The Order of Myths

by Margaret Brown, Director
DVD, 80 mins., 2008
Sales, $395.00; rental, $95.00
Distributor's website: http://cinemaguild.com.

In Search of Gandhi (Why Democracy? Series)

by Alex Gibney, Director
DVD, 52 mins., 2007
Sales, $1995.00 (includes all 11 DVDs in the series)
Distributor's website: http://cinemaguild.com.

Taxi to the Dark Side (Why Democracy? Series)

by Lalit Vachani, Director
DVD, 52 mins., 2007
Sales, $295.00; rental, $95.00
Distributor's website: http://cinemaguild.com.

Strawberry Fields

by Ayelet Heller, Director
DVD, 60 mins., 2007
Sales, $350.00; rental, $95.00
Distributor's website: http://cinemaguild.com.

Jesus Politics:   The Bible and the Ballot

by Ilan Ziv, Director
DVD, 90 mins., 2007
Sales, institutional $398.00; sales, home $29.98
Distributor's website: http://www.icarusfilms.com/.

Killer's Paradise

by Giselle Portenier, Director
DVD, 83 mins., 2007/2008
Sales, $398.00
Distributor's website: http://www.icarusfilms.com/.

Baghdad Twist

by Joe Balass, Director
DVD, 34 mins., 2008
Sales, $225.00
Distributor's website: http://www.icarusfilms.com/.

Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

jzilberg@illinois.edu

There are common themes woven through each of these six documentary films.   Each of these films is about violations of human rights, rites of passage and passages. They are about historical legacies of injustice, searches for justice and survival. They are about the central role religion and social networks, and how these provide emotional, spiritual and practical support for those enduring uncertainty, violations of human rights and for grieving after deaths. In taking us into six very different worlds, they each provide us with compelling useful case studies for studying ethics and values.

From the carnivalesque legacy of slavery in the American south to human rights violations in Guatemala, Guantanamo Bay and Bagram, from the role of religious groups in the 2008 US elections to growing strawberries under fire in the Gaza strip, they are united by common desires and struggles:   for hope and prosperity, peace and security, justice and liberty. In essence, they are about human dignity and are all connected in one way or another to the use of terror in the present or the past. In this, they each speak to histories of the struggle for survival.

These films will be of exceptional use in classes on world history, democracy and human rights, injustice and absence of mercy, terrorism and the war on terror - no less imperialism and colonialism and the dark ways of history's sweep. From the racial divide in Louisiana as seen through the lens of Mardi Gras preparations to a walk in Gandhi's footsteps, from the fading decades of the centuries old Iraqi Jewish community to Gazan strawberry fields, the most gripping of these films and important in terms of democracy, politics and American history is Taxi to the Dark Side . This powerful film documents the US abrogation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention [1]. It contextualizes the legalization of the use of debasement and torture of suspected terrorists through detailing the interrogation and homicide of one innocent Afghani and the peculiar notion that torture became defined as only that treatment which leads to organ failure or death. In this it is important to keep in mind, as the film emphasizes, that of the tens of thousands of detainees, approximately 1 percent turned out to be "terrorists." In essence, this movie is fundamentally important for understanding the return to the dark side in international US relations after 9/11 and subsequently the importance of the US Supreme Court in balancing Executive Power [2].   It is significant to realize here that the suspension of habeas corpus arguably presents the most important legal, symbolic and philosophical departure to date from the original constitution. The film is of singular importance at this moment as Barack Hussein takes office having been elected in part on the notion of the restoration of habeas corpus and hope for change nationally and internationally.

From rampant impunity for rape and murder in Guatemala today to portent in Gaza, these documentaries will take you straight to the dark side. There, each of these films can perhaps best be brought into a meaningful orbit through the documentary Jesus Politics which through documenting the mobilization of voters through Christian church organizations in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Why this orbit?   Because the election of President Obama centered on singularly powerful issues relating not only to US international relations but the nation's very charter, that is, liberty and justice for all. The notion of habeas corpus lies at the heart of the concept of liberty as it allows for justice. Denying the possible innocence of the accused, in peace or war, provokes urgent questions about democracy, about imperialism and resistance, good and evil and by extension everything else. Thus the Executive abrogation of Article III of the Geneva Convention and its restoration by the Supreme Court are extraordinary historical decisions and judgments. They become even more salient when one considers the dark histories of the countries as given in each of these films wherein anyone suspected of being an enemy of the state could be subjected to "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment [3].

Take for instance the tragic story of how Dilaware, the innocent taxi driver on his first day at work lands up being tortured to death in Bagram. Or take the story of how Palestinian strawberries find their way to Europe through the mutual benefit of Palestinian and Jewish businesses working together. Now consider the recent mass releases of prisoners from Bagram and the pledge to close down Guantanamo Bay. Consider the images of the ruins of Gaza and the nature of asymmetric power and terror [4]. In all cases, these films are in one way or another about the sanctity of life and liberty. In each of them, the issue of justice and injustice either comes to the fore or lingers in the background.

The Order of Myths takes the viewer into the insular and racially divided world of the deep South despite the substantial changes in that society in the last few decades [5]. Set in Mobile, Alabama it takes one inside these worlds through following the preparation for the debutante balls that take place during Mardi Gras, the celebration we know associate with New Orleans having first been held here in 1703. It provides a penetrating glimpse into Southern society and what Mardi Gras means to the local elites for whom these expensive forms of display provide theaters of opulence and a public rite of passage for the chosen Kings and Queens. Through this lens we learn about how Mardi Gras embodies the complex inheritance of the slave era meaning very different things to these two communities. However, in the context of the six other films, it is only in that particular historical sense that this film is about injustice.

