refused to continue to take Security Council orders, the same Security Council that had imposed and sustained genocidal sanctions on the innocent of Iraq. I did not want to be complicit. I wanted to be free to speak out publicly about this crime.
And above all, my innate sense of justice was and still is outraged by the violence that UN sanctions have brought upon, and continues to bring upon, the lives of children, families – the extended families, the loved ones of Iraq. There is no justification for killing the young people of Iraq, not the aged, not the sick, not the rich, not the poor.
Some will tell you that the leadership is punishing the Iraqi people. That is not my perception, or experience from living in Baghdad. And were that to be the case – how can that possibly justify further punishment, in fact collective punishment, by the United Nations? I don’t think so. And international law has no provision for the disproportionate and murderous consequences of the ongoing UN embargo – for well over 12 long years.[5]
A Unicef from the period of the “Oil for Food” program showed a doubling of the child mortality rate (http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unicef/990816qa.html)
Even if one dismisses Denis Halliday’s statement as “melodramatic” (I do not) and blames deaths from sanctions on Saddam Hussein (Saddam is responsible for his own actions, we are responsible for ours,and the sanctions were our decisions, not Saddam’s), a situation of siege in the Medieval sense of cutting of external supplies as well as a continued bombing campaign can hardly be defined as “peace”.
To put it another way, were a foreign power preventing the delivery of food and medicines to the UK or United States while simultaneously bombing air-defence and aircraft in those nation’s own airspace how would we define it? As peace or as war?
At one of the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq I remember being struck by the fact that even the protesters were speaking of an imminent war rather than the escalation of a conflict which had been going on for more than a decade.
For many it is seen as George W Bush’s war, but much of the early stages of the conflict were carried out under Bill Clinton. There are parallels with “Bush’s” Missile Defence policy, which actually shows examples of ongoing research from 1977. Essentially Saddam was defanged before being overthrown.
Afghanistan has also had the misfortune of ongoing warfare and interference by the Superpowers. In August 1979 the State Department “the United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” In 1980 the Soviets invaded and began, as former CIA veteran describes it, “their Vietnam”: of course it was the Afghans’ Vietnam too.
First the Mujaheddin against the Soviets backed by both Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan. John K. Cooley’s book “Unholy Wars: Afghanisthan, America and International Terrorism” gives a pretty detailed account of some of these activities which are also mentioned here: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1093
I remember clearly first reading of the Taliban in The Guardian during the 1990′s. As someone of Iranian origin I was shocked by the thought of a regime so oppressive that it drove millions to flee into Iran for sanctuary.
In the early 1998 the Taliban were negotiating with US firms while fighting a civil war http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm
1990′s Clinton was bombing Afghanisthan (and Sudan) with Cruise missiles, but the public was more interested in where he put his cigars. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/155252.stm
Clinton declared his War on Terrorism http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1998/aug/29/alqaida.terrorism?INTCMP=SRCH
As with Iraq, sanctions were enforced, though the country was by this time so poor there was little they could have afforded to buy anyway: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/dec/22/unitednations?INTCMP=SRC
Early in 2001 the Taliban and Northern Alliance prepared for renewed conflict (at that time backed by Iran and Russia): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/02/worlddispatch.lukeharding?INTCMP=SRCH
Gino Strada, Italian war surgeon and of the foundersfounders of the medical charity Emergency (working in Afghanisthan from the 1990′s) wrote his thoughts from the days immediately following September the 11th 2001:
‘When CNN, at midnight Italian time, airs nighttime BAGLIORI from the sky of Kabul, the TV journalist asks live, “Has the American response already begun?”
For more than twenty years there have been explosions nearly every night in Kabul, but he ignores this because CNN never showed them to him.
In twenty years, nearly two-million Afghans were able to quietly die from bombs or mines, from cold or famine. Two-million dead are a minor detail which can be ignored by CNN, for many years they have not been worth media coverage. This time however, they are interested in what happens in Afghanisthan.”
With the official war in its tenth year in Afghanisthan, and the official war in Iraq having passed its eighth, and with unofficial, undeclared, and to the majority of our press uninteresting wars being fought across the globe, isn’t it time to stop repeating the same myth about the world changing after 9/11?
Notes: While researching for this piece I found that Kate Hudson of CND had written a similar piece which can be viewed here: http://www.cnduk.org/media/item/1258-did-9-11-change-the-world?
