list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Standard Operating Procedure on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Standard_Operating_Procedure/316171/default.aspx Title: Standard Operating Procedure
Year: 2008
Director: Errol Morris
Plot: Filmmaker Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line) takes an unflinching look at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal while meditating on the frightening side effects of the War on Terror in a thought-provoking documentary from Participant Productions (An Inconvenient Truth). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 19
Number of Lists: 7
Number of blog posts: 8
Number of discussion threads: 2
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:02:04 GMTStandard Operating Procedure2008Errol MorrisFilmmaker <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___103562/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Errol Morris</a> (<a href="http://www.spout.com/films/13026/detail.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Gates of Heaven</a>, <a href="http://www.spout.com/films/34754/detail.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>The Thin Blue Line</a>) takes an unflinching look at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal while meditating on the frightening side effects of the War on Terror in a thought-provoking documentary from Participant Productions (<a href="http://www.spout.com/films/274995/detail.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>An Inconvenient Truth</a>). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide19Tag Target (>10)7823http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s316171.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Standard_Operating_Procedure/316171/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/2/27/40714.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/27/2009 6:02:04 PM
Body: Watching Graphic Sexual Horror, Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell’s nonfiction look behind the rise and fall of heavy BDSM porn site Insex.com, the first thought that came to my mind was from my film critic’s perspective: “How’s this gonna play in Peoria?” And the second thought was inevitably from my submissive’s perspective: “Is this gonna give my lifestyle a bad name?” There is no pat answer to either question, which is why I was so thrilled that co-director Lorentzon found time to let me pick her brain prior to the film’s East Coast premiere at this year’s CineKink Film Festival, on Friday, February 27th at 11:10 pm at Anthology Film Archives. (Full disclosure: Un Piede di Roman Polanski, an homage to Roman Polanski’s foot fetish by myself and Roxanne Kapitsa, will screen the following evening as part of the festival’s “Twisted Knickers” shorts program at 6:45 pm. Stop on by!) But as I finally sat down to discuss the doc with director Lorentzon, who worked as a producer at Insex.com from 1999 until the site was strong-armed by Homeland Security into closing, I found I didn’t have any questions for her – merely some very strong reactions that I hoped she could shed some light on. So it actually took me by surprise to discover that the issues I was struggling with as an audience member were the same issues that prompted the filmmakers to make the film, and ones that they still struggle with to this day. Frustratingly, there are no answers to the ethical questions “torture porn” raises – only a Pandora’s Box of more questions. So I guess the best one can do is approximate that struggle in image and word. Lauren Wissot: “The reality of how something is made doesn’t necessarily correlate with what it looks like,” the model Lorelei says in the film. Watching Graphic Sexual Horror I thought of Errol Morris’ doc Standard Operating Procedure, and its whole premise that those infamous Abu Ghraib photos pave the way for more questions than they answer. For people not in the BDSM scene site founder PD’s artwork and the Insex scenes look like snuff films, pure and simple, but to someone like me who’s been involved in that world for 14 years they look like standard operating procedure for a heavy sub session. Anna Lorentzon: It’s only because they see something sexual that someone might see Insex.com as real, as snuff. But obviously everything we did there was staged, and all the girls gave their consent to participate. It’s interesting that people don’t worry about the women in horror films getting tortured because they know it’s fake – yet they’re disturbed by Insex.com faking torture? Yeah, even though producers obviously hire pretty young things to get axed in horror films for the sexual titillation! I think Insex.com exposes this uncomfortable truth, which is another reason it might disturb people. But the site is really more like pro wrestling – where yes, it’s staged, and yes, the bruises are real. Yes. Also, one of my favorite parts of your film is the “screen test” footage, only in this case potential models tell the camera, “I’ve been instructed to use the name yx,” (which simultaneously has sci-fi and losing one’s identity to slavery overtones) or are asked (for legal purposes, I assume), “Are you O.K. with bruises and rope burns?” rather than recount any personal history. What stood out for me was the one crucial question that should have been asked but wasn’t, “Are you O.K. with someone hijacking your head?” For that’s really what these girls were consenting to. The irony is that a lot of these women viewed Insex as an alternative to stripping or “porn.” But this is fucking – they’re getting mind-fucked! Yes, but I think that in most situations in life you don’t know what you’re getting into. There was one guy in the audience at Slamdance who compared it to the corporate world he was a part of. Firms don’t tell you when they hire you that you’re going to be working sixteen-hour days, what you have to do to get that bonus. No company does that. They’ll push you to your limit as well – the only difference maybe is that the corporate world does it over an extended period of time. The girls at Insex worked short intense shifts, a day, or a week at a time. Yes, but at least for me the fact that PD repeatedly hired models that were neither lifestyle nor professional subs struck me as completely unethical. Participating in a heavy session requires training and skills that few of these women seemed to possess. PD never properly screened potential employees in the first place. But I guess the fact that both PD and the girls got greedy, got so corrupted by the money flowing in that they did things they otherwise never would have done, is also a great analogy for our current economic crisis. But greed also forces people to have to make a decision about what they’ll consent to – and hopefully to grow from that decision. I think the other big mistake PD made was in not realizing that his artistic passion had become a business. It’s the same thing that happens to a lot of lifestyle doms who transition to pro; they don’t understand that what they do with their personal slaves is not always translatable to “for hire” gigs. Isn’t this often the case, though, with unstable artists who don’t have a clue once money becomes involved? I mean, look at Mickey Rourke! But I think PD’s greatest problem is that he’s a control freak. (laughing) Well, yeah, he’s a master! Right. But he’s not a businessman – he’s an artist. If he could have given up that control and hired someone to manage Insex he wouldn’t have been under the stress that caused him to make all the bad decisions. We did those interviews with PD after Insex had closed and he was a lot calmer, a lot more able to admit his failings. His openness and ability to reflect surprised me. One of my favorite quotes is when PD calls that “glassy eyed” euphoric state some of the models reach the “money shot,” for he’s absolutely right. Though Insex specializes in torture porn it’s different from both snuff films and hetero and gay male porn in that it’s female climax-centric. No men are having orgasms onscreen. Also, the whole artistic collaboration between master and slave, PD and especially the model Lorelei, one of the few true subs interviewed, captures the essence of BDSM play. The women at Insex may be hogtied and caned but they aren’t disrespected. Yes, it’s all about the woman. Which is also why, as one guy in the film says, he couldn’t get his girlfriend to do a lot of things in the bedroom, but once the camera was turned on at Insex she’d do almost anything. It’s the issue of the spotlight – pride – wanting to impress the audience. But it’s also really refreshing that you got PD to talk about his serial killer fascination on camera, for some of the best BDSM players are the ones with the darkest fantasies, who allow themselves to explore in a safe environment rather than keeping desire down and exploding – and as a result, raping and murdering pretty young things picked up in a bar. Yes, and we even used to hear from a lot of members saying that Insex provided an outlet, that now they didn’t feel the need to transfer those fantasies to real life. And with the models I can’t think of even one girl who was psychologically harmed as a result of working for the site. If they were psychologically disturbed they were probably that way before they got to Insex. Speaking of real life, Metal Man also brings up a great point when he says that where he’s from in Eastern Europe they torture people who don’t want to be tortured, and “Here we torture people who want to be tortured – and we pay them. We’re the criminals?” The fact that Homeland Security harassed Insex, that the credit card companies now control our content, is the real pornography – every bit as disturbing as the corruption by money endemic in the sex industry. Well, governments like to keep their monopoly on torture. (laughing) Well said! