Sunday, September 02, 2007

Abeer - Fragnance of Flower


I wrote about Abeer, an Iraqi teenager who was raped and burned by US soliders six months ago.

Well, that innocent kiddo and her horrible story moved a Hollywood director to make a film and it is called " Redacted". Brian DePalma ( Scarface, The black Dahlia) says he made this film as he believes that only pictures can stop the war. Redacted was shown in Venice film festival last week and it should be out very soon.

Surprisingly Google search is not bringing as many articles as I had hope for, as Brian DePalma is no small fry when it comes to getting media attention to whatever he does. TIME ran a story two days ago but I can not find it now.

"The film's title refers to how, according to De Palma, mainstream American newspapers and television channels are failing to tell the true story of the war by keeping the most graphic images of the conflict away from public opinion.

"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to "edit" the material.

"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get sued," De Palma said.

"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real."

The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons." - AOL article dated 8/31/07

Artistes are considered to be the mirror of any society. Society and its leaders can take any course of action but an artist always chooses the path of truth and justice - otherwise he / she is a bania and does need to be called an artist.

ps: The picture above is NOT from the film but a real one. So those boots that you see are real and so are those tears, the cry and the blood. The question is where is her mother? I suspect she was dead by the time this picture was taken, as every mother would fight tooth and nail with any opposition to get to her daughter in that situation....

This is how it is a in War Zone....

3 comments:

Jyoti said...

War really can get anything called "right" in any sense.

Ye manzilen !! said...

Absloutly.....

Ye manzilen !! said...

The next day headlines of news papers at the Venice film Festival said " Shocking".....Brain Depalma is a legend....he will do whatever it takes..