Enemy Image

When Baghdad exploded under bombs, television chose to bring us fireworks. But does this distant and spectacular image tell us what is really happening on the ground, how it feels or what it means? Television has the means to take us anywhere and show us anything. It can bring us the physical experience of war with all its' horrors, like no other medium, and yet the image of American war on television is disembodied, bloodless, and unreal. The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitized and controlled by the Pentagon. Enemy Image traces the ways us television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms. Comparing footage of Vietnam, including rarely-seen material shot in North Vietnam, to coverage of Iraq and using extensive interviews with veteran war correspondents and news anchors, Mark Daniels demonstrates how television that once revealed the truth is now increasingly used to hide it.

Rachel: An American Conscience

I’ve been here for about a month and half now and this is definitely the most difficult situation that I have ever seen. In the time that I have been here, children have been shot and killed. On the 30th of January, the Israeli military bulldozed the two largest water wells, destroying over half of Rafah’s water supply. Ever few days, if not everyday, houses are demolished here.. so I feel like what I am witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of peoples’ ability to survive and that is incredibly horrifying. Yahya Barakat, who teaches at Al-Quds University, told The Washington Report that he began work on the documentary the instant he learned that Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer. This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinosaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel's fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents

The Killing of Kashmir

I would soon learn the security forces and the militants take who they want, they torture, and they kill. Caught in the middle are the people of Kashmir. More than 60,000 people, mostly innocent civilians, have died in the 15-year conflict. Half a million Indian troops are stationed in Kashmir, fighting Pakistani-funded militants who slip across the border to attack the troops but also to terrorize the local population into giving them shelter and assistance. While both governments talk of peace, Unreported World reveals that, on the ground, very little has changed. For the local villagers life is a cycle of militant violence and government repression. The team arrive in Srinagar to find Indian police have just violently beaten a group of women who are protesting about the detention of two men and a woman for alleged links to pro-Pakistan militants. Two sisters tell Jordan that around 25 masked troops from a Special Operations Group had burst in through the window and grabbed their father, mother and uncle. The children are terrified that their parents may join the 8,000 people who international human rights groups say have "disappeared" after being taken away by the security forces over the last 15 years.

USS Liberty Dead in the Water

On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public. This USS Liberty Memorial web site tells their story and is dedicated to the memory of the 34 brave men who died. After surveilling USS Liberty for more than nine hours with almost hourly aircraft over flights and radar tracking, the air and naval forces of Israel attacked our ship in international waters without warning. USS Liberty was identified as a US naval ship nine hours before the attack by Israeli reconnaissance aircraft and continuously tracked by Israeli radar and aircraft thereafter. Sailing in international waters at less than five knots, with no offensive armament, our ship was not a military threat to anyone. The Israeli forces attacked without warning and without attempting to contact us. Thirty four Americans were killed in the attack and another 174 were wounded. The ship, a $40 Million Dollar state of the art signals intelligence platform, was later declared unsalvageable and sold for scrap.

Beyond Treason

Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent. Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Was Gulf War Illness actually predicted by the DoD before hand? Why are thousands of our men and women in uniform dying? Why won't the mainstream media report this story? Beyond the disclosure of black-ops projects spanning the past six decades, Beyond Treason also addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness. It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it.

War Photographer

A film about the American photographer James Nachtwey, about his motivation, his fears and his daily routine as a war photographer. If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about 'exposure time' in the very moment of dread? Swiss author, director and producer Christian Frei followed James Nachtwey for two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, Palestine... Christian Frei used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey's photo-camera. We see a famous photographer looking for the decisive moment. We hear every breath of the photographer. For the first time in the history of movies about photographers, this technique allowed an authentic insight into the work of a concerned photo-journalist.

Deir Yassin Remembered

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover. In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.