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:02:04 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/27/2009 6:02:04 PM Watching Graphic Sexual Horror, Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell’s nonfiction look behind the rise and fall of heavy BDSM porn site Insex.com, the first thought that came to my mind was from my film critic’s perspective: “How’s this gonna play in Peoria?” And the second thought was inevitably from my submissive’s perspective: “Is this gonna give my lifestyle a bad name?” There is no pat answer to either question, which is why I was so thrilled that co-director Lorentzon found time to let me pick her brain prior to the film’s East Coast premiere at this year’s CineKink Film Festival, on Friday, February 27th at 11:10 pm at Anthology Film Archives. (Full disclosure: Un Piede di Roman Polanski, an homage to Roman Polanski’s foot fetish by myself and Roxanne Kapitsa, will screen the following evening as part of the festival’s “Twisted Knickers” shorts program at 6:45 pm. Stop on by!) But as I finally sat down to discuss the doc with director Lorentzon, who worked as a producer at Insex.com from 1999 until the site was strong-armed by Homeland Security into closing, I found I didn’t have any questions for her – merely some very strong reactions that I hoped she could shed some light on. So it actually took me by surprise to discover that the issues I was struggling with as an audience member were the same issues that prompted the filmmakers to make the film, and ones that they still struggle with to this day. Frustratingly, there are no answers to the ethical questions “torture porn” raises – only a Pandora’s Box of more questions. So I guess the best one can do is approximate that struggle in image and word. Lauren Wissot: “The reality of how something is made doesn’t necessarily correlate with what it looks like,” the model Lorelei says in the film. Watching Graphic Sexual Horror I thought of Errol Morris’ doc Standard Operating Procedure, and its whole premise that those infamous Abu Ghraib photos pave the way for more questions than they answer. For people not in the BDSM scene site founder PD’s artwork and the Insex scenes look like snuff films, pure and simple, but to someone like me who’s been involved in that world for 14 years they look like standard operating procedure for a heavy sub session. Anna Lorentzon: It’s only because they see something sexual that someone might see Insex.com as real, as snuff. But obviously everything we did there was staged, and all the girls gave their consent to participate. It’s interesting that people don’t worry about the women in horror films getting tortured because they know it’s fake – yet they’re disturbed by Insex.com faking torture? Yeah, even though producers obviously hire pretty young things to get axed in horror films for the sexual titillation! I think Insex.com exposes this uncomfortable truth, which is another reason it might disturb people. But the site is really more like pro wrestling – where yes, it’s staged, and yes, the bruises are real. Yes. Also, one of my favorite parts of your film is the “screen test” footage, only in this case potential models tell the camera, “I’ve been instructed to use the name yx,” (which simultaneously has sci-fi and losing one’s identity to slavery overtones) or are asked (for legal purposes, I assume), “Are you O.K. with bruises and rope burns?” rather than recount any personal history. What stood out for me was the one crucial question that should have been asked but wasn’t, “Are you O.K. with someone hijacking your head?” For that’s really what these girls were consenting to. The irony is that a lot of these women viewed Insex as an alternative to stripping or “porn.” But this is fucking – they’re getting mind-fucked! Yes, but I think that in most situations in life you don’t know what you’re getting into. There was one guy in the audience at Slamdance who compared it to the corporate world he was a part of. Firms don’t tell you when they hire you that you’re going to be working sixteen-hour days, what you have to do to get that bonus. No company does that. They’ll push you to your limit as well – the only difference maybe is that the corporate world does it over an extended period of time. The girls at Insex worked short intense shifts, a day, or a week at a time. Yes, but at least for me the fact that PD repeatedly hired models that were neither lifestyle nor professional subs struck me as completely unethical. Participating in a heavy session requires training and skills that few of these women seemed to possess. PD never properly screened potential employees in the first place. But I guess the fact that both PD and the girls got greedy, got so corrupted by the money flowing in that they did things they otherwise never would have done, is also a great analogy for our current economic crisis. But greed also forces people to have to make a decision about what they’ll consent to – and hopefully to grow from that decision. I think the other big mistake PD made was in not realizing that his artistic passion had become a business. It’s the same thing that happens to a lot of lifestyle doms who transition to pro; they don’t understand that what they do with their personal slaves is not always translatable to “for hire” gigs. Isn’t this often the case, though, with unstable artists who don’t have a clue once money becomes involved? I mean, look at Mickey Rourke! But I think PD’s greatest problem is that he’s a control freak. (laughing) Well, yeah, he’s a master! Right. But he’s not a businessman – he’s an artist. If he could have given up that control and hired someone to manage Insex he wouldn’t have been under the stress that caused him to make all the bad decisions. We did those interviews with PD after Insex had closed and he was a lot calmer, a lot more able to admit his failings. His openness and ability to reflect surprised me. One of my favorite quotes is when PD calls that “glassy eyed” euphoric state some of the models reach the “money shot,” for he’s absolutely right. Though Insex specializes in torture porn it’s different from both snuff films and hetero and gay male porn in that it’s female climax-centric. No men are having orgasms onscreen. Also, the whole artistic collaboration between master and slave, PD and especially the model Lorelei, one of the few true subs interviewed, captures the essence of BDSM play. The women at Insex may be hogtied and caned but they aren’t disrespected. Yes, it’s all about the woman. Which is also why, as one guy in the film says, he couldn’t get his girlfriend to do a lot of things in the bedroom, but once the camera was turned on at Insex she’d do almost anything. It’s the issue of the spotlight – pride – wanting to impress the audience. But it’s also really refreshing that you got PD to talk about his serial killer fascination on camera, for some of the best BDSM players are the ones with the darkest fantasies, who allow themselves to explore in a safe environment rather than keeping desire down and exploding – and as a result, raping and murdering pretty young things picked up in a bar. Yes, and we even used to hear from a lot of members saying that Insex provided an outlet, that now they didn’t feel the need to transfer those fantasies to real life. And with the models I can’t think of even one girl who was psychologically harmed as a result of working for the site. If they were psychologically disturbed they were probably that way before they got to Insex. Speaking of real life, Metal Man also brings up a great point when he says that where he’s from in Eastern Europe they torture people who don’t want to be tortured, and “Here we torture people who want to be tortured – and we pay them. We’re the criminals?” The fact that Homeland Security harassed Insex, that the credit card companies now control our content, is the real pornography – every bit as disturbing as the corruption by money endemic in the sex industry. Well, governments like to keep their monopoly on torture. (laughing) Well said! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/24/37595.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/24/2008 7:01:27 PM
Body: When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces a shortlist for one of its Oscar categories, many critics immediately focus on what titles are missing. Religulous was snubbed! Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was punished for having a “secret” qualifying run! The Academy’s rules for eligibility must be amended! Such reactions were seen all over the web last week as awards season pundits looked at the narrowed-down list of 15 Feature Documentary hopefuls and criticized the Academy for its omissions. But the better response (which is the one SpoutBlog had) is to primarily address and celebrate the included films, not just for being contenders for the Feature Documentary Oscar but also for being showcased in general. The wonderful thing about shortlists is that they expand further the idea that it’s great just to be nominated. For feature documentaries, particularly those without a lot of media and major distributor attention, it is also great just to be shortlisted. Non-fiction film fans may now see this as an opportunity to take note of some documentaries that weren’t previously on their radar (unfortunately none of these films are actually allowed to advertise their recent achievement of being shortlisted). But the Academy Awards are, of course, still a competition. So, while we take notice of the 15 semi-finalists for the Feature Documentary Oscar, we shall also weigh their chances of being selected for the final five and predict which titles are likely to be announced as nominees on January 22. 1. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh It’s a constant joke that any film related to the Holocaust is guaranteed an Oscar nomination. Obviously this is a generalization based on common trend, and not every Holocaust doc has in fact been recognized by the Academy, but if such a film is good enough to reach the shortlist, there is a very good chance that it will also be nominated. And since there hasn’t been a feature doc on the subject nominated since 2002, it’s probably time for a new one to get the spotlight. Blessed is narrated by Oscar-nominee Joan Allen and details the courageous life of Hannah Senesh, who took part in a mission to rescue Hungary’s Jews. If Hollywood doesn’t nominate this doc, it will probably at least use it as a springboard from which to produce an Oscar-bait dramatization about Senesh in the near future. 2. Trouble the Water Never mind the fact that it’s one of the best-reviewed films of the year, this is the Academy’s first chance to get behind the Katrina issue. Though some mistakenly see the Feature Documentary Oscar as primarily a category with which to showcase its favored causes rather than recognizing the actual best documentary filmmaking of the year, there is a miniscule amount of truth in the matter. It’s part of the reason that the Holocaust-doc joke is so often made, and it’s also why the films Born Into Brothels and An Inconvenient Truth were named winners, despite their being subject-over-style kinds of documentaries. Trouble the Water is a tad bit sloppy, but it has the subject matter and enough inspirational substance to receive a nomination. 3. Encounters at the End of the World This may be the Academy’s chance to make up for their exclusion of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man a few years back or simply honor a filmmaker who has been important to the non-fiction genre for decades. Also, with their snub of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, the Academy Documentary Branch could use this as more opportunity to distinguish and make an example out of the difference between a theatrical documentary and a television documentary (as David Poland recently pointed out, “if you are a TV doc, be a TV doc…if you are a theatrical doc, that is what the Oscars reward”). People who went to see Encounters recommended it on the basis that it needs to be seen on a big screen, which is not often said about documentaries. Other things it has going for it are a shared location with Oscar-winner March of the Penguins (even if Herzog starts the film addressing that this is not like that film) and a slight relevance to the global warming issue, which is one of the Academy’s currently favored issues. 