I really love film, and for the last few years I’ve been getting more and more interested in watching documentaries. While I still think you can’t beat passing a few hours with some great storytelling, these documentaries have really inspired me to think more deeply about the world we live in. So, in no particular order:

1. The Corporation

Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and written by Joel Bakan, this film won an astonishing 24 international awards and 10 Audience Awards (including one at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival). The premise was rather unique: since the corporation is deemed in the eyes of the law to have the rights of a person (and sometimes more), what sort of a person would the corporation be? This was a highly enjoyable film exploring the history of the modern corporation and asked some incredibly pertinent questions about its impact in our age of globalization.

Amazon - Internet Movie Database - Official Website - The Book

2. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

An earlier film also directed by Mark Achbar (along with Peter Wintonick), it explores the life of Noam Chomsky, specifically focusing on his ideas about the mass media in democratic societies as put forward in the book “Manufacturing Consent”, co-authored with Edward S. Herman. This is an incredibly provocative film, and will make you question basic truths about Western society.

Amazon - Internet Movie Database - Wikipedia - Companion Book to the Film

3. The Fog of War

Winner at the Oscars in 2003 for Best Documentary Feature, the Fog of War was filmed by legendary director Errol Morris, often credited as the founder of the modern documentary. The film is loosely based around eleven lessons learnt by former US Secretary of Defense Robert S McNamara during his often controversial life. Covering both his personal life, the Vietnam war and the Cuban Missile Crisis, amongst other key events in US history, it’s often an extremely candid and insightful film in politics, war and international relations.

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4. Capturing the Friedmans

Still one of the most amazing documentaries I’ve ever watched, Capturing the Friedmans was directed by Andrew Jarecki and won at least ten international awards for its harrowing tale. Originally intending to shoot a film about children entertainers in New York, Jarecki learns that the father and youngest brother of one of the entertainers, David Friedman, was arrested in a paedophile scandal. Astonishingly, the Friedman family documented the entire period through with a home video recorder, providing an incredible insight into the effect the episode had on their family. The more Jarecki digs, the clearer it becomes that the paedophile scandal was not all that it appears to be. Essential viewing.

Amazon - Internet Movie Database - Official Website - Wikipedia

5. Grizzly Man

Directed by the legendary Werner Herzog, Grizzly Man is about the life and death Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist and bear lover who, over thirteen years of visiting and living in bear territory in Alaska, believed that he had been accepted by the bears he loved and protected. Ultimately, he was to be proven tragically wrong when he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by a bear. The film is essentially an exploration of man’s place in nature, and the boundaries that exist between being human, and being a wild animal; a brilliant film.

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6. Bus 174

Winner of at least 23 international prizes and awards, including an Emmy, Bus 174 is a Brazillian film directed by Jose Padilha. It essentially tells two stories: the first is a bus hijacking, caught live on camera, where Sandro do Nascimento, a typical, young Rio de Janeiro street kid, held hostages on Bus 174 for over four hours while the police attempted (and failed) to control the situation. The second part, interwoven into the first, is what drove Sandro to this point, and reveals how society had constantly failed to try provide him and others like him any type of meaningful existence. Social commentary doesn’t get much better than this.

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7. I Know I’m Not Alone

A film that I’ve reviewed before on here, the film follows musician and political activist Michael Franti as he goes on a journey to Iraq, Israel and Palestine to meet the people affected by war and occupation. This was a truly outstanding piece of political and social commentary that tried to help build bridges between real people.

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8. Koyaanisqatsi/Powaqqatsi

These two films, as well as the third film in the trilogy called Naqoyqatsi, remain as beautiful, inspiring, and thought-provoking now as when the first film, Koyaanisqatsi, was released in 1982. Directed by Godfrey Reggio, the films have no real dialogue, and consist of just simple and moving imagery of our world overlayed with the wonderful music composed by Philip Glass (the third film, however, focuses more on image manipulation rather than simply film). These timeless films explore the relationship between mankind and nature, urban life and technology versus nature, and between the so-called first and third worlds.

