Australian Film Presents Unique View from Iraq

A family home stands in rubble. Trapped under the wreckage of a bomb is a little girl. Crowds of neighbours have gathered, anxious, panicking, shouting in rapid Arabic. Women wail and ululate, throwing up their arms and crying out to Allah. Men desperately scramble through the wreckage. All is chaos, anarchy and violence.

This is the view of Iraq we have become immune to.

Compassion fatigue has set in and the sight of yet another injured civilian, yet another family home destroyed, yet another life reduced to rubble is somehow no longer as horrifying as it should be. News of impending civil war in Iraq barely makes the papers anymore.

We were told it was a new kind of war. The most media-covered conflict in military history. Briefings in Washington, ‘embedded’ reporters, views from Kuwait and Qatar – these were all supposed to keep the pubic informed – but did we really know what was happening in Baghdad?

On the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week, this astonishing Australian/Iraqi documentary, In The Shadow Of The Palms, the latest work by acclaimed independent Australian documentary filmmaker, Wayne Coles-Janess, won the Golden Reel for Best Documentary at its US premiere at the Tiburon Film Festival in California.

This is the only documentary filmed on the streets of Baghdad before, during and immediately after ‘liberation’ and it tells a fascinating tale of the lives of ordinary Iraqis. A view rarely seen in mainstream media.

The film had been effectively censored until now – having been refused all government and industry funding in Australia – however it has been a surprise hit at film festivals around Europe and Asia.

There is a crucial difference between ‘media war’ and ‘real war’. While the ‘media war’ may have been an entirely new one in Iraq, Coles-Janess’ film demonstrates that the ‘real war’ was still about the sounds, sights, smells and emotions of fear and violence.

Any attempt to represent reality entails a number of choices: what to show, what to highlight, what to omit and these choices are intrinsically bound up with power struggles and operational constraints.

Governments have now become expert at directing the construction of the media war, to the point where it has been argued that correspondents are fast becoming merely extras in a piece of theatre.

In direct contrast to this is Coles-Janess’ film. At a time when journalists are being exposed to unprecedented government and military control of the media spectacle, he gained access to the city and people of Baghdad and documented the changes in the lives of ordinary people in the last four weeks before the invasion.

Unlike the mediated view of the mainstream media, which highlights the technological developments, or the political processes underway before the invasion, Coles-Janess offers the stories of a diverse range of everyday Baghdad residents: a professor of Arabic poetry, an Olympic Wrestling coach, a Palestinian-born translator and a Cobbler. Each of them tell their own stories and express their opinions without censorship or restraint.

It is the humanitarian, rather than the political perspective, which is foregrounded. While it is easy to become immune to the mainstream media’s war coverage, it is impossible to deny the power of the stories of these ordinary people.

In an excruciating countdown to the catastrophe, a grandmother prays to God for peace whilst her family cooks their last meal together and looks over their war supplies. An academic struggles to find a book to calm his mind whilst waiting for the bombing to begin. A young father cleans his rifle and asks for a last photo saying “I want to smile.”

A view of Iraq we have never seen before.

In the Shadow of the Palms will screen at this years Los Angeles Film Festival as well as the Inspiration Film Festival, California.

In the Shadow of the Palms Website