4. Standard Operating Procedure The Academy Documentary Branch does seem to favor former nominees in their category, perhaps due to the number of documentarians who turn to fiction filmmaking after breaking out in non-fiction (maybe that explains their snub of Barbara Kopple recently after her attempt into fiction). So Morris, who was infamously rejected by the Academy with his monumental film The Thin Blue Line, and who later won the Oscar for The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons Learned from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, should be given another go. It also helps that Standard Operating Procedure is the sole Iraq War-relevant documentary in the bunch, an interesting fact given how many films dealing with this topic have been shortlisted in the past few years. Even though last year the Oscar was given to a similarly themed doc about torture and prisoner abuse, the issue is likely still one that the Academy feels strongly about. Of course, speaking of that film, Taxi to the Dark Side, its director’s latest film was not shortlisted. 5. Man on Wire This is the highest grossing (and best-reviewed) of the 15 shortlisted films, and that could mean a lot, even if it is only the fifth top grossing doc of the year. The Academy is hardly a sucker for popular documentaries, but most years since Michael Moore was honored in 2002 have seen at least one popular doc, such as Super Size Me, March of the Penguins and Moore’s Sicko. In fact, only four of the ten top grossing (non-IMAX, non-concert, non-compilation, non-reality TV-based) documentaries have not been nominated for an Oscar. The only drawback for Man on Wire could be that it features a very large percentage of re-enactment or dramatization, and even if the Academy’s rules have a greater permission for these kinds of documentaries than in the days of The Thin Blue Line’s snub, it’s very possible that members of the Academy Documentary Branch are more appreciable towards one of the films that aren’t so heavily dependent on re-enactments. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:01:27 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/24/2008 7:01:27 PMWhen the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces a shortlist for one of its Oscar categories, many critics immediately focus on what titles are missing. Religulous was snubbed! Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was punished for having a “secret” qualifying run! The Academy’s rules for eligibility must be amended! Such reactions were seen all over the web last week as awards season pundits looked at the narrowed-down list of 15 Feature Documentary hopefuls and criticized the Academy for its omissions. But the better response (which is the one SpoutBlog had) is to primarily address and celebrate the included films, not just for being contenders for the Feature Documentary Oscar but also for being showcased in general. The wonderful thing about shortlists is that they expand further the idea that it’s great just to be nominated. For feature documentaries, particularly those without a lot of media and major distributor attention, it is also great just to be shortlisted. Non-fiction film fans may now see this as an opportunity to take note of some documentaries that weren’t previously on their radar (unfortunately none of these films are actually allowed to advertise their recent achievement of being shortlisted). But the Academy Awards are, of course, still a competition. So, while we take notice of the 15 semi-finalists for the Feature Documentary Oscar, we shall also weigh their chances of being selected for the final five and predict which titles are likely to be announced as nominees on January 22. 1. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh It’s a constant joke that any film related to the Holocaust is guaranteed an Oscar nomination. Obviously this is a generalization based on common trend, and not every Holocaust doc has in fact been recognized by the Academy, but if such a film is good enough to reach the shortlist, there is a very good chance that it will also be nominated. And since there hasn’t been a feature doc on the subject nominated since 2002, it’s probably time for a new one to get the spotlight. Blessed is narrated by Oscar-nominee Joan Allen and details the courageous life of Hannah Senesh, who took part in a mission to rescue Hungary’s Jews. If Hollywood doesn’t nominate this doc, it will probably at least use it as a springboard from which to produce an Oscar-bait dramatization about Senesh in the near future. 2. Trouble the Water Never mind the fact that it’s one of the best-reviewed films of the year, this is the Academy’s first chance to get behind the Katrina issue. Though some mistakenly see the Feature Documentary Oscar as primarily a category with which to showcase its favored causes rather than recognizing the actual best documentary filmmaking of the year, there is a miniscule amount of truth in the matter. It’s part of the reason that the Holocaust-doc joke is so often made, and it’s also why the films Born Into Brothels and An Inconvenient Truth were named winners, despite their being subject-over-style kinds of documentaries. Trouble the Water is a tad bit sloppy, but it has the subject matter and enough inspirational substance to receive a nomination. 3. Encounters at the End of the World This may be the Academy’s chance to make up for their exclusion of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man a few years back or simply honor a filmmaker who has been important to the non-fiction genre for decades. Also, with their snub of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, the Academy Documentary Branch could use this as more opportunity to distinguish and make an example out of the difference between a theatrical documentary and a television documentary (as David Poland recently pointed out, “if you are a TV doc, be a TV doc…if you are a theatrical doc, that is what the Oscars reward”). People who went to see Encounters recommended it on the basis that it needs to be seen on a big screen, which is not often said about documentaries. Other things it has going for it are a shared location with Oscar-winner March of the Penguins (even if Herzog starts the film addressing that this is not like that film) and a slight relevance to the global warming issue, which is one of the Academy’s currently favored issues. 4. Standard Operating Procedure The Academy Documentary Branch does seem to favor former nominees in their category, perhaps due to the number of documentarians who turn to fiction filmmaking after breaking out in non-fiction (maybe that explains their snub of Barbara Kopple recently after her attempt into fiction). So Morris, who was infamously rejected by the Academy with his monumental film The Thin Blue Line, and who later won the Oscar for The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons Learned from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, should be given another go. It also helps that Standard Operating Procedure is the sole Iraq War-relevant documentary in the bunch, an interesting fact given how many films dealing with this topic have been shortlisted in the past few years. Even though last year the Oscar was given to a similarly themed doc about torture and prisoner abuse, the issue is likely still one that the Academy feels strongly about. Of course, speaking of that film, Taxi to the Dark Side, its director’s latest film was not shortlisted. 5. Man on Wire This is the highest grossing (and best-reviewed) of the 15 shortlisted films, and that could mean a lot, even if it is only the fifth top grossing doc of the year. The Academy is hardly a sucker for popular documentaries, but most years since Michael Moore was honored in 2002 have seen at least one popular doc, such as Super Size Me, March of the Penguins and Moore’s Sicko. In fact, only four of the ten top grossing (non-IMAX, non-concert, non-compilation, non-reality TV-based) documentaries have not been nominated for an Oscar. The only drawback for Man on Wire could be that it features a very large percentage of re-enactment or dramatization, and even if the Academy’s rules have a greater permission for these kinds of documentaries than in the days of The Thin Blue Line’s snub, it’s very possible that members of the Academy Documentary Branch are more appreciable towards one of the films that aren’t so heavily dependent on re-enactments. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/11/17/37386.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 11/17/2008 9:01:42 PM
Body: AJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.) The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher). Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:01:42 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog11/17/2008 9:01:42 PMAJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.) The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher). Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/17/37385.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/17/2008 9:01:28 PM
Body: AJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.) The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher). Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:01:28 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/17/2008 9:01:28 PMAJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.) The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher). Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/groups/Top_5/Re_Top_5_Iraq_War_Movies_That_Overcome_Iraq_Fatigu/190/36798/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: SkyPilot
Post To: Top 5
Post Date: 10/30/2008 12:05:19 PM
Body: We're a bit late in announcing the winners, but Fall in Michigan has been so wonderful that, quite frankly, we can't stop rolling in leaf piles and picking apples.But we did want to stop and pick jmcnally and Chris Gray as the winners of Standard Operating Procedure on DVD. I also want to mention that filmmaker Nick Bicanic left an interesting comment about interviewing people for Shadow Company. Everyone wanted to know: is your film "pro" or "anti"? This got me thinking about jmcnally's picks. Is it fair to call M*A*S*H, 3 Kings, and Dr. Strangelove "anti" war? Or are they really "pro" something else?
]]>Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:05:19 GMTSkyPilotTop 510/30/2008 12:05:19 PMWe're a bit late in announcing the winners, but Fall in Michigan has been so wonderful that, quite frankly, we can't stop rolling in leaf piles and picking apples.But we did want to stop and pick jmcnally and Chris Gray as the winners of Standard Operating Procedure on DVD. I also want to mention that filmmaker Nick Bicanic left an interesting comment about interviewing people for Shadow Company. Everyone wanted to know: is your film "pro" or "anti"? This got me thinking about jmcnally's picks. Is it fair to call M*A*S*H, 3 Kings, and Dr. Strangelove "anti" war? Or are they really "pro" something else? http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/22/36590.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/22/2008 6:01:12 PM
