Director: Steve Connors & Molly Bingham // 2007 // 84 mins
Iraq, US // Arabic with English Subtitles

What would you do if America was invaded? MEETING RESISTANCE raises the veil of anonymity surrounding the Iraqi insurgency by meeting face to face with individuals who are passionately engaged in the struggle, and documenting for the very frst time, the sentiments experienced and actions taken by a nation’s citizens when their homeland is occupied.

Full Battle Rattle

Director: Tony Gerber & Jesse Moss // 2008 // 85 mins
Iraq, USA // Englis & Arabic with English subtitles

In California’s Mojave Desert, the US Army has built a “virtual Iraq” – a billion dollar urban warfare simulation – and populated it with hundreds of Iraqi role-players. FULL BATTLE RATTLE follows an Army Battalion through the simulation, as they attempt to quell an insurgency and prevent Medina Wasl, a mock Iraqi village, from slipping into civil war. Comic, surreal and poignant, the flm provides a revelatory look at the soul of the American war machine, and, in the battle for Medina Wasl, fnds a potent allegory of America’s military misadventure in Iraq.

Biography: Tony Gerber – Producer/Director

Tony Gerber was born in New York City and began his directing career creating films for live theatre. His work has been featured in a number of award-winning productions, including the Broadway musical Rent. His short film, Small Taste of Heaven premiered at Rotterdam and the Sundance film Festival and enabled him to direct his first feature, Side Streets, starring Rosario Dawson, Valeria Golino and Shashi Kapoor. The film was Executive Produced by Ismail Merchant / Merchant Ivory and premiered at the Venice and Sundance film festivals.

He is developing the feature film Disobedience, a story of impossible love in the US anti-war movement with producers Killer Films, and Mud, River Stone, from the play by award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. He collaborated with artist Matthew Barney on his Drawing Restraint 9 (starring Bjork) and Cremaster IV. Gerber is currently in pre-production on a documentary series for National Geographic, shooting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His previous work in television earned him two Emmy Awards.

Biography: Jesse Moss – Producer/Director

Jesse Moss is the founder of Mile End Films(www.mileendfilms.com), a New York based production company. His award winning documentaries include Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story, which aired on POV/PBS, and Con Man, which aired on HBO/Cinemax. He is currently working on a series of scripted training films for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs about a new cognitive therapy designed to help Iraq War Vets, and producing Disturbing the Universe, adocumentary about the radical lawyer William Kunstler.

He is also writing the screenplay adaptation of Con Man, about Ivy League impostor James Hogue, for Paul Giamatti’s company Touchy Feely Films. Prior to establishing his own production company, Moss worked as a producer for Barbara Kopple and a speechwriter on Capitol Hill. He has been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, and was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2003.

Forget Baghdad Still

Winner of the 2002 Locarno Jury Prize, Forget Baghdad tells the forgotten story of four Baghdadi-Jews, all former members of the Iraqi communist party who were forced to emigrate at Israel’s founding.

A film reflecting upon the clichés of “the Jew” and “the Arab” in the last hundred years of cinema, combined with the biographies of some extraordinary individuals: Iraqi-Jewish communists.

The four elderly protagonists (all now successful Israelis) were influenced in their youth by the internationalism of the Iraqi communist party. But in the early 1950s, their Jewish identity put them at odds with the rising Arab nationalism so characteristic of the decade. Fleeing to Israel was hardly a solution, as the men found themselves on the outskirts of a society built and governed by European Jews. Jews in Baghdad and Arabs in Israel, the divided identities and confusion of these four men’s lives tell a much larger tale of global, political and cultural disorder.

Plus Short: Twinning Towns

Hussein Ahmed, who was born in Basra but now lives in Warrington, is on a mission to try and persuade his local town to twin themselves with Basra.

• Director: May Abdalla
• 3 mins, 2008, UK
• Language: English
• Documentary

A Candle for the Shabandar Cafe

Director: Emad Ali // 2007 // 23 mins //
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

Founded in 1917, the Shabandar Café in Al Mutanabbi Street in the heart of the old centre of Baghdad, was a cultural landmark, where generations of Iraqis came to discuss and debate literature and politics – a living repository of Iraqi intellectual history and one of the last places where people could gather to exchange ideas.

Emad had shot most of his flm by the end of 2006, but in March 2007, a massive car bomb destroyed the Shabandar Café, all the bookshops on Al Mutanabbi Street and killed and wounded scores of people. Days later, Baghdad’s poets and artists held a wake in the ruins of the street they loved so much and Emad took a small camera and went back to flm. As he was leaving he was attacked, his camera stolen and he was shot in the legs and chest, and his own story is an epilogue to his flm about the Shabandar Café and Mutanabbi Street – before and after they were destroyed.

