Posted on 08/31/2007 6:45:24 AM PDT by tcrlaf
VENICE (Reuters) - A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.
"Redacted", by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice's main competition.
Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.
De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.
"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.
"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.
Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped, killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Her parents and younger daughter were also killed.
Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
"The film's title refers to how, according to De Palma, mainstream American newspapers and television channels are failing to tell the true story of the war by keeping the most graphic images of the conflict away from public opinion.
"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to "edit" the material.
"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get sued," De Palma said.
"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real."
The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons."
FAKE, but accurate...
Brian De Palma = the enemy.
Enemy propaganda out of Hollyweird. The MO of traitors doesn’t change.
“So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real.”
Sounds like something Algore or Johm Kerry would say.
“all based on real material he found on the Internet.”
LOLOL!
Or Dan Rather.
Yeah, we all know that everything found on Youtube is the truth not taken out of context or edited at all... /s
Doesn’t this guy usually specialize in misogyny, violence and horror? So now he has turned his attention to besmirching the reputation of those who defend his freedoms, in a country that has made him rich. I have never seen any of his films and now I know I never will. Not one dime.
The MSN dosen't miss any chances they get.
Okay, five Americans committed an atrocity and were tried and convicted by American military tribunals. And DePalma’s point is?
In the universe De Palma lives in, those sorts of things don't exist. In his universe all the trouble in the world is caused by Americans and the US military. In his world, no one was prosecuted for crimes against civilians - the military didn't investigate it and no one was court-martialed.
Who is this little prick and where did he come from ? Wasn’t he once a film director? Anti-American sacum...
That a$$ wipe dePalmer still alive? I thought that creep died of AIDS years ago!
Politics are (is?) dirty, but people like these film producers carry it way, way beyond indecency to nausea.
Flm can be a powerful medium, playing on emotions with visual cues and music, and in the process, can abandon all respect for truth, ala Michael Moore and Al Gore.
It is a prime tool of the propagandaministers. While the truth will set you free, the opposite will enslave you. For that reason, these are sinister people.
He wants American Congressmen to vote for suicide, I guess. BTW, why didn’t he make a film about Muslim atrocities and crimes... I am certain that the frequency of these events is greater and actual good quality images are more readily available from the perpetrators themselves who have been airing the stuff openly from the beginning. Muslim murderers and torturers are doing with film what the Nazis had such a sick compulsion for doing with written records... so I am sure there is a regular goldmine of images he could use to make a really gory flick about Muslim crimes.
I found this material on the internet. Is it in his film too?
Amen! This drug addled hack has been churning out one loser film after another for almost 4 decades. His films are marked by graphic violence, more often than not, directed towards women. Critics have not been kind to him over the last 20 years, but I'll be they love this one.
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