Body: If you opened up a movie trade publication or read a movie-focused blog between October 2007 and February 2008 the odds are good you saw at least one story about how the massive influx of Iraq War-themed films that were being released (The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, etc) were not only all failing but were causing havoc in the independent film world. Their less than fantastic box-office success was not always attributable to the quality of the movie. Nor was it always to do the audience’s perceived lack of interest in movies about our current military situation. But these were easy journalistic hooks on which to hang a story and so became part of our entrenched conventional wisdom. Indeed there were some high-quality films released about this subject matter in the last year or so that are deserving of a broader audience. But release patterns don’t always line up with audiences. That’s why the appearance of films such as Heavy Metal in Baghdad on distribution sites like SnagFilms (a Spout partner) is so important: by flattening the distribution field to allow for anywhere, anytime viewing, the audience (at least that portion of it that’s tuned into online viewing, a percentage that’s growing steadily) can find movies that will interest them regardless of whether or not it’s playing at their local multiplex. One such film that got lots of headlines upon its release earlier this year was Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris about the behind the scenes stories of those pictures showing prisoner humiliation at the Abu Ghraib detention facility. Karina, in her review of the film that also comes with insights from a session with Morris himself, says the film frustrates as often as it enlightens and comes with no easy answers, no clear moralistic conclusions. Now Spout is giving you the opportunity to win one of two DVD copies of Standard Operating Procedure. We want to hear from you what your top five favorite war (or war-related) movies are. Either leave the list as a comment on this post or, if you’re a member of the Spout community (and you really should be), you can build your own list in this discussion thread specific to the contest. We’ll pick one winner tomorrow and one winner Friday and send you not only the movie but a whole package of Spout goodies as well. It’s that simple, so good luck and let’s hear what your favorites are. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:01:12 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/22/2008 6:01:12 PMIf you opened up a movie trade publication or read a movie-focused blog between October 2007 and February 2008 the odds are good you saw at least one story about how the massive influx of Iraq War-themed films that were being released (The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, etc) were not only all failing but were causing havoc in the independent film world. Their less than fantastic box-office success was not always attributable to the quality of the movie. Nor was it always to do the audience’s perceived lack of interest in movies about our current military situation. But these were easy journalistic hooks on which to hang a story and so became part of our entrenched conventional wisdom. Indeed there were some high-quality films released about this subject matter in the last year or so that are deserving of a broader audience. But release patterns don’t always line up with audiences. That’s why the appearance of films such as Heavy Metal in Baghdad on distribution sites like SnagFilms (a Spout partner) is so important: by flattening the distribution field to allow for anywhere, anytime viewing, the audience (at least that portion of it that’s tuned into online viewing, a percentage that’s growing steadily) can find movies that will interest them regardless of whether or not it’s playing at their local multiplex. One such film that got lots of headlines upon its release earlier this year was Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris about the behind the scenes stories of those pictures showing prisoner humiliation at the Abu Ghraib detention facility. Karina, in her review of the film that also comes with insights from a session with Morris himself, says the film frustrates as often as it enlightens and comes with no easy answers, no clear moralistic conclusions. Now Spout is giving you the opportunity to win one of two DVD copies of Standard Operating Procedure. We want to hear from you what your top five favorite war (or war-related) movies are. Either leave the list as a comment on this post or, if you’re a member of the Spout community (and you really should be), you can build your own list in this discussion thread specific to the contest. We’ll pick one winner tomorrow and one winner Friday and send you not only the movie but a whole package of Spout goodies as well. It’s that simple, so good luck and let’s hear what your favorites are. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/groups/Top_5/Top_5_Iraq_War_Movies_That_Overcome_Iraq_Fatigue/190/36577/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: SkyPilot
Post To: Top 5
Post Date: 10/22/2008 12:21:52 PM
Body: Iraq War movies so far have consistently underperformed at the box office, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad films. Which Iraq War movies have broken through your Iraq Fatigue? List your Top 5 Iraq War Movies That Overcome Iraq Fatigue ...and we'll choose two people to win a free DVD of Standard Operating Procedure, a doc about the US Military's tactics of interrogation. Features and documentaries are both fair game for your lists. (By the way, you can watch a lot of Iraq documentaries for free here on Spout.)
]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:21:52 GMTSkyPilotTop 510/22/2008 12:21:52 PMIraq War movies so far have consistently underperformed at the box office, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad films. Which Iraq War movies have broken through your Iraq Fatigue? List your Top 5 Iraq War Movies That Overcome Iraq Fatigue ...and we'll choose two people to win a free DVD of Standard Operating Procedure, a doc about the US Military's tactics of interrogation. Features and documentaries are both fair game for your lists. (By the way, you can watch a lot of Iraq documentaries for free here on Spout.) http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/4/25/27794.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 4/25/2008 10:01:28 AM
Body: The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure in two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford. Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” Of course, Morris has made a living crafting subjective mediations of reality, and formally Standard Operating Procedure is an embodiment of the problematic relationship between representation and interpretation that underlies his thesis. High-contrast, hyper-shallow focus re-enactments (Morris prefers the word “illustrations”) compete for space with actual images from the prison, set in the middle of the screen so we can see their original framing. Low-res cell cam videos are are also left their original size, and in the case of the footage documenting the infamous “human pyramid,” the video appears as a flickering doorway taking up about a fifth of an otherwise black screen. Throughout, Morris uses the cinematic language of fantasy films––including a score by Danny Elfman, strategic CGI compositing and slow motion effects––in order to sell the feeling that we’re trapped in a nightmare, familiar in its photorealism and yet, in terms of what’s actually seen and what we read it to mean, surreal. Morris is particularly concerned with how the information contained in individual photographs led to indictment of the soldiers involved––both in terms of criminal charges and in the court of public opinion––as well as the fact that if there wouldn’t have been a “scandal” as such if the photos hadn’t existed. An Army investigator charged with considering the images as evidence is given ample screen time, and his explanation of how and why some photographs were considered more damning than others is fascinating. The image of a hooded detainee with wires attached to his finger, though probably the most iconic image of the scandal on the whole, shows no sign of anything criminally untoward––in the investigation, it was classified as evidence of “S.O.P.”, or Standard Operating Procedure. Meanwhile, the image of Lynndie England pointing to a masturbating soldier seems to depict a coerced sexual act, and was thus considered evidence of a crime. England is now just 25, but as Swofford noted, she’s come out of this ordeal (and three years in prison) looking “like she’s aged a decade” compared to the girl in that photograph. Though vilified in the media for her cheerful presence in many of the most damning photos from Abu Ghraib, England maintains that her crimes were spawned by passion. “I was blinded by being in love with a man,” England laments in the film––not sentimentally, but tough and resigned, like a Loretta Lynn song come to life. Throughout, Morris contrasts photos taken by the soldiers of one another with their photos documenting their treatment of the detainees, and in several of the former, England is frozen in poses that would be nearly indistinguishable from photos compromising activity involving detainees…were she not young, white and female. When we see England hand cuffed in a sprawl on a cot, or squatting with her pants around her knees and a middle finger raised to the camera, knowing that these images were taken by her then-boyfriend Sargeant Charles Graner, we understand that she’s the middle link in a chain of humiliation. Every soldier who served time in relation to the scandal says they were just following orders from their commanding officer, but England, a love-struck 20 year old in way over her head in every respect, was taking orders from the man she was sleeping with. The infamous human pyramid of naked detainees? England says Graner referred to it as his “birthday present” to her. This was before England found out she was pregnant and learned that Graner was also sleeping with Meghan Ambuhl, another female officer at the prison. Now serving a ten year prison sentence, Graner is currently married to Ambuhl, who appears in both Kennedy and Morris’ films. Mrs. Graner also appeared off to the side in the original image of England holding a leash attached to a detainee, but she had been cropped out by Graner by the time the image made it to the media. If anything, this psycho-sexual drama is underplayed in Morris’ film. One could easily image a full feature on how the Graner/England/Ambul love triangle––and particularly Graner’s fetishistic impulse to obtain photographic evidence of the younger of his two girlfriends in situations of humiliation––was fueled by the stresses of the war and the prison and in turn snowballed into a serious black mark on America’s record of military professionalism. Morris sacrifices analysis of this and other provocative ideas naturally embedded in the story, in order to keep the focus on the way the story has been told through imagery. This analysis is often so wonkily specific that it can sometimes lose the forest for miniscule trees. Nonetheless, Morris indicated after the screening that the sex and gender issues raised by England’s aspect of the story was at the forefront