The postscript to Gil Scott Heron’s “Me and the Devil” is as poignant an epigram as he could ever need:
Standing in the ruins of another black mans life
Or flying through the valley
Separating day and night
I am am Death,
Cried the Vulture,
For the people of the light
Caron brought his raft
From the sea that sails on souls
And I saw the scavenger departing
Taking warm hearts to the cold
He knew the ghetto was a haven
For the meanest creature ever known
In a wilderness of heart break
In a desert of despair
Evil’s clarion of justice
Shrieks a cry of naked terror
Taking babies from their mamas
Leaving grief beyond compare
So if you see the vulture coming
Flying circles in your mind
Remember their is no escaping
For he will follow close behind
Only promise me a battle
A battle
For your soul and mind
And mine
And mine
So this is my most up to date reel. Comments, critiques and opinions welcome!
Savorengo Ker, which means “the house of all” in Romanes, is an experimental housing project which took place in the Roma Gypsy camp Casilino 900 in Rome. It is the story of a simple and brave idea which became the symbol of emancipation for a marginalized community. The project was hosted at the Venice Architecture Biennale and was visited by Members of the European Parliament, reviewed by the international press and debated in academic centres around the world. But in Rome, where the house was built and presented, it met only hostility and unnecessary controversy. Now that house is no more.
I have now posted my new compositing showreel on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/8772838
There is a shot breakdown on the Vimeo page to accompany the video. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to check it out and let me know what they think.
This is part 1 of my 2005 short film “Amore e Credito” it was shot on the Z1 when that was the “hot” indy camera (yes that’s unbelievable to hear nowadays, but really the HDV seemed really exciting back then).
By the way there are English subtitles available if you don’t speak Italian – just click on the little triangle on the right hand side of the viewer.
I really appreciate youtube comments – criticism, praise or just queries/debate.
As a kid I watched a few of the later Godzilla movies. They were cheesy, entertaining monster bash movies with rubber suits and weird sounds. The original movie is something very different indeed.
Yes, the monster effects are cheesy, and the model ships Godzilla destroys are a demonstration of the fact that water does not scale well in SFX, but there is a pathos in this movie that is hard to shake off. The fact this movie came out only nine-years after the end of World War II and features a huge, radioactive monster that destroys Japanese fishing villages, burns Tokyo to the ground and which the Japanese military are helpless to prevent is a pretty clear metaphor for how the Japanese lived that war. In fact the film refers directly to the war and explicitly states the comparison: after the authorities announce that civilians must evacuate Tokyo because of Gojira’s imminent attack, one woman declares “I can’t face this again after what happened to me in Nagasak.” A man hearing the same announcement declares, “I’m not evacuating again”. The mysterious scientist, Daisuke Serizawa, lost his eye in the war and Godzilla himself was awoken by the H-bomb tests in the Pacific.
It’s amazing to think that a large apart of the original audience would have witnessed carnage similar to that shown in the movie, not wreaked by a giant Jurassic beast of course, but by the Big Green Machine of the American military. Several scenes are far more harrowing than anything shown in contemporary American B-movies – for example the mother who tells her children, “You’ll join your father in heaven soon” and the children in post-Gojira Tokyo who the scientist examines with a geiger counter before sadly shaking his head to his companion. Even the dynamic between the heroes is very different – the good-looking Navy-frogman, Hideto Ogata, is heroic, but the true hero turns out to be Serizawa – who is first presented as the almost classic mad-scientist. In fact Serzawa is terrified of his own discovery – a weapon more terrible than the H-bomb, and even knowing that he holds the only weapon that can stop the otherwise invincible Gojira, he balks, lest politicians should use later unleash his creation upon the world. Serizawa’s dilemma is the crux of the movie. The human stories: Emiko, betrothed to Serizawa, but Hideto’s lover; the scientist Kyohei Yemani, who believes Gojira to be a repository of scientific marvels too precious too be killed; the people of Japan; and of course, Serizawa, are far more important than the monster (which has surprisingly little screen time).
Filmed in moody, grainy, black and white this film is a welcome counterpoint to the classic b-movie monster movie (which is what the Godzilla sequels basically became). In fact the movie is more of a drama played out against the backdrop of a national tragedy and a warning, by the only nation ever attacked by nuclear weapons, against further meddling with such monstrosities. In fact if you cut out the monster you could probably edit the piece as a movie about World War II - it’s the war retold, but with Japan winning at great cost. Yet it’s not a military victory, it is the civilians who defeat Gojira so that the nation might live in peace.
If an an attack by a giant. prehistoric monster is unbelievable, so most likely, was defeat and the atomic bomb for those who experienced it. Strangely, after 9/11, the film might speak more to American audiences than it ever could have before.
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