As some of you may know my documentary partner on OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND, Garrett Scott, sadly passed away only two days before we were awarded an Independent Spirit Award for the film. It is a blow that many of us are still trying to recover from. While there was no way to move forward with business as usual, it quickly became clear that showing the film was a source of relief. It has been a way to honor Garrett and the work we did together. It is in that spirit that I look forward to sharing the film and some of my thoughts on it with you.
One of the questions I am often asked is, "How did you get the access?" To some it seems incredible that two independent filmmakers could get intimate access to a Forward Operating Base in Iraq and come back with such starkly candid material. In all honesty we weren't sure we could either. That's why it was hard to find significant funding up front. In fact our initial funding consisted of tape stock, airplane tickets and body armor, that's it. We basically just showed up in Iraq and starting contacting Army public affairs officers at the battalion level. Once we were over there, there was almost this sense that we belonged, even if, like Garrett and myself, we had no military training and no prior experience in war zones. There was no high level clearance from back home, really only two guys basically knocking on the gates of FOB Volturno (AKA 'Dreamland') and asking if we could hang out for awhile.
Part of this relaxed policy was of course due to the amazing success, from the military's perspective, of the imbedding program during the initial invasion. The US Military is impressively professional and many of these early reports were simply jingoistic accounts of military prowess. But of course when we got there it was a different story. It was an occupation.
We suspected that the role of an infantry soldier during an occupation would be a conflicted and complicated one. All we could hope was that if they let us hang out long enough, eventually the walls would come down and we'd catch glimpse of something real and unmediated. Toward the end of the film one of the soldiers says, "People want their steak, but they don't want to know how the cow gets butchered." I think when it comes to the war in Iraq people do want to know. That's in many ways what the film seeks to be: an unmediated look at the raw process of occupation.
One of the questions I am often asked is, "How did you get the access?" To some it seems incredible that two independent filmmakers could get intimate access to a Forward Operating Base in Iraq and come back with such starkly candid material. In all honesty we weren't sure we could either. That's why it was hard to find significant funding up front. In fact our initial funding consisted of tape stock, airplane tickets and body armor, that's it. We basically just showed up in Iraq and starting contacting Army public affairs officers at the battalion level. Once we were over there, there was almost this sense that we belonged, even if, like Garrett and myself, we had no military training and no prior experience in war zones. There was no high level clearance from back home, really only two guys basically knocking on the gates of FOB Volturno (AKA 'Dreamland') and asking if we could hang out for awhile.
Part of this relaxed policy was of course due to the amazing success, from the military's perspective, of the imbedding program during the initial invasion. The US Military is impressively professional and many of these early reports were simply jingoistic accounts of military prowess. But of course when we got there it was a different story. It was an occupation.
We suspected that the role of an infantry soldier during an occupation would be a conflicted and complicated one. All we could hope was that if they let us hang out long enough, eventually the walls would come down and we'd catch glimpse of something real and unmediated. Toward the end of the film one of the soldiers says, "People want their steak, but they don't want to know how the cow gets butchered." I think when it comes to the war in Iraq people do want to know. That's in many ways what the film seeks to be: an unmediated look at the raw process of occupation.