of his concern. “I’ve often seen this war as a war of sexual humiliation,” he said, “It’s no accident that American women were used to strip Iraqi males. To me, it’s no accident that Graner took his 90 pound girlfriend, who is 20 years old, and took THIS picture.” In the film, England takes responsibility for falling for the wrong man, but she also takes every opportunity to blame her complicity in the crimes on the coupling. Under Morris’ gaze, England isn’t a morally reprehensible bad apple, or even a woman who made bad choices based on romantic obsession, but a victim. So is Sabrina Harman, a female soldier seen in another iconic Abu Ghraib image, giving the camera a thumbs up next to a corpse. Morris says that when he first saw that image, his knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Harmon “was a monster…maybe even responsible [for the death].” He later learned that Harmon was an aspiring forensic photographer, and that after taking a single photo of herself in front of the body of a detainee accidentally killed during an interrogation by a CIA agent when she was not present, she proceeded to take dozens of evidentiary-style photos of the corpse. Morris says he’s about to publish an entire essay on “Sabrina and the smile” on his New York Times blog, which will include an interview with “the greatest living expert on the smile.” I hope this essay gives greater consideration to why the budding forensic photographer saw fit to document herself as a gleeful tourist at the crime scene; Harman’s explanation that her thumb reflexively popped up because she “never knows what to do with my hands in pictures” didn’t quite do it for me. Morris’ persistently insists, both within the film and in the conversation afterwards, that those who participated in the abuses and photographed them (and served time for their actions) are virtually without culpability compared to the higher-ups who, at best, created a culture of Geneva Convention indifference, and at worst, ordered torture and then pretended like they didn’t know it was happening when the photographs came to light. The idea that there would not have been an Abu Ghraib scandal had the photographs not made it to the media is one thing; the idea that the human beings who appear in those photographs are not responsible for their own actions is another. Such suggestions hold particularly little water when it comes to people like England and Harman, who continually prove themselves on screen to be tangled masses of impulse vs. intellect; to write their actions off as products of the frustrations of working in a male military culture is both condescending and too generous. Standard Operation Procedure frustrates more than it enlightens, but to hear Morris tell it, that’s part of the plan. “It’s not a movie that can provide an answer to every question––far from it,” he said towards the end of last night’s chat. “It’s a movie that raises questions, and if I’ve done that, I’ve done my job.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:01:28 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog4/25/2008 10:01:28 AM The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure in two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford. Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” Of course, Morris has made a living crafting subjective mediations of reality, and formally Standard Operating Procedure is an embodiment of the problematic relationship between representation and interpretation that underlies his thesis. High-contrast, hyper-shallow focus re-enactments (Morris prefers the word “illustrations”) compete for space with actual images from the prison, set in the middle of the screen so we can see their original framing. Low-res cell cam videos are are also left their original size, and in the case of the footage documenting the infamous “human pyramid,” the video appears as a flickering doorway taking up about a fifth of an otherwise black screen. Throughout, Morris uses the cinematic language of fantasy films––including a score by Danny Elfman, strategic CGI compositing and slow motion effects––in order to sell the feeling that we’re trapped in a nightmare, familiar in its photorealism and yet, in terms of what’s actually seen and what we read it to mean, surreal. Morris is particularly concerned with how the information contained in individual photographs led to indictment of the soldiers involved––both in terms of criminal charges and in the court of public opinion––as well as the fact that if there wouldn’t have been a “scandal” as such if the photos hadn’t existed. An Army investigator charged with considering the images as evidence is given ample screen time, and his explanation of how and why some photographs were considered more damning than others is fascinating. The image of a hooded detainee with wires attached to his finger, though probably the most iconic image of the scandal on the whole, shows no sign of anything criminally untoward––in the investigation, it was classified as evidence of “S.O.P.”, or Standard Operating Procedure. Meanwhile, the image of Lynndie England pointing to a masturbating soldier seems to depict a coerced sexual act, and was thus considered evidence of a crime. England is now just 25, but as Swofford noted, she’s come out of this ordeal (and three years in prison) looking “like she’s aged a decade” compared to the girl in that photograph. Though vilified in the media for her cheerful presence in many of the most damning photos from Abu Ghraib, England maintains that her crimes were spawned by passion. “I was blinded by being in love with a man,” England laments in the film––not sentimentally, but tough and resigned, like a Loretta Lynn song come to life. Throughout, Morris contrasts photos taken by the soldiers of one another with their photos documenting their treatment of the detainees, and in several of the former, England is frozen in poses that would be nearly indistinguishable from photos compromising activity involving detainees…were she not young, white and female. When we see England hand cuffed in a sprawl on a cot, or squatting with her pants around her knees and a middle finger raised to the camera, knowing that these images were taken by her then-boyfriend Sargeant Charles Graner, we understand that she’s the middle link in a chain of humiliation. Every soldier who served time in relation to the scandal says they were just following orders from their commanding officer, but England, a love-struck 20 year old in way over her head in every respect, was taking orders from the man she was sleeping with. The infamous human pyramid of naked detainees? England says Graner referred to it as his “birthday present” to her. This was before England found out she was pregnant and learned that Graner was also sleeping with Meghan Ambuhl, another female officer at the prison. Now serving a ten year prison sentence, Graner is currently married to Ambuhl, who appears in both Kennedy and Morris’ films. Mrs. Graner also appeared off to the side in the original image of England holding a leash attached to a detainee, but she had been cropped out by Graner by the time the image made it to the media. If anything, this psycho-sexual drama is underplayed in Morris’ film. One could easily image a full feature on how the Graner/England/Ambul love triangle––and particularly Graner’s fetishistic impulse to obtain photographic evidence of the younger of his two girlfriends in situations of humiliation––was fueled by the stresses of the war and the prison and in turn snowballed into a serious black mark on America’s record of military professionalism. Morris sacrifices analysis of this and other provocative ideas naturally embedded in the story, in order to keep the focus on the way the story has been told through imagery. This analysis is often so wonkily specific that it can sometimes lose the forest for miniscule trees. Nonetheless, Morris indicated after the screening that the sex and gender issues raised by England’s aspect of the story was at the forefront of his concern. “I’ve often seen this war as a war of sexual humiliation,” he said, “It’s no accident that American women were used to strip Iraqi males. To me, it’s no accident that Graner took his 90 pound girlfriend, who is 20 years old, and took THIS picture.” In the film, England takes responsibility for falling for the wrong man, but she also takes every opportunity to blame her complicity in the crimes on the coupling. Under Morris’ gaze, England isn’t a morally reprehensible bad apple, or even a woman who made bad choices based on romantic obsession, but a victim. So is Sabrina Harman, a female soldier seen in another iconic Abu Ghraib image, giving the camera a thumbs up next to a corpse. Morris says that when he first saw that image, his knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Harmon “was a monster…maybe even responsible [for the death].” He later learned that Harmon was an aspiring forensic photographer, and that after taking a single photo of herself in front of the body of a detainee accidentally killed during an interrogation by a CIA agent when she was not present, she proceeded to take dozens of evidentiary-style photos of the corpse. Morris says he’s about to publish an entire essay on “Sabrina and the smile” on his New York Times blog, which will include an interview with “the greatest living expert on the smile.” I hope this essay gives greater consideration to why the budding forensic photographer saw fit to document herself as a gleeful tourist at the crime scene; Harman’s explanation that her thumb reflexively popped up because she “never knows what to do with my hands in pictures” didn’t quite do it for me. Morris’ persistently insists, both within the film and in the conversation afterwards, that those who participated in the abuses and photographed them (and served time for their actions) are virtually without culpability compared to the higher-ups who, at best, created a culture of Geneva Convention indifference, and at worst, ordered torture and then pretended like they didn’t know it was happening when the photographs came to light. The idea that there would not have been an Abu Ghraib scandal had the photographs not made it to the media is one thing; the idea that the human beings who appear in those photographs are not responsible for their own actions is another. Such suggestions hold particularly little water when it comes to people like England and Harman, who continually prove themselves on screen to be tangled masses of impulse vs. intellect; to write their actions off as products of the frustrations of working in a male military culture is both condescending and too generous. Standard Operation Procedure frustrates more than it enlightens, but to hear Morris tell it, that’s part of the plan. “It’s not a movie that can provide an answer to every question––far from it,” he said towards the end of last night’s chat. “It’s a movie that raises questions, and if I’ve done that, I’ve done my job.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/4/25/27792.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 4/25/2008 10:01:19 AM