Amazon - Internet Movie Database - Wikipedia - Official Website

9. The Devil And Daniel Johnston

A film about genius and insanity, director Jeff Feuerzeig documents the life of singer and songwriter Daniel Johnston through Daniel’s own film and tape footage, as well as interviews with friends, family and supporters. Hailed as a musical genius and inspiration to some of the most influential bands over the last twenty years (such as Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Sonic Youth), he also suffered from deep mental problems that lay unrecognised for many years (he was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder). A deeply moving documentary.

Amazon - Internet Movie Database - Wikipedia - Official Website

10. Planet Earth

Probably the most stunning nature documentary ever made, the critically-acclaimed BBC series is a landmark in nature film-making, providing some of the most unique cinematography ever put on film. Enough said, really.

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Honorable Mentions:
Supersize Me
Winged Migration
Microcosmos
Baraka
The Yes Men
American Blackout
The Power of Nightmares (Available online)
The Century of Self (Available online)
The Thin Blue Line
Beyond the Gates of Splendour

Ha’aretz is reporting that flights used by the CIA to transport terrorist suspects stopped over in Tel Aviv. The “straw” company owning the plane, Prescott Support, is apparently a front for the CIA. The interesting thing, though, is that you can go here and have a look at photos of the plane in question. It seems to get around, with photos being taken as far back as 2001, in a variety of places including Malta, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Iceland, USA, Portugal, Malaysia and Singapore.

When Michael Franti mentioned in the opening scenes of his new film I Know I’m Not Alone (you can buy it here) that he was growing “frustrated” at the reporting on the Middle East, I could relate. I can’t say I’ve always been political, and I wish I could proudly confess that I’ve always been aware and concerned about what was going on in the world. The truth is, I used to avoid reading or watching the news in South Africa, and I remember complaining to my step father that there should be a “good news” newspaper out there, as if the media were supposed to stop reporting the bad stuff and everything would be fine. When the fall of apartheid exposed whites for the first time to the crime that had plagued black communities for decades, you became desensitized and frustrated at the monotony of reporting, and preferred instead just to close my eyes, at least for a while.

Fortunately for us, Franti wants to keep his eyes wide open. Taking a camera, a few friends, and his guitar, he heads to Iraq, Palestine and Israel, hoping to bypass the politicians and the soundbites and speak to the people on the ground, see how they live and listen to what they think. He talks to taxi drivers, shop owners, families, children, musicians, soldiers - the everyday people who rarely, if ever, have a voice on television. I could probably count the number of documentary films that have truely moved me through their simplicity and power on one hand. This most certainly belongs at the top, and I wouldn’t mind calling this one of the most lovely pieces of film I have ever witnessed.

First and foremost, Franti is a poet, so the film is layered with his songs and lyrics reflecting the world he sees and hears around him, and his ideas and thoughts about that world. Of course, Franti goes out of his way to try and find musicians in each location: in Iraq, a death metal band; in Palestine, a trio of hiphop artists; in Israel, he jams with an excellent group of Israeli musicians.

One of the wonderful things about a smile and music is that they’re excellent ways to break down barriers between cultures. Time and again, he is welcomed with open arms into families singing “Habibi” (an Arabic term for showing someone you love them), bringing smiles and laughter to children running along rubble-strewn streets and pock-marked buildings. Generally, though, it seems as if his music is Franti’s way of expressing himself to the viewer. While he himself does sometimes talk to the camera directly or with a voiceover, or he speaks to those he meets, it is the voices of the people he meets that have center stage: Franti sings about what he thinks, but we hear from them what they live and feel.

What is highly enjoyable is that Franti is not trying to impose his thoughts or ideas on the people who are living through occupation or terror. As he explains towards the end, he doesn’t want to choose sides, except for the sides of the “peacemakers”. He just wants to know what they think and, in turn, to let them tell us, the viewer. When ex-Saddam dissidents tell him that if Iraq invaded America, and Americans fought back, they would be considered to be fighting for their country instead of being terrorists, or when someone else tells him the Americans should leave, he doesn’t attempt to argue or justify what’s happening. Nor, when he plays to a room of American soldiers, does he try and judge them even though it’s clear that Franti doesn’t agree with the reasons that they’re there. The film is more effective in its subtlety and non-confrontational style, something that a number of documentary makers could learn from.

