iraq – FILMdetail

The Oscar-nominated documentary No End In Sight will screen in full on YouTube from this Monday (September 1st).

The New York Times report:

The Oscar-nominated documentary “No End in Sight,” which chronicles the early months of the American occupation of Iraq, will be available on YouTube starting Monday and continuing through the presidential election on Nov. 4.

Charles Ferguson, the director of the film, which won the Documentary Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, said in a statement that he had underwritten its screening on YouTube because “I wanted to make the film, and the facts about the occupation of Iraq, accessible to a larger group of people.”

He added, “My hope is that this will contribute to the process of making better foreign policy decisions moving forward in Iraq and elsewhere.”

This is a very smart move – not only will it boost audiences and awareness for the film but I also think that it could actually help future DVD sales.

Although this might sound strange, think of those who have never heard of it but watch it on YouTube and then reccommend it to a friend, who in turn buys the DVD because they prefer that format.

Whatever happens, the publicity generated by being the first feature to officially (i.e. legally) screen on YouTube will give the film a timely boost ahead of the US presidential election.

> YouTube channel for No End In Sight
> No End In Sight at the IMDb
> Find out more about the film at Wikipedia and check out some reviews at Metacritic

The website for Standard Operating Procedure is now live.

It is the new documentary from director Errol Morris and deals with the photographs taken during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

The website for his last film – The Fog of War – won a Webby Award in 2004 and this one has a similar use of flash.

It also stresses the the importance of the actual photos as they are scattered all over the site.

As Morris says in the official Q&A:

It all starts with the photographs. They are at the core of this whole project.

270 photographs were given to the Army Criminal Investigation Division, and many of them appear in the movie.

Standard Operating Procedure is my attempt to tell the story behind these photographs, to examine the context in which they were taken.

People think they understand the photographs, that they are selfexplanatory.

They think they know what they are about – but do they, really? That’s the question.

Megan Ambuhl, one of the soldiers in the movie, asks: have we looked “outside the frame?” This film is an attempt to do that.

The film opens in the US on April 25th in limited release

> Official site for Standard Operating Procedure
> Participant site for the film