Body: The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure in two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford. Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” Of course, Morris has made a living crafting subjective mediations of reality, and formally Standard Operating Procedure is an embodiment of the problematic relationship between representation and interpretation that underlies his thesis. High-contrast, hyper-shallow focus re-enactments (Morris prefers the word “illustrations”) compete for space with actual images from the prison, set in the middle of the screen so we can see their original framing. Low-res cell cam videos are are also left their original size, and in the case of the footage documenting the infamous “human pyramid,” the video appears as a flickering doorway taking up about a fifth of an otherwise black screen. Throughout, Morris uses the cinematic language of fantasy films––including a score by Danny Elfman, strategic CGI compositing and slow motion effects––in order to sell the feeling that we’re trapped in a nightmare, familiar in its photorealism and yet, in terms of what’s actually seen and what we read it to mean, surreal. Morris is particularly concerned with how the information contained in individual photographs led to indictment of the soldiers involved––both in terms of criminal charges and in the court of public opinion––as well as the fact that if there wouldn’t have been a “scandal” as such if the photos hadn’t existed. An Army investigator charged with considering the images as evidence is given ample screen time, and his explanation of how and why some photographs were considered more damning than others is fascinating. The image of a hooded detainee with wires attached to his finger, though probably the most iconic image of the scandal on the whole, shows no sign of anything criminally untoward––in the investigation, it was classified as evidence of “S.O.P.”, or Standard Operating Procedure. Meanwhile, the image of Lynndie England pointing to a masturbating soldier seems to depict a coerced sexual act, and was thus considered evidence of a crime. England is now just 25, but as Swofford noted, she’s come out of this ordeal (and three years in prison) looking “like she’s aged a decade” compared to the girl in that photograph. Though vilified in the media for her cheerful presence in many of the most damning photos from Abu Ghraib, England maintains that her crimes were spawned by passion. “I was blinded by being in love with a man,” England laments in the film––not sentimentally, but tough and resigned, like a Loretta Lynn song come to life. Throughout, Morris contrasts photos taken by the soldiers of one another with their photos documenting their treatment of the detainees, and in several of the former, England is frozen in poses that would be nearly indistinguishable from photos compromising activity involving detainees…were she not young, white and female. When we see England hand cuffed in a sprawl on a cot, or squatting with her pants around her knees and a middle finger raised to the camera, knowing that these images were taken by her then-boyfriend Sargeant Charles Graner, we understand that she’s the middle link in a chain of humiliation. Every soldier who served time in relation to the scandal says they were just following orders from their commanding officer, but England, a love-struck 20 year old in way over her head in every respect, was taking orders from the man she was sleeping with. The infamous human pyramid of naked detainees? England says Graner referred to it as his “birthday present” to her. This was before England found out she was pregnant and learned that Graner was also sleeping with Meghan Ambuhl, another female officer at the prison. Now serving a ten year prison sentence, Graner is currently married to Ambuhl, who appears in both Kennedy and Morris’ films. Mrs. Graner also appeared off to the side in the original image of England holding a leash attached to a detainee, but she had been cropped out by Graner by the time the image made it to the media. If anything, this psycho-sexual drama is underplayed in Morris’ film. One could easily image a full feature on how the Graner/England/Ambul love triangle––and particularly Graner’s fetishistic impulse to obtain photographic evidence of the younger of his two girlfriends in situations of humiliation––was fueled by the stresses of the war and the prison and in turn snowballed into a serious black mark on America’s record of military professionalism. Morris sacrifices analysis of this and other provocative ideas naturally embedded in the story, in order to keep the focus on the way the story has been told through imagery. This analysis is often so wonkily specific that it can sometimes lose the forest for miniscule trees. Nonetheless, Morris indicated after the screening that the sex and gender issues raised by England’s aspect of the story was at the forefront of his concern. “I’ve often seen this war as a war of sexual humiliation,” he said, “It’s no accident that American women were used to strip Iraqi males. To me, it’s no accident that Graner took his 90 pound girlfriend, who is 20 years old, and took THIS picture.” In the film, England takes responsibility for falling for the wrong man, but she also takes every opportunity to blame her complicity in the crimes on the coupling. Under Morris’ gaze, England isn’t a morally reprehensible bad apple, or even a woman who made bad choices based on romantic obsession, but a victim. So is Sabrina Harman, a female soldier seen in another iconic Abu Ghraib image, giving the camera a thumbs up next to a corpse. Morris says that when he first saw that image, his knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Harmon “was a monster…maybe even responsible [for the death].” He later learned that Harmon was an aspiring forensic photographer, and that after taking a single photo of herself in front of the body of a detainee accidentally killed during an interrogation by a CIA agent when she was not present, she proceeded to take dozens of evidentiary-style photos of the corpse. Morris says he’s about to publish an entire essay on “Sabrina and the smile” on his New York Times blog, which will include an interview with “the greatest living expert on the smile.” I hope this essay gives greater consideration to why the budding forensic photographer saw fit to document herself as a gleeful tourist at the crime scene; Harman’s explanation that her thumb reflexively popped up because she “never knows what to do with my hands in pictures” didn’t quite do it for me. Morris’ persistently insists, both within the film and in the conversation afterwards, that those who participated in the abuses and photographed them (and served time for their actions) are virtually without culpability compared to the higher-ups who, at best, created a culture of Geneva Convention indifference, and at worst, ordered torture and then pretended like they didn’t know it was happening when the photographs came to light. The idea that there would not have been an Abu Ghraib scandal had the photographs not made it to the media is one thing; the idea that the human beings who appear in those photographs are not responsible for their own actions is another. Such suggestions hold particularly little water when it comes to people like England and Harman, who continually prove themselves on screen to be tangled masses of impulse vs. intellect; to write their actions off as products of the frustrations of working in a male military culture is both condescending and too generous. Standard Operation Procedure frustrates more than it enlightens, but to hear Morris tell it, that’s part of the plan. “It’s not a movie that can provide an answer to every question––far from it,” he said towards the end of last night’s chat. “It’s a movie that raises questions, and if I’ve done that, I’ve done my job.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:01:19 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com4/25/2008 10:01:19 AM The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure in two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford. Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” Of course, Morris has made a living crafting subjective mediations of reality, and formally Standard Operating Procedure is an embodiment of the problematic relationship between representation and interpretation that underlies his thesis. High-contrast, hyper-shallow focus re-enactments (Morris prefers the word “illustrations”) compete for space with actual images from the prison, set in the middle of the screen so we can see their original framing. Low-res cell cam videos are are also left their original size, and in the case of the footage documenting the infamous “human pyramid,” the video appears as a flickering doorway taking up about a fifth of an otherwise black screen. Throughout, Morris uses the cinematic language of fantasy films––including a score by Danny Elfman, strategic CGI compositing and slow motion effects––in order to sell the feeling that we’re trapped in a nightmare, familiar in its photorealism and yet, in terms of what’s actually seen and what we read it to mean, surreal. Morris is particularly concerned with how the information contained in individual photographs led to indictment of the soldiers involved––both in terms of criminal charges and in the court of public opinion––as well as the fact that if there wouldn’t have been a “scandal” as such if the photos hadn’t existed. An Army investigator charged with considering the images as evidence is given ample screen time, and his explanation of how and why some photographs were considered more damning than others is fascinating. The image of a hooded detainee with wires attached to his finger, though probably the most iconic image of the scandal on the whole, shows no sign of anything criminally untoward––in the investigation, it was classified as evidence of “S.O.P.”, or Standard Operating Procedure. Meanwhile, the image of Lynndie England pointing to a masturbating soldier seems to depict a coerced sexual act, and was thus considered evidence of a crime. England is now just 25, but as Swofford noted, she’s come out of this ordeal (and three years in prison) looking “like she’s aged a decade” compared to the girl in that photograph. Though vilified in the media for her cheerful presence in many of the most damning photos from Abu Ghraib, England maintains that her crimes were spawned by passion. “I was blinded by being in love with a man,” England laments in the film––not sentimentally, but tough and resigned, like a Loretta Lynn song come to life. Throughout, Morris contrasts photos taken by the soldiers of one another with their photos documenting their treatment of the detainees, and in several of the former, England is frozen in poses that would be nearly indistinguishable from photos compromising activity involving detainees…were she not young, white and female. When we see England hand cuffed in a sprawl on a cot, or squatting with her pants around her knees and a middle finger raised to the camera, knowing that these images were taken by her then-boyfriend Sargeant Charles Graner, we understand that she’s the middle link in a chain of humiliation. Every soldier who