There are some genuinely touching moments that are inspirational testimonies of the human spirit, one of the most poignant being towards the end when a Palestinian and Israeli soldier talk to one another about the possibilities for peace and friendship. Religion, says the Israeli soldier, must not be part of the government of either side otherwise that leads to trouble. There’s a nodding of heads, and understanding between two people portrayed as mortal enemies.

All in all, I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is exceptional, and deserves to be watched all over the world because its message is cultureless and timeless. From the Israeli army dissenters courageously speaking out, to the Palestinian mother who sleeps on the street because she’s afraid her house will be demolished around her; from the Israeli and Palestinian families who’ve lost loved ones and have come together to find forgiveness, to the Iraqi taxi driver who just wants peace. There are beautiful tales here that deserve to be heard, and to be witnessed by eyes that should no longer be closed.

In a recent post on the John Hopkins study of 655,000 deaths in Iraq since the US invasion, William Arkin asks: “Is the Hopkins study correct, and can reasonable non-partisan people feel comfortable with the conclusion that Iraq has suffered about 15,000 violent deaths a month every month since the U.S. invasion, about 500 deaths a day? I think not.”

This is just the latest in a long line of statements coming out against the study. Bush, for example, declared that, “I don’t consider it a credible report. Neither does General (George) Casey (top U.S. commander in Iraq) and neither do Iraqi officials”, calling the study’s methodology “pretty well discredited.” Casey commented that the figure “seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I’ve not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don’t give it that much credibility at all.” (Although Casey couldn’t confirm where he got his 50,000 figure from). A spokesman from the Iraqi government said, “The report is unbelievable. These numbers are exaggerated and not precise.” UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was a lot more reserved, saying, “The report gives a figure which is orders of magnitude different from any other source… nobody else has come up with figures on this scale… the report has been criticised by the Iraqi government as unreasonable”, but a spokesman for Blair was more forward: “It’s not [a figure] we believe to be anywhere near accurate”.

What annoys the hell out of me is not that people question the study - that just makes good sense - but that they pick and choose which studies to question. For example, in the Sudan, the press routinely takes estimates of deaths there also generated from studies also using estimates and, in some cases, using very similar methods, without question.

A recent study (by Hagan and Palloni) concluded that around 170,000 to 255,000 thousand people had died in Darfur (but the authors believe it much higher at near 400,000), while a Coalition for International Justice study caused Hagan, in an earlier analysis using the CIJ data, to conclude that the death toll was at around 390,000. The CIJ study, incidently, was “based on semi-structured interviews with 1,136 randomly selected refugees at 19 locations in eastern Chad. … The field data for the 1,136 interviews were compiled using a standardized data entry process that involved the collection and coding of detailed information from each refugee respondentâ??s set of answers. The researchers then used a statistical program to aggregate the data and analyze the results.”

My, that sounds very familiar. As pointed out in the John Hopkins newspaper, “These same survey methods [for the Iraq mortality study] were used to measure mortality during conflicts in the Congo, Kosovo, Sudan and other regions.”

Don’t know about you, but I have yet to read in the press refutations of the figures presented for these countries. Does the press publish columns or articles lamenting the fact that this is impossibly high? That it’s incorrect or too high? Of course not. The Washington Post went on about “Why has the world failed to act?”, pointing out that “Darfur has all ingredients for international intervention”, while citing the Hagan/Palloni study that the death toll was around 200,000 - 400,000. MSNBC also said that Hagan and Palloni’s study was the “first scientifically rigorous estimate of the death toll” and it showed “that the pessimists were right”. And so on. I also note with some amusement that, in 2005, the WaPo concluded in an editorial that Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick needed to “cite better numbers” - referring to Hagan’s original study - because if “his international partners … are allowed to believe that the death toll is one-third of its real level” the killing in Darfur will continue.

The real bottom line is that it’s easy to accept the Sudan estimate because they’re not, strictly speaking, “our” victims, but the Iraqi’s are. Of course the John Hopkins study will not be correct but it is by far the most accurate measurement we have to date; that’s the crucial point. The state of the country at the moment means it’s impossible for there to be any proper way of knowing the real figures (one of the reasons why the Sudan estimates and studies are also likely to be the most accurate assessment of casualties).

