500 Miles to Babylon...trailer for movie

[madfloridian]

Run time: 05:01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqBgEJ0CtcY   Posted on YouTube: December 08, 2006 By YouTube Member: videonation Views on YouTube: 4060   Posted on DU: December 25, 2006 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 692

 
I found a little about this movie which is apparently being shown in screenings now. There is a lot of anger from the people of Fallujah who are shown in the trailer. I have been angry about we did to that city and its citizens.

http://www.thenation.com/events/permalink/988

500 Miles to Babylon is a one-hour documentary film about Iraq under U.S. occupation. Narrated by the filmmaker, using footage shot in Iraq during 2003-4, the film addresses the current war not simply as a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company's coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project.

Through impromptu interviews, glimpses of daily life, still photographs, and footage of car-bombs, demonstrations, night-time graffiti artists, and the celebrations following Saddam's capture, 500 Miles To Babylon reveals the situation in contemporary Iraq through a personal lens. More than a simple anti-war movie, 500 Miles will follow a narrative of disintegration, showing the initial excitement of some sectors of the Iraqi population after the U.S. military toppled Saddam Hussein, their hope eroding as they watched their country sink into chaos and violence in the months that followed.

The film ends with the April 2004 assault on Fallujah, when all of Iraq was rising against the Americans, and includes rare footage from inside besieged Fallujah, where the filmmaker went with a group of journalists and aid workers to deliver medical supplies and move wounded civilians to Baghdad.

500 Miles To Babylon includes appearances by journalists Prothap Chatterjee, Christian Parenti, Dahr Jamail, Rob Eshelman, and others.

I remember hearing our talking heads on TV saying that we need to take Fallujah quickly and with much force. I would sit there looking at the TV and wondering what the people of Fallujah had done to us to deserve such destruction and chaos. I even remember some Democratic talking heads and spokepersons saying that....do it quickly.

I remember thinking do what quickly. And I would feel sick. My hubby and I are too old to ever get over being ashamed for what we have done there. They say older people are affected more drastically by such things, by the deterioration of the country that once was respected.