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Restrepo: upcoming movie documentary on US outpost in Korangal Valley

From a lengthy review, worth a read:

Reviewing "Restrepo" and the wars we fight
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/06/reviewing_restrepo

Restrepo, a documentary that tracks an Army platoon serving in a dangerous part of northeast Afghanistan near the Pakistani border a little more than two years ago, arrives as a summer of discontent and uncertainty over the Afghanistan war unfolds in America. As I watched the opening scenes of the movie, a wave of déjà vu washed over me -- I have seen this movie several times before, and it doesn't end nice.

Restrepo is the movie of the year that Americans should see but most won't. The film won't likely compete with the choices of an American public seeking distraction from economic malaise, an oil spill, and not least but usually last as an afterthought in our national consciousness: a war in Afghanistan not going so well. Restrepo has one similarity with many of the box office hits of the summer -- the latest installments of the Twilight saga, Toy Story, and Shrek or revamped versions of the Karate Kid and an updated movie version of the 1980s television show the A-Team -- they are all retreads containing figments of the past and similarities to previous movies.

Restrepo calls to mind some of the documentaries released while our national debate over the Iraq war waged five years ago. First, with its intense and up-close focus on the daily lives of grunt-level U.S. troops serving in a faraway land, the movie is similar to Gunner Palace and The War Tapes, two documentaries filmed in 2004 and 2005 -- the latter filmed by troops with a New Hampshire National Guard unit themselves. The viewer gets to see the soldiers combating insurgents, trying to win over the local population with good deeds, and goofing off in their free time just as any ordinary men of a similar age do back home. But these are no ordinary men. In showing what daily life of the troops in a warzone looks like, the movie reminds us how much we demand of our brave young Americans ---we ask them to be warriors one moment, and cultural anthropologists and development workers the next...

In today's Afghanistan policy discussions, there is a lot of talk about the "whole of government" approach and the civilian surge -- the teams of diplomats and development and agricultural specialists that are accompanying the current surge of military forces. One interesting aspect about Restrepo is that the civilian counterparts to the troops are non-existent in the movie -- yet there was a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) working in the area at that same time. This blog post from Alison Blosser, a State Department political officer working at that time in the Korengal Valley, offered some details on the projects the PRT was doing, but the U.S. civilian presence doesn't get much attention in the documentary. This may be because the military has had to undertake many of the tasks that should be assigned to civilian agencies, which suffer from personnel and resource shortages (particularly in comparison to the military).

So Restrepo shows the soldiers of the 173rd Airborne serving as diplomats and development workers. The most interesting scenes are watching the soldiers meet with local elders to try and win their trust by settling disputes over livestock and offering promises of jobs and improved infrastructure. In Restrepo, we witness the considerable difficulties with translating counterinsurgency principles into practice. One broader question not directly asked in the movie -- or raised all that much in today's policy debate for that matter -- is whether all of these counterinsurgency efforts are directly making Americans safer...

Two key imperatives shaping today's generation of leaders in the United States are to avoid another Vietnam and to make the considerable sunk costs in our current conflicts matter. Real global security threats exist in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but similar threats reside in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen -- we just seek to manage those threats differently in those places than we do in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a less costly footprint and more indirect role.

The United States arrived towards some light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq not simply because the surge "worked" in producing some sort of victory or counterinsurgency tactics considerably improved the quality of life of Iraqis. Americans arrived at some sense of closure in Iraq because we felt like we could move on and the mission was accomplished, even when millions of Iraqis still do not see it that way in their personal lives...

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Tune in for a discussion with Restrepo director Tim Hetherington at the New America Foundation tomorrow at approximately 6:30pm. 
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/restrepo

Mark
Ottawa
 
I read the book "WAR" that goes with it. Can't wait to see this.
 
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/restrepo-afghan-outpost-4808

Starts Monday 29 Nov 10 on the National Geographic Channel. Link has lots of info.

Restrepo, a film by award-winning photojournalist Tim Hetherington and author Sebastian Junger, chronicles the deployment of U.S. troops stationed at one of the most dangerous postings in Afghanistan.

RESTREPO is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the soldiers; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.
 
Looking forward to seeing the movie after reading the book that is a companion piece ("War").  IIRC, the US Army left the Korengal Valley and no longer has troops there.
 
Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta is the first living recipient  - since Vietnam - of the Congressional Medal of Honor...he earned it in the Korengal...

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/96470.0.html

edit to change link to merged topic on the good Sgt.

milnet.ca staff
 
Seen it earlier this week and was impressed with the brutal honesty of it. The one thing I did notice though, was how young the troops all looked.  Not a one looked older than 18-20 years old.
 
Just finished downloading this.  Will have a look at it later this weekend.
 
Just finished watching it out a few minutes ago, It was pretty moving to see what these soldiers went through and what they accomplished.  I'd definitely suggest people watch it.
 
I just recently viewed it as well, and I thought it was fantastic. One of the best military documentaries I've seen, particularly modern.

Very raw, honest, and emotional. I think it's as close as you can get to being there, without being there. You shared the fighting, the work, the losses, the boredom... pretty much everything that makes a tour, a tour.

I think, for me, what's more profound is that, despite how tragic and hard this tour is for us to watch, it would have been much more difficult for them. Great piece of film.
 
Just finished watching.  A must see to say the least.  :yellow:
 
jollyjacktar said:
A must see to say the least.  :yellow:
Nauticus said:
One of the best military documentaries I've seen, particularly modern....Great piece of film.

I second that. The book is just as good.

Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington did a great job putting both together, especially after they lost alot of their footage.
 
See: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/96470.25.html

http://restrepothemovie.com/

Outpost Films presents "The Sal Giunta Story". This 14 minute video tells his story.
 
full movie is on next Tue @1800 on the Nat Geo channel in HD . . .  check your local channel . . .  103 in my neck of the woods.
 
It's out on DVD Eamon.  ;)

Regards
 
http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

National Post 4 Feb 11

In 2007, when the journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington set out to make a documentary following a military unit in Afghanistan, they had no awards aspirations.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC The documentary Restrepo, about U.S. soliders in Afghanistan, is nominated for an Oscar.


“Don’t get hurt, don’t get killed doing this — that was our first order of business,” Junger said. The documentary, Restrepo, about a remote base in the Korangal Valley, led them to embed with the Second Platoon of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team for more than a year, and they did get hurt. A Humvee Junger was in drove over an improvised explosive device, rattling those on board, and he later tore his Achilles’ tendon jumping out of the line of a firefight. Hetherington broke his leg on a mission and had to walk four hours down a mountain on it, humping his gear, to get back to camp. Their personal ordeals, complete with some level of post-traumatic stress and difficulty returning to civilian life, mirrored those of the soldiers they followed. Restrepo won a grand jury prize for best domestic documentary at the Sundance Film Festival last year and went on to play at theatres and on military bases around the country.

Now it is one of the five Oscar documentary hopefuls, in a category that was among the few with major surprises when nominations were announced last week. Waiting for Superman, an early favourite, was left off the list, as was The Tillman Story, another harrowing film about Afghanistan; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, from the Oscarwinner Alex Gibney, also got no love. Instead the contenders are mostly smaller films from lesser-known filmmakers: Waste Land, set against the backdrop of a massive garbage dump in Rio de Janeiro; Gasland, which examines the dangers of natural-gas drilling; and the oddball of the group, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy’s subversive story of a street artist run amok. The presumed front-runner is Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s well-liked dissection of the economic crisis. But with most of the feature film and acting categories apparently sewn up, thanks to the consensus voting of industry groups, the documentaries are one area where there is still some drama.

“This is tough year, a really tough year,” Gibney, who is on the executive committee of the documentary branch at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said at a screening for his movie at the start of this awards season.

Ferguson, the only repeat nominee (he was a contender with No End in Sight in 2008), has as an agent now, but he was still bewildered by the whole prize process. “This is totally not my department,” he said.

And Junger, a veteran war correspondent but first-time filmmaker, said he wished The Tillman Story had been included. “The nominating procedure is a mystery even for people in the business,” he said.

