US-Based Filmmakers Give Ordinary Iraqis a Chance to Documen

 

By Robin¹ Rupli

A new video documentary about life in Iraq opened in October in theaters across the United States. For Voices of Iraq ,three Los Angeles-based filmmakers sent 150 hand-held video cameras into the war-torn country to give Iraqi citizens a chance to talk about their experiences before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The result was 450 hours of raw video edited into an 80-minute film. While some critics say the documentary was edited to strongly support the war, most agree that it provides an unprecedented² and compelling look into the everyday lives of the Iraqi people.

In Voices of Iraq, viewers can, in one moment, see images of war: bombs going of, burning cars, and people running for cover. Then, in the next, they can see a group of teenagers in a kind of line dance, a child riding his bicycle, and a smiling woman in a headscarf being interviewed by her child about the meaning of democracy. Every image in the film was recorded without a director or crew, which is precisely³ what filmmaker Martin Kunertz had in mind. " We came to the idea that if you give cameras to the Iraqi people themselves, they'd be able to film things that nobody else would be able to. And certainly they'd have access to places in Iraq that no news crew would have access to."

Martin Kunertz and Eric Manes, two former filmmakers with the music television or MTV network, teamed up with film producer Archie Drury, a former Marine⁴ stationed in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, whose job to personally carry the small video cameras into the country and distribute them.

Martin Kunertz recalls that between April and September 2004, the producers received back nearly 3,000 interviews on video tape. People sharing their stories of horror and hope and then passing the cameras onto others throughout the country to do the same.

"In lots of tapes, an Iraqi would take a camera and start walking down the street and go up to a car or a taxi driver and say, 'What do you think?' and then walk across the street into a bar and say, 'What do you think?'"

"As it turned out, the Iraqi people, once they started trusting that this is really something honest and they could voice their opinions for the first time, they really wanted to be heard. And they knew to be heard they'd have to return the camera or send it to other people."

(Different Views)

Voices of Iraq presents several different views about whether life is better or worse after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The overriding⁵ message of the documentary is that, while the American occupation is difficult, it is preferable to the decades-long tyranny of the Iraqi dictator. The film's creators maintain that there never was a political agenda in mind. They say they wanted to present the citizens of Iraq as people just like everybody else, and try to give them an opportunity to make their voices heard for the very first time.

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注释：
raw 原始的，未加工的
unprecedented 空前的
compelling 引人注目的
overriding 最重要的
preferable 更好的
tyranny 暴政，专治
dictator 独裁者

1 robin   

n.知更鸟，红襟鸟

参考例句：

• The robin is the messenger of spring.知更鸟是报春的使者。
• We knew spring was coming as we had seen a robin.我们看见了一只知更鸟，知道春天要到了。

2 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

3 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

4 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

5 overriding   

a.最主要的

参考例句：

• Development is of overriding importance. 发展是硬道理
• My overriding concern is to raise the standards of state education. 我最关心的是提高国民教育水平。