served time in relation to the scandal says they were just following orders from their commanding officer, but England, a love-struck 20 year old in way over her head in every respect, was taking orders from the man she was sleeping with. The infamous human pyramid of naked detainees? England says Graner referred to it as his “birthday present” to her. This was before England found out she was pregnant and learned that Graner was also sleeping with Meghan Ambuhl, another female officer at the prison. Now serving a ten year prison sentence, Graner is currently married to Ambuhl, who appears in both Kennedy and Morris’ films. Mrs. Graner also appeared off to the side in the original image of England holding a leash attached to a detainee, but she had been cropped out by Graner by the time the image made it to the media. If anything, this psycho-sexual drama is underplayed in Morris’ film. One could easily image a full feature on how the Graner/England/Ambul love triangle––and particularly Graner’s fetishistic impulse to obtain photographic evidence of the younger of his two girlfriends in situations of humiliation––was fueled by the stresses of the war and the prison and in turn snowballed into a serious black mark on America’s record of military professionalism. Morris sacrifices analysis of this and other provocative ideas naturally embedded in the story, in order to keep the focus on the way the story has been told through imagery. This analysis is often so wonkily specific that it can sometimes lose the forest for miniscule trees. Nonetheless, Morris indicated after the screening that the sex and gender issues raised by England’s aspect of the story was at the forefront of his concern. “I’ve often seen this war as a war of sexual humiliation,” he said, “It’s no accident that American women were used to strip Iraqi males. To me, it’s no accident that Graner took his 90 pound girlfriend, who is 20 years old, and took THIS picture.” In the film, England takes responsibility for falling for the wrong man, but she also takes every opportunity to blame her complicity in the crimes on the coupling. Under Morris’ gaze, England isn’t a morally reprehensible bad apple, or even a woman who made bad choices based on romantic obsession, but a victim. So is Sabrina Harman, a female soldier seen in another iconic Abu Ghraib image, giving the camera a thumbs up next to a corpse. Morris says that when he first saw that image, his knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Harmon “was a monster…maybe even responsible [for the death].” He later learned that Harmon was an aspiring forensic photographer, and that after taking a single photo of herself in front of the body of a detainee accidentally killed during an interrogation by a CIA agent when she was not present, she proceeded to take dozens of evidentiary-style photos of the corpse. Morris says he’s about to publish an entire essay on “Sabrina and the smile” on his New York Times blog, which will include an interview with “the greatest living expert on the smile.” I hope this essay gives greater consideration to why the budding forensic photographer saw fit to document herself as a gleeful tourist at the crime scene; Harman’s explanation that her thumb reflexively popped up because she “never knows what to do with my hands in pictures” didn’t quite do it for me. Morris’ persistently insists, both within the film and in the conversation afterwards, that those who participated in the abuses and photographed them (and served time for their actions) are virtually without culpability compared to the higher-ups who, at best, created a culture of Geneva Convention indifference, and at worst, ordered torture and then pretended like they didn’t know it was happening when the photographs came to light. The idea that there would not have been an Abu Ghraib scandal had the photographs not made it to the media is one thing; the idea that the human beings who appear in those photographs are not responsible for their own actions is another. Such suggestions hold particularly little water when it comes to people like England and Harman, who continually prove themselves on screen to be tangled masses of impulse vs. intellect; to write their actions off as products of the frustrations of working in a male military culture is both condescending and too generous. Standard Operation Procedure frustrates more than it enlightens, but to hear Morris tell it, that’s part of the plan. “It’s not a movie that can provide an answer to every question––far from it,” he said towards the end of last night’s chat. “It’s a movie that raises questions, and if I’ve done that, I’ve done my job.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2007/8/17/18298.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 8/17/2007 2:01:26 PM
Body: On today’s edition of FilmCouch, Paul and Kevin referenced Errol Morris in their discussion of Charles Ferguson’s even-tempered (yet incendiary) documentary, No End in Sight. So I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you to the most recent post on Zoom, Morris’ New York Times blog, which he filed this past Wednesday. Perhaps this is where it should be noted that although technically, Zoom is published in blog format, Morris is really using it as a platform to release long, critical essays on photography about once a month. The August installment is about the infamous image of the hooded figure standing on a box at Abu Ghraib. Morris has done much research and rumination on this subject, as his next film, S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure, uses issues surrounding representation and photographic evidence as jumping off points to examine the events at Abu Ghraib within the larger context of the war on terror. In this latest post on Zoom, Morris discusses a bizarre case of mistaken identity associated with that photograph. One Iraqi prisoner, who was given the nickname Clawman, told the NY Times that it was him under the hood; he even, according to Morris, “printed business cards with a drawing of the hooded-man displayed next to his name.” Later, it was discovered that Clawman was not actually the man in the photograph–the soldier in charge of watching him said that Clawman was never placed on a box, and in fact was a large enough man that “If Clawman had been put on a box, he would have crushed it” — and the NY Times published a retraction. Morris explains that one of the reasons why Clawman’s story was able to fly was because the Times ran a photo with their story in which Clawman’s own, slightly deformed left hand was cropped out of frame. The actual photo of the man in hood is blurry and his fingers appear to be curled in. If you saw it juxtaposed with language professing it to be a photograph of a man with a deformed hand, you’d that claim accept at face value. As Morris puts it, Photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view. It allows us to not-see at the same time that it allows us to see. But language plus photography provides an express train to error. The photograph should be a constant reminder of how we can make false inferences from pictures. And of how pictures and language can interact to produce falsehood. The problem was not a lack of research. Yes, there was archival material that could have cast suspicion on the claim that Clawman was the Hooded Man. But the mistaken identification was driven by Clawman’s own desire to be the iconic victim, to be the Hooded Man, and our own need to believe him. It is an error engendered by photography and perpetuated by us. And it comes from a desire for “the ocular proof.” A proof that turns out to be no proof at all. You can read the full story here. At the end, Morris thanks readers for their feedback and says he “intends to respond”, so if you have a question for the man you may want to leave it in the Zoom comments. Originally posted on:Spoutblog
]]>Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:01:26 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com8/17/2007 2:01:26 PMOn today’s edition of FilmCouch, Paul and Kevin referenced Errol Morris in their discussion of Charles Ferguson’s even-tempered (yet incendiary) documentary, No End in Sight. So I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you to the most recent post on Zoom, Morris’ New York Times blog, which he filed this past Wednesday. Perhaps this is where it should be noted that although technically, Zoom is published in blog format, Morris is really using it as a platform to release long, critical essays on photography about once a month. The August installment is about the infamous image of the hooded figure standing on a box at Abu Ghraib. Morris has done much research and rumination on this subject, as his next film, S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure, uses issues surrounding representation and photographic evidence as jumping off points to examine the events at Abu Ghraib within the larger context of the war on terror. In this latest post on Zoom, Morris discusses a bizarre case of mistaken identity associated with that photograph. One Iraqi prisoner, who was given the nickname Clawman, told the NY Times that it was him under the hood; he even, according to Morris, “printed business cards with a drawing of the hooded-man displayed next to his name.” Later, it was discovered that Clawman was not actually the man in the photograph–the soldier in charge of watching him said that Clawman was never placed on a box, and in fact was a large enough man that “If Clawman had been put on a box, he would have crushed it” — and the NY Times published a retraction. Morris explains that one of the reasons why Clawman’s story was able to fly was because the Times ran a photo with their story in which Clawman’s own, slightly deformed left hand was cropped out of frame. The actual photo of the man in hood is blurry and his fingers appear to be curled in. If you saw it juxtaposed with language professing it to be a photograph of a man with a deformed hand, you’d that claim accept at face value. As Morris puts it, Photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view. It allows us to not-see at the same time that it allows us to see. But language plus photography provides an express train to error. The photograph should be a constant reminder of how we can make false inferences from pictures. And of how pictures and language can interact to produce falsehood. The problem was not a lack of research. Yes, there was archival material that could have cast suspicion on the claim that Clawman was the Hooded Man. But the mistaken identification was driven by Clawman’s own desire to be the iconic victim, to be the Hooded Man, and our own need to believe him. It is an error engendered by photography and perpetuated by us. And it comes from a desire for “the ocular proof.” A proof that turns out to be no proof at all. You can read the full story here. At the end, Morris thanks readers for their feedback and says he “intends to respond”, so if you have a question for the man you may want to leave it in the Zoom comments. Originally posted on:Spoutblog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/prison/MemberTagFilms.aspxprison
Number of films tagged: 2437

