October
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Standard Operating Procedure Goes Medical, Digital
It's not like Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure, for all its merits, is going to go flying off the shelves when Sony releases the DVD on October 14th, even if the doc did win the Silver Bear Grand Jury Audience Award at Berlin. So how do you promote a serious doc about relative truth, photography and torture?
Well, I've never seen this one before: Physicians for Human Rights and Participant Media, which backed the film, are setting up a simultaneous digital screening at 27 medical schools around the country on October 6 (7 PM EST). The medical schools range from Albert Einstein U, Boston U to Brown Medical School and the U of Utah. The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker and Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, author of PHR’s Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and Its Impact.
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Abu Ghraib? Gee, that's a courageous film. I'm waiting for someone to make a documentary exposing the horrific torture inflicted on captured American soldiers, kidnapped Europeans and Israelis, and friendly Iraqis (including women and children) who are mutilated and slain (usually by beheading) and whose bodies are then dumped on the roadside by the barbaric Islamists. Now THAT, in the current cinematic zeitgeist of cultural self-flagellation, anti-Americanism, and abject capitulation, would be courageous.
Posted by: Bigshaker | October 03, 2008 at 06:19 PM
Forgive me for writing but I bristled when I read your recent blog regarding the Participant/Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)medical school screenings of Standard Operating Procedure. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an event producer who has been brought on by Participant to coordinate this program. (Please know that Participant certainly doesn't know that I'm writing you; they would probably be rather upset with me if they knew). Your blog framed this project as a promotional vehicle for the film. It's typical of the entertainment industry not to be able to see beyond promotion. What Participant has done is to utilize this film as a catalyst for a serious national discussion about the complicity of doctors in torture condoned by the American military system. By partnering with PHR who are leaders in this discussion, Participant is furthering this impressive organization’s ability to generate critical examination where it may matter most, on campuses where our best and brightest study to become tomorrow’s doctors. The project is more than a promotion, it is a rare example of a major entertainment company taking social action.
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Chris Wangro
Zaragunda, Inc.
Oct 4, N.Y.C.
Posted by: Chris Wangro | October 06, 2008 at 03:48 PM