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Oct 22 2007
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Society + Culture
By Bob Boldt   

Translation

Redacted redacted

 Brian De Palma's film, now add the redaction of their images entirely
Brian De Palma's film, now add the redaction of their images entirely
It is appalling to hear that Redacted has been redacted. As if it were possible to further destroy the identities of the poor, maimed, dead Iraqis whose faces formed the background of the end titles in Brian De Palma's film, now add the redaction of their images entirely.

Are the cost benefit analysts working for the pharmaceuticals, automobile manufactures and the tobacco companies the only ones with any sense of risk or courage anymore? I prefer to think this has less to do with protecting the producers from legal action or the Iraqis from humiliation and invasion of privacy, than a monumental cowardice when it comes to confronting of the American moviegoer with a little too much reality.

De Palma's initial acquiescence to the insurers forced him to abandon the use of any actual documentary footage in the body of the film. This has already resulted in the Right Wing warmongers accusing him of "making it all up" because he restaged rather than using the real footage. This colossal inability on their part to understand the difference between art and life is too outrageous to even deserve comment.

What this chronic failure of nerve on the part of underwriters will do to the future of actual documentary filmmaking I leave to cynical speculation. I am convinced however that eventually the entertainment industry, corporations and the insurance pencil pushers will so lobotomize the creative spirit in this country, that the only artists left in our culture will be members of the Britney Spears Ilk's Club.

If you wish to see an unrepentant, unredacted piece of filmmaking that is not afraid of lawsuits and not afraid to show the real face of war, I recommend to you a moving three minute video on YouTube called "Kindertotenlied".


I hope that when the producers, whose footage was stolen for use in this video, finally get around to suing little old filmmaker (me), they will learn exactly how much blood can be squeezed from a rock (as opposed to Iraq). Abject poverty, ah my foes and oh my friends, does have its privileges!

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1. 23-10-2007 05:36
US Child killing, War, Ellsberg, Art, Ki
Bob Boldt\'s movie Kindertotenlied - Song about the Death of Children - is profoundly moving and illustrates the power of inspired imagery, visual Art, to transcend cold statistics.  
 
I have been bearing witness to the continuing horror of the Bush War on Terror that is in actuality a War on Asian Women and Children - Asian Women and Children constitute most of the victims.  
 
Thus the excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 22 million in post-1950 US Asian Wars (see \"Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950\" via the link below) and 8 million in the Bush I plus Bush II Asian Wars (see:  
United State Terorism. 8 million deaths & media holocaust denial).  
 
Consult UNICEF (see: UNICEF and you will quickly discover that 122,000 under-5 year old infants die each year in US-occupied Iraq and 370,000 annually in US-occupied Afghansitan - do the math for 4.6 years of US war in Iraq and 6 years of US war in Afghanistan and the total infant deaths = 0.56 million + 2.22 million = 2.78 million infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to egregious US war crimes.(By way of comparison the Nazis murdered 1.5 million Jewish children in WW2). 
 
Yet the statistics are ignored by the world - they are lied to by media and politicians, they are ashamed or simply just don\'t care or don\'t want to know.  
 
Dr Daniel Ellsberg in his recent great interview on MWC News (see: Daniel Ellsberg explained this holocaust ignoring in terms of an intrinsic lack of sympathy for foreigners: \"But the reason that does not get more prominence is a very sad one, and I think it is sad not only about America but, I have to say, about our species. That reason is that the public at large--both in Vietnam and now--does not seem to feel a great deal of concern about deaths of foreigners, even if their country is strongly implicated in those deaths. If they feel any concern at all, it is certainly not anywhere near their concern for the deaths of their own people.  
 
I must say I am not aware of any countries in history or now for which that is not true. I have not seen it in my reading of history: a great concern about the death of so-called enemies or even of innocent people.\" 
 
However images, and especially inspired images or collections of images - visual Art - can transcend this gap in responsiveness.  
 
Remember the photograph of the naked, burnt Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm holocaust - a photograph credited with shortening the Indo-China war (13 million excess deaths). Likewise see other inspired photographs that exposed gross civil society and war-time abuses of humanity in the book \"My Brother\'s Keeper\" (reviewed recently on MWC News: link
 
Hopefully Bob Boldt\'s deeply moving 3 minute movie Kindertotenlied will have a big impact and help stop the carnage of the Bush Wars and its much-feared, adumbrated extension to remote, peaceful Iran.
Guest
gpolya@optusnet.com.auNOSPAM! ">Dr Gideon Polya

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