Lucy Walker, the director of Waste Land, agreed. “It’s a small community,” she said, “but you don’t get to peek behind the curtain.” At this year’s Sundance festival, where she was a juror, Walker met an Academy member who told her he had voted to nominate her film but didn’t know how to vote for her to win. (The documentary branch requires its members to have seen all the films to vote.) “He was saying, like: ‘Do I have to see the movies all over again? I’ve seen them all already, but I think I have to go see it again, and I don’t think I can vote for you because I’m leaving town,’ ” she recounted. (No repeat viewings were necessary if he had already seen it at the nominations level, according to Leslie Unger, an Academy spokeswoman; if he hadn’t, it had to be seen at a theatre, not on a screener.)
“I’ve been asking for copies of the rules of the voting,” Walker said. “It seems quite arcane.”

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Great movie. The extra interviews are also worth listening to.
 
http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

National Post - 21 Apr 11 - DOMINIQUE SOGUEL Benghazi, Libya, Agence France-Presse, with files from news services

WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS’ LAST BATTLE ZONE

Renowned American photographer, British director killed in Libya conflict

Award-winning photographer Chris Hondros was killed shortly after taking this dramatic picture Wednesday of a rebel fighting house-to-house in the besieged town of Misurata.

Photo Caption: CHRIS HONDROS / GETTY IMAGES A Libyan rebel runs up a burning stairwell during house-to-house fighting with Gaddafi loyalists in Misurata on Wednesday. The photo was taken by Chris Hondros; shortly after, Hondros and fellow award-winning photographer Tim Hetherington were killed after being struck by mortar fire.

Tim Hetherington, an Oscar-nominated film director and war photographer, was also killed when they were hit by mortar fire in Tripoli Street, the main thoroughfare and focus of fighting in the city.

The photographers were following rebels who had forced soldiers loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi into houses in Tripoli Street. When the soldiers refused to surrender, the rebels went house to house, setting fires and shooting.

After capturing the intense scenes, Mr. Hondros, 41, an American with the Getty photo agency, and Mr. Hetherington, also 41, a photographer with
Vanity Fair, were hit by mortar fire.

“It was quiet and we were trying to get away and then a mortar landed and we heard explosions,” Spanish photographer Guillermo Cervera said.

“I told them not to gather,” said one rebel who recalled advising the photographers about the dangers of sticking too close together. “They hit groups. I told them not to.”

Doctors attended to Mr. Hetherington and a wounded colleague but after 15 minutes, Mr. Hetherington was pronounced dead.

Mr. Hetherington, a Briton, produced and co-directed the acclaimed documentary Restrepo, which won a Oscar nomination. “He really wanted to get the pictures but, at the same time, I had the impression he was a very responsible person,” said Tiziana Prezzo, an Italian journalist who was in Misurata two days earlier.

“He was one of the last people I met in Misurata. Now that he’s not alive any more ... it’s shocking,” she said.

Mr. Hetherington covered numerous conflicts and won the 2007 World Press Photo Award for his coverage of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Mr. Hondros suffered serious head injuries and died several hours later.

He had received multiple awards, including the 2005 Robert Capa gold medal.

His work in Liberia earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

They are the second and third journalists killed in Libya in the two-month-old conflict.

President Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, Jay Carney, said the U.S. leader was “saddened” to learn Mr. Hetherington had been killed, in a statement released before the news of Mr. Hondros’s death.

Mr. Hondros “never shied away from the front line, having covered the world’s major conflicts throughout his distinguished career, and his work in Libya was no exception,” Getty said in a statement.

Also injured in the incident were Guy Martin, a freelance photographer working for the picture agency Panos, and American Michael Brown, who was working for the Corbis agency.

Mr. Hetherington’s family said in a statement released to Vanity Fair that it was “with great sadness we learned that our son and brother” was killed, saying “he will be forever missed.”

On Tuesday, he sent his last post to his Twitter account: “In besieged Libyan city of Misurata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

Journalists have increasingly come under fire in the ongoing conflict in Libya.

In the courtroom of Benghazi, seat of the opposition, photographs of missing journalists plaster the walls, alongside a portrait of Ali Hassan alJaber, an Al-Jazeera cameraman killed on March 12 in an ambush near Benghazi.

Mr. Jaber was the first foreign journalist killed in Libya since the beginning of the uprising against Col. Gaddafi on Feb. 15.

The Libyan regime detained numerous journalists.

A spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) said that eight foreign journalists and six Libyan colleagues were being held by Col. Gaddafi’s forces.


   






 
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