In a statement released on the internet from Osama Bin Laden, he said that:

â??It is a fundamental principle of any democracy that the people choose their leaders, and as such, approve and are party to the actions of their elected leaders… By electing these leaders, the American people have given their consent to the incarceration of the Palestinian people, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the slaughter of the children of Iraq. This is why the American people are not innocent. The American people are active members in all these crimes”

It is this principle that he was citing when he warned American citizens ahead of their election in 2004 that “”Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands.” He also repeatedly cites religious texts to “fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.”

I mention all this because I was shocked to read, in the Jerusalem Post today, the idea that “once noncombatants have been warned, the IDF bears no moral responsibility for their lives if they are unintentionally killed along with terrorists, arms and ammunition stockpiles”. Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Shmona, and head of the Birkat Moshe Hesder Yeshiva, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitz, all seemed to agree with this type of view. In fact, I was rather stunned by Rabinovitz’s statement in particular, which said:

“It is Hizbullah’s fault if these people are killed, not ours. Islam aspires to rule the world. Warfare is a means to this end. We are involved in a struggle for survival against radical Islam. That is the reality. A nation that ignores this reality and fails to do everything in its power to protect its own people runs the risk of extinction.”

It’s astounding because it is a mirror image of bin Laden, who talks about “a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims” by America and Israel, and that “militant struggle … is aimed at defending sanctity and religion” against “an enemy who is attacking religion and life”.

If anyone can tell me the difference between these two positions, I’d certainly like to hear them. As usual, we’re not responsible, we’re justified, and you’re the bad guy.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch condemned Hezbollah’s practice of packing their rockets with “hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.” It’s worth looking at this point, to illustrate exactly why Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel are the same.

The accusation that this is a war crime is entirely legitimate, and is routinely mentioned and described in press reports. For the example, the BBC reported about casualties in the Israeli city of Haifa, commenting that “Many of the casualties have been wounded by some 14kg of ball-bearings packed into the missile warheads, designed to cause maximum damage.”

Alan Dershowitz, whom I’ve mentioned before, has referred to this terrible practice, stating that “Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides” by “deliberately [operating] military wings out of densely populated areas”, “[launching] antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties”. He concludes that “Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism.”

Firstly, it is highly questionable that Hezbollah do, in fact, use Lebanese civilians as shields. In a recent article for Salon.com about this “myth”, Mitch Prothero reports that “Hezbollah fighters — as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers — avoid civilians … This is not for humanitarian reasons … but for military ones”, namely because they’re afraid of collaborators that can betray them.

“Israel” Prothero adds, “has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.” In comparison, this is the same as Hezbollah targetting and bombing all groups supplying “humanitarian aid and social protection” for people in Israel, something which no doubt would be condemned but, for Israel, it is considered entirely legitimate.

Secondly, as I’ve stated before, even if Hezbollah are using civilians as shields - a terrible act - this does not remove the character of the civilian population under international law, yet Israel clearly disregards this, viewing civilian infrastructure as a legitimate target and that the killing of civilians is morally legitimate, too. Since both Hamas and Hezbollah consider the targeting of civilians as legitimate, the terrorist tag is equally applicable to Israel. In comparison, it would be laughable to consider reading in the press no criticism over Hamas and Hezbollah’s claims that their attacks on civilians in Haifa in Israel are “morally justified” because they had “warned the civilians and gave them enough time to leave, and that the civilians who remained chose, themselves, not to leave” before raining rockets down on them (quotes from Professor Asa Kasher, the author of the Israeli Defense Force’s code of ethics). It’s also worth asking, if all the transportation networks had been destroyed preventing Israelis to leave Haifa, would the media also have no comment about whether or not they could actually leave?

Thirdly, if we are to condemn Hezbollah’s practice of filling their missiles with ball-bearings and use this as evidence of their terrorism and barbarism seperating them from the Israelis who do “everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties” (Dershowitz), what are we to make of the accusation made by the General Manager of Ambulances and Emergencies for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Muawiya Hassanei, that “The Israeli forces are using internationally prohibited missiles that contain chemical materials and burning metals and in addition, have shrapnel in the shape of nails”.

He pointed out that the injuries received in the hospitals as a result of these missiles are very dangerous because the human tissues and muscles are torn and in addition, the injured suffer from severe bleeding, loss of limbs and broken bones.