Number of people who tagged: 62

Number of times used: 167

]]>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:02:27 GMT243762167Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/terrorism/MemberTagFilms.aspxterrorism
Number of films tagged: 981

Number of people who tagged: 49

Number of times used: 117

]]>Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:04:22 GMT98149117Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/torture/MemberTagFilms.aspxtorture
Number of films tagged: 571

Number of people who tagged: 43

Number of times used: 104

]]>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:51:19 GMT57143104Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/iraq/MemberTagFilms.aspxiraq
Number of films tagged: 241

Number of people who tagged: 17

Number of times used: 40

]]>Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:18:09 GMT2411740Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/scandal/MemberTagFilms.aspxscandal
Number of films tagged: 540

Number of people who tagged: 16

Number of times used: 30

]]>Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:14:49 GMT5401630Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/interrogation/MemberTagFilms.aspxinterrogation
Number of films tagged: 8

Number of people who tagged: 4

Number of times used: 8

]]>Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:22:46 GMT848Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/iraq-war/MemberTagFilms.aspxiraq-war
Number of films tagged: 11

Number of people who tagged: 4

Number of times used: 11

]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:54:47 GMT11411Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/current-events/MemberTagFilms.aspxcurrent-events
Number of films tagged: 2

Number of people who tagged: 2

Number of times used: 2

]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:33:48 GMT222Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/interrogator/MemberTagFilms.aspxinterrogator
Number of films tagged: 67

Number of people who tagged: 2

Number of times used: 2

]]>Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:02:41 GMT6722Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/abu-ghraib/MemberTagFilms.aspxabu-ghraib
Number of films tagged: 1

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 1

]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:33:48 GMT111Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/current-affairs/MemberTagFilms.aspxcurrent-affairs
Number of films tagged: 1

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 1

]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:33:48 GMT111Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/tff/MemberTagFilms.aspxtff
Number of films tagged: 116

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 116

]]>Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:50:42 GMT1161116Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/tribeca/MemberTagFilms.aspxtribeca
Number of films tagged: 146

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 146

]]>Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:53:15 GMT1461146Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/tribeca-08/MemberTagFilms.aspxtribeca-08
Number of films tagged: 116

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 116

]]>Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:50:42 GMT1161116Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/tribeca-2008/MemberTagFilms.aspxtribeca-2008
Number of films tagged: 116

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 116

]]>Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:50:42 GMT1161116Tag