In Search of Gandhi is the tragic story of the extent of the failure of Gandhi's dream. Here Lalit Vachani takes us on a journey through a small part of northwestern India. Retracing Gandhi's salt march, beginning in Ahmadebad, he reveals the underside of development and "democracy" in a country punished and blessed depending on who you are by accident of birth, that is, by the immense injustice of the caste system weighing down on the poor like time and gravity itself and a divisive hatred between Muslims and Hindus. Though the film ends triumphantly with a tiny group of marchers crowning the Gandhi sculpture with a garland of flowers, it is a comparatively lackluster group. Yet keeping in mind the Massacre of Mumbai and the near collapse of the Western economic system, the relevance of Gandhi's legacy creates powerful resonances between this film and all the others.

In each of these documentaries, we see instances of people seeking and struggling for justice on their own or other's part. We also gain a partially global sense of history. For instance, in the case of Baghdad Twist , in learning how one woman's identity was largely formed on the principle of refusing to be abused, we learn the story of the end of the Jews of Baghdad and gain insight into just how much the Middle East has changed since the birth of the state of Israel. Here the director interviews his mother about her life in Iraq and then crafts the conversation against photographs from albums and home made movies.   Through glimpses into urban Iraqi cosmopolitan society during the 'fifties and on, we see a world so different from the Baathist era and today, that it leaves one with the feeling of having been to a museum, words and images recalling a vanished world. Despite the interviewee's terse unsentimental Israeli nature, we gain sensitive insight into the closing decades of a centuries old Jewish Arab world - from growing up on the banks of the Tigris to dancing in the 'fifties to bebop in Baghdad and being not so enthusiastically prompted to sing the lines "Those were the days my friend, we thought would never end . . . . ".

While watching this, one might experience a strange shock of disconnect with the Iraq we know today from the media as opposed to what it was then, at least in urban cosmopolitan settings, especially if one is from such places. In this way all these films are sure to provoke personal reflection as to where one or one's parents and grandparents and relatives or friends and their families were in those decades. They will trigger intimate personal perceptions of and relations with those places today. In the case of the war against terror, Alex Gibney's haunting film will remind one of how a random event in one day can take one straight to the dark side.

Each of these films can be connected to larger discussion of conflict and human rights, morality and justice, but each invariably relates to America and its international relations in the age of the war on terror. Each one in its own ways prefigures issues which informed the most fundamental expectations people have of the incoming 44 th President as an agent of change and hope as recorded by Ilan Ziv in Jesus Politics.   In contrast, Killer's Paradise is far less hopeful. It provides a case study of the long term consequences of the militarization of Latin America and an unintended effect of the Monroe Doctrine. It documents how domination and demonization of an enemy, the systematic use of "outrages upon human dignity" including rape and murder without ever holding perpetrators of gross and singular instances of human rights violations accountable, invariably affects such societies, that is,   long after the wars have ended. Today, in Guatemala, two women are murdered a day. According to the lawyers and victims interviewed here there is a climate of complete impunity in which the perpetrators are never brought to justice. As the film relates, the routine army tactic of terrorizing rural villagers and enemies of the state has now become a part of daily life.

The images of love and community and the consequences of hatred and war as recorded in these films are stark. For the victims of the violence and their families, and for the harbingers of hope whatever their political persuasion, these films each show how people typically turn to religion and community as a means to cope with the suffering. This is what unites all these dark films. They are each about the importance of religion and law, about the psychic desire for justice. They are about rights and in cases rites, rites of grieving, rites of prosecuting, rites of democracy and in one case, a rite of celebration. To end then, as a group these documentary films will make excellent contributions to university, high school and public libraries as they present six case studies of histories of the search for justice and freedom.

Notes:

[1] For the text of this article of the Geneva Convention, see http://www.amnestyusa.org/war-on-terror/torture/common-article-iii-of-the-geneva-convention/page . For the Executive Order to re-affirm the US commitment to Common Article III after the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld at the US Supreme Court, see Executive Order : Interpretation of the Geneva Councils Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070720-4.html . For the importance of a free media in bringing about such balance in power, see the article on Common Article III in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/refs/us/AP-Guantanamo-Geneva-Convention.html .

[2] See The Challenge:"Hamdan v. Rumsfeld" and the Fight Over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler. New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008. Also see the US Supreme Court's Hamdan Decision at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinion/05pdf//05-184.pdf .

[3] For a clear definition of torture as "the deliberate infliction of physical or psychological pain" see Rape as a Weapon of Torture by Jenis Barkas, ed., Michael Peel, London: Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, 2004, available at http://www.torturecare.org.uk/files/rape_singles2.pdf . This document amongst others at Amnesty International amongst other sites documents the scale of the routine global use of torture and rape in prisons and conflict.

[4] For a revealing account of the nature of international relations and the weapons market, see Michel Chossudovsk's article "Unusually Large U.S. Weapons Shipment to Israel: Are the US and Israel Planning a Broader Middle East War" in Global Research , January 11, 2009 available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11743 .

[5] For a critique of to what degree people in Mobile do or do not live in separate social worlds, see "Synposis for The Order of Myths" at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1157694/synopsis .