Dr Nabil

Director: Ahmed Jabbar // 2007 // 15 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

A gentle and committed surgeon, with literary talents, works at a small understaffed Baghdad hospital, which suffers from lack of equipment and medicines. While many other doctors have been killed or have fed the country in fear of their lives, Dr Nabil has decided to stay. He worries, though, about the effect that the atmosphere of violence and brutality is having on his young son.

Leaving

Director: Bahram Al Zuhairi // 2007 // 22 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

Threatened with kidnap and facing escalating and horrifc violence in their neighbourhood, a Mandaean family from Baghdad reaches the diffcult decision to leave their home of more than 30 years and go to live in Damascus. The flm documents the painful process of selling all their goods and dividing up their house so it can be rented out and fnally it records their dangerous road trip to the Syrian border and their arrival to their new, temporary home.

Omar Is My Friend

Director: Mounaf Shaker // 2005 // 15 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

A student at Baghdad University works as a taxi driver to support his wife and 4 daughters. As he negotiates his clapped out taxi around checkpoints, tanks and traffc jams, he talks about work, lack of petrol, electricity, having daughters in a male-dominated society, his personal aspirations and those of his society.

Still from Life After the Fall

The story following a large mixed Baghdad family, shot in 2003-2007, struggling to accommodate the massive changes in their lives and city. It is told chronologically and juxtaposing the rhythms and concerns of everyday life with events of historical importance.

The heart of the film is the Abid family. Their personal story is a metaphor for the bigger picture of Iraq. The changes wrought in his family are a reflection of the enormous upheavals in Iraq since the end of Saddam’s rule.

The film is a layered, multigenerational story. Around Zeinab and Fatima are their parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents, each with his or her own trajectory. As the film unfolds, their mood gradually moves from hope to a growing sense of despair as the situation in the country becomes chaotic and the violence moves closer to them.

At the end of the film the whole family is falling apart…they are either leaving the country or have even been killed.

Biography

Director: Kasim Abid

Kasim Abid is a cameraman, director and producer of Iraqi origin. He holds Diploma in Arts from the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, and MA from Moscow Film Institute VGIK, and lives in London since 1982.

He worked as a cameraman for Channel 4, BBC and other British satellite stations. For six years he worked as the head of Documentary programmes at Arab channel MBC, followed by as the head of camera department at ANN. He directed and produced award-winning Naji Al Ali: Artist With Vision ( London Arab Film Festival 2000), and Life After The Fall (DocFest Munich 2008) .

In 2003, in co-operation with his colleagues, Kasim founded an Independent Film and TV College in Baghdad, where he conducts media training for Iraqi film-makers.

Director: Layth Abdulamir

Iraqi filmmaker Layth Abdulamir travels along the Tigris to find the common roots of his often mistreated and misunderstood country. His camera captures the cultural, social and historical heritage of men and women who weave the fabric of this diverse country. Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen, Shiites, Sunnies and Christians, all make up the a close-up of a particular “identity” that prospered, suffered and finally ended when the Coalition’s tanks arrived into what was once the Garden of Eden.

Q & A

The director, Layth Abdulamir, will be present for a question and answer session after the screening.

Biography

Layth hold a Masters in fine art and has studied cinema at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He worked from 1999-2004 at Dubai TV and has directed many documentary and feature films.

Plus Short: Where is Iraq?

Synopsis

Still from 'Where is Iraq'

Seventy-five days before Saddam Hussein was captured by the U.S. Army, an Iraqi-Canadian filmmaker tries to re-enter his homeland after 27 years of forced exile. In Jordan, he meets other Iraqis who are no longer able to cross the border: workers without jobs, truckers, cab drivers and anxious refugees. Worn down by years of war, sanctions, arbitrary arrests, torture and fear of execution, the men angrily recall the darkest years of the fallen regime.

Still stunned by the course of events and uncertain about the future, they have no faith in the Americans, whom they believe are out for their oil. “Are we another Palestine?” asks one of them. Shot in the thick of the action amid the ongoing chaos, the film reveals Iraqi opinions and their versions of the unfolding story.

Director Spotlight: Baz Shamoun

Baz Shamoun

Baz Shamoun is of Iraqi origin and has lived in Europe since 1978, he emigrated to Canada since1997. He studied television and film at Karlova University in Prague. He started working and developing as independent filmmaker “cinema realism” at the end of the 90s; he directed and produced several short documentary films for TV.

At the moment he is producing and directing a future documentary film under title “The Alien & the Worries of the Angels” and a semi fiction Monologue the Fading Life.

• Director: Baz Shamoun
• 20 mins, 2004  Jordan/ Canada
• Language: Arabic with English Subtitles
• Documentary

Synopsis

In 2003 Al-Daradji, after the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, travelled back to his homeland. There he found heartbreaking chaos with countless psychiatric patients.

In this film, made under very dangerous and threatening circumstances, he tells us the story of a young woman, Ahlaam. She ended up in an institution after her husband was dragged off violently from their wedding. When the institution is flattened by a bomb, she finds herself on the streets.