The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) gained interviews with several doctors working in different hospitals in the Gaza strip, and all confirmed the use of non-conventional weapons. One of the doctors, Dr. Saeed Jodah, said, “When the Shrapnel hits the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones. When this shrapnel enters the body, it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, the spleen and other organs, and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.”

The latest case that matched these symptoms was Muhammad Muhra, 17, from Al Bureij refugee camp. He was killed on Thursday. His body arrived at the hospital in an almost unrecognizable condition.

This went unreported in Western media, and a search on Google News showed this mentioned only in the International Middle East Media Center (see also Google Cache).

Where are the voices of condemnation from Dershowitz and others who (rightly) complain about Hezbollah’s “antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel” being designed “to maximize civilian casualties”? And, since Palestinians voted in a democratic election (but are still under occupation) and the Lebanese voted in a democratic election, while Israel clearly supports terrorism against Lebanese and Gazian civilians, does this then justify Hamas and Hezbollah in using Dershowitz’s argument to say they “prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism”?

I’ve expanded a bit more on some of the themes I wrote about in my recent article, Israel’s Rational Prospect. You can read it here.

As Lebanon is bombed by Israel, I was shocked (but not surprised) to watch the BBC talk calmly on TV a few days ago - with computer generated graphics to demonstrate - how Israel was conducting war crimes (not said as such, obviously) by targetting Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, a mirror image of Hizbollah’s repeated war crimes against Israel in Haifa and elsewhere.

Israel have so far targetted: “highway bridges, residential buildings, and an electrical sub-station“; Beirut airport, “the fuel stores of the Jiyyeh power plant”; three factories producing household goods; “production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country’s largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant” that “will cripple the economy for decades to come”; churches; a hospital; apparent Hezbollah TV and radio stations; highways, and more. This mimics the usual Israeli strategy of collective punishment, as carried out in the recent Gaza attacks which “included the cutting off of water and power supplies, the destruction of bridges and damaged sanitation for local Palestinians.” As Amnesty International pointed out, “The wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and property and the disproportionate restrictions imposed on civilians by Israeli forces amount to collective punishment on the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing protected persons for offences they have not committed.”
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Khalid Rashid’s apparent rendition just got weirder (see here, here, and here for my previous coverage). According to IOL, the Wits Law Clinic, a well-known human rights group in South Africa, has claimed it has evidence pointing to a “pattern and practice of state discrimination against Arab nationals”. It is believed that they have “details of a series of raids and allegations that information was extracted through torture”, which resulted in “the arrest and subsequent disappearance of a Jordanian alleged to be an al-Qaeda kingpin” after a six-month operation.

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On Tuesday, I attended a Q&A session hosted by Blackwell books at the School of Oriental and African Studies’ Brunei Gallery. The speaker for the evening was journalist, author, and documentary film-maker John Pilger (he has his own website at www.johnpilger.com and a blog at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website). The topic for discussion was his new book Freedom Next Time, where historian and author Mark Curtis, when reviewing the book for the Guardian, said “the voiceless” are “given a voice”. Johann Hari of the Independent was less flattering but still complimentary, trying to “stand between … admiring [Pilger’s] great skills and exposés but weeping over his occassional follies”. “Freedom Next Time mostly showcases Pilger at his best,” he said, but “flaws can be spotted”, concluding that “when Pilger is good, he is great, but when Pilger is bad, he reeks.”

Not having read the book myself, I was interested to hear what Mr. Pilger had to say. I’ve read and seen some of his previous works (The New Rulers of The World being a particularly favourite of mine), and agreed with many of his observations from time to time, so I knew what to expect. I was also particularly interested in his thoughts on South Africa, where I come from, and his observations regarding Nelson Mandela. Twelve A5 pages of hand-scribbled notes later, here is a summary of his talk, and the Q&A session that followed, along with some of my own thoughts. I’ll split this into two parts, one for his outline, and the other for the Q&A session, to cut down on the overall length. [And, to clarify: all links used in the article are not meant to reflect sources that Pilger himself may or may not have used to substantiate his comments, I simply searched the Net to try find out more, and linked to relevant pieces.]

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