Part of Creating Reality: The Iraq War on Handicam, a two-film retrospective commemorating 23 years since the United States invaded Iraq, a Quixotic adventure that proved to be one of the more consequential decisions of the 21st century. Of particular interest for this series will be the image, specifically the image as produced by the handicam, that ubiquitous palm-sized camera whose lo-fi digital aesthetic is simultaneously detached and nightmarish. The two films in this series, Mission Accomplished (dir. by Sean Langan, 2007) and Only the Dead Know (dir. by Michael Ware and Bill Guttentag, 2015) are made by men who aren’t filmmakers, yet they find themselves filming prisons, protests, and roadside bombs because of the democratization of the digital image. It’ll be through the handicam too that we meet the men who would come to haunt the American occupation for years via an explosive (and highly motivated) insurgency.

After each screening, we hope to have a wide-spanning conversation on the legacy of the Iraq War (and the wider so-called Global War on Terror) and the ongoing Ramadan War, which threatens to plunge the world into a global depression.

Only the Dead (2015)
Directed by Bill Guttentag, Michael Ware

A searing account of war correspondent Michael Ware’s seven years reporting in Iraq–an extraordinary journey that takes him into the darkest recesses of the Iraq War and the human soul.