Here, she was in danger of succumbing to rapists and extortionists. In the meantime, with the aid of the Red Cross and a young doctor, her family is looking for the patients lost in this urban jungle.

Still from Iraq In Fragments

An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied.

Q & A

The director, James Longley, will be present for a questions and answers session after the screening and will host a Masterclass at the Scottish Documentary Institute on May 15.

Short Biography

James Longley began making documentary films as a student in Moscow in 1992. He is best known for his documentary film work in the Gaza Strip and Iraq, for which he has been nominated for two Academy Awards.

Still from Turtles Can Fly

The first film to be made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the devastating Turtles Can Fly is set in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraqi-Turkish border just before the US invasion in spring 2003.

Director Bahman Ghobadi concentrates on a handful of orphaned children and their efforts to survive the appalling conditions: there’s the entrepreneurial Satellite, the armless clairvoyant Henkov, and his traumatised sister Agrin, who herself is responsible for a blind toddler. Using an entirely non-professional cast, Ghobadi vividly immerses the viewer in the nightmarish realities of daily existence in this makeshift community.

Biography

Beginning in the mid 1990s Ghobadi’s short films received many foreign and domestic awards. One of his films, “Life in Fog” became known as “the most famous documentary ever made in the history of Iranian cinema.” In the wake of being awarded several different International Awards, this film opened up new opportunities in Ghobadi’s career.

With the making of his full-length feature “A Time for Drunken Horses” in 1999, Ghobadi became fully recognized as a professional director. Not only was this the first Kurdish full-feature film in the history of Iranian cinema, but Ghobadi also came to be recognized as the pioneer Kurdish director from Iran.

Still from Battle for Haditha

Using ex-Marines as actors and shooting in Jordan, British director Nick Broomfield tackles a controversial subject in Battle for Haditha. It recreates the events of November 19 2005, when US Marines massacred Iraqi civilians in retaliation for a deadly IED attack on their convoy.

Even-handedly cutting between the Marines, led by Corporal Ramirez, the  insurgents and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield’s handheld camera throws us head first into the action and asks us to find our own way through the fog of war.

Biography

Nick Broomfield is an English documentary filmmaker. He studied Law at Cardiff, Wales, and political science at the University of Essex; subsequently, he studied film at the National Film and Television School. Broomfield films with a minimum of crew, just himself and one or two camera operators, which gives his documentaries a distinctive style. Broomfield himself is often in shot holding the sound boom.

Synopsis

Shawkat Amin Korki on set

A road movie shot in a documentary style about two Kurdish soldiers who have to take food to their comrades along dusty Iraqi roads. On the way, they find a lost boy by the name of Saddam. Should they help him or not?

Shawkat Amin Korki (born in Iraqi Kurdistan) deals in his first feature-length film with the recent history of his country. The story takes place in Iraq during the American invasion in 2003 and the day of the fall of Saddam’s regime in a sensitive and lyrical look at this turbulent time.

It is an unusual and unplanned road movie about two Kurdish soldiers, who truck in food supplies to their comrades-in-arms, and a five year-old boy they find lost on the street. One of the soldiers, Asad, takes pity on the boy and wants to help him find his family. The other one, Rashid, is a tougher – certainly after he hears that the boy’s name is Saddam. He fiercely refuses to help the child. The two soldiers continue to quarrel about whether to help the boy or not while they carry on their way. They travel in the dust tracks, the boy between them. After their vehicle gets stolen they wander around the dried-out countryside that has been destroyed by war, and where the most common sight is soldiers and tanks.

The film is a personal drama in a time of war – for the soldiers, the boy and many others – and this is hightened especially with its documentary-like feel and use of non-professional actors. This film has a simplicity that effectively conveys the absurdity and chaos of war.

Biography

Shawkat Amin Korki was born in 1973 in Zakho – Iraqi Kurdistan In 1975 he and his family escaped to Iran fearing for repression of Iraqi army and stayed there until 1999.

He has worked in Theatre, TV & Cinema in Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan.His short films have participated in many film festivals and some of them have been rewarded.In 2002, He managed the First Kurdistan Short Film Festival.

Plus Short: Ali The Iraqi

Synopsis

Still from Ali the Iraq

Nasser, a former Iraqi military officer, and his teenage son, Ali, have just emigrated from Iraq to the United States. Torn between assimilation and rejection of his new environment, and between looking up to and renouncing his father’s generation, Ali must decide what it means to be an Iraqi, an Arab, and a Muslim in America as Iraq spirals further into violence.

Biography

Vatche Boulghourjian is a Lebanese filmmaker and video artist. He has directed, shot, and edited several documentaries, short and experimental films. Boulghourjian attends the Graduate Film Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His thesis film, currently in production, was awarded a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

• Director: Vatche Boulghourjian
• 22 mins, 2008 Lebanon/USA
• Language: Arabic with English Subtitles