This film " Road to Guantanamo" was just released in the Bay Area and is a must see. 2 articles from February follow. For anyone who has known a US prison, they have clearly captured the mentality of US prison guards and the US military while exposing the consistent willingness to torture and violate human rights by both.
Trailer http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4631171106002398288 Ex-captives push Guantanamo film Tuesday 14 February 2006 6:56 PM GMT Two former Guantanamo Bay captives have joined Michael Winterbottom, a British director, to promote his semi-documentary film about their experience, an appearance that they coupled with a call for the prison's closure. Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, friends who became known as "the Tipton three" after their English hometown, were captured in Afghanistan in 2001. They were released without charge from the US detention centre on Cuba in March 2004. The Road to Guantanamo, one of 19 films competing at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, combines interviews with the men, news archive material and scenes re-creating their experience. Ahmed and Rasul joined Winterbottom on Tuesday, at the film's premiere. Rasul said: "We want to show the world what's happening in Guantanamo. What we really want is everyone to be released from there; we want the place to be closed down." The three Britons and a fourth friend went to Pakistan shortly after 11 September, 2001, to attend Iqbal's wedding. The film depicts them travelling next to neighbouring Afghanistan, after hearing an imam's call to help people in need there. Of the then-ruling Taliban, Ahmed said: "We had no idea who they were." They were captured by Northern Alliance troops before being taken to Guantanamo. Sweltering cages In a report released by their lawyers in 2004, the three Britons claimed they suffered systematic brutality and were kept in open cages in the sweltering Cuban heat, and that the treatment forced them to make false confessions. "We had it rough, but we didn't have it as bad as others, for example the Arabs. Because we could speak English and communicate with people, I think it made it a lot easier for us." The United States is holding about 500 people in Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, though only 10 suspects have been charged. The prison has drawn widespread criticism in Europe and elsewhere. Winterbottom and co-director Mat Whitecross met the three about two months after their release, and Whitecross spent a month interviewing them for material for the film. Winterbottom won the Berlin festival's top Golden Bear prize in 2003 for In This World, a story of two young Afghans' gruelling journey to England as refugees. He said The Road to Guantanamo focused on the personal story of the three - to "put faces to three of the people there and then imagine that could also apply to the other 500 people who are still there." Winterbottom told reporters: "The starting point was to tell (about) these three people, not to tell the general political situation. "All the images you see - it's hard to know whether it's deliberate or not, they sort of dehumanise the people there -you don't have any sense of what they're like." Personal approach In concentrating on the personal approach, the filmmakers did not seek comment from US and British authorities, Winterbottom said. He brushed aside suggestions that the film could be seen as anti-American. He said: "I don't think the film is anti-American in a general sense." He said that it aimed to send the message that "the fact of Guantanamo's existence is shocking and terrible, and it shouldn't be there". Rasul said that "nobody's ever said, to this day, that we are innocent". The two former captives also said they had expected more support from Muslims at home after their return. "In their eyes - not all of them - but the area we live in, we were guilty. It was hard for our families." The film is to be shown by Britain's Channel Four television in March. Winterbottom did not give details of other release plans. You can find this article at: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CA6D056D-5224-4759-8ABA-580C210B1B16.htm Guantanamo film re-opens debate By Damien McGuinness in Berlin One of the most eagerly awaited films at this year's Berlin Film Festival, The Road To Guantanamo by British director Michael Winterbottom, is premiered in the German capital on Wednesday. Judging from the attention it has already attracted here, the film looks set to re-ignite the whole debate about the Guantanamo Bay American detention camp in Cuba. There aren't many films which create a buzz at Berlin Film Festival before being shown. It was no surprise that Tuesday's press screening of The Road To Guantanamo filled to capacity as soon as it opened its doors. 'Shocking' The film tells the story of the three British Muslims, from Tipton in the Midlands, who went to Pakistan to arrange a wedding, travelled to Afghanistan and were transported to Guantanamo Bay. They were held there without trial for more than two years before charges were dropped and they were released in March 2004. Dramatised scenes, charting their journey, are interspersed with interviews with the men themselves, who explain what happened to them and how they felt. "I don't think the film is anti-American because there are plenty of Americans who are against Guantanamo Bay too," says Michael Winterbottom. "But the very fact that this camp exists is shocking. "We are telling the story of these three people so you can imagine yourself what it is like to be in a situation where your rights are taken away from you, you have no contact with your family and no idea when you will be released," he adds. Winterbottom first came up with the idea of making the film when he met Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed two months after they had been released. He interviewed the men, and turned the resulting 600 pages of transcript into a 95-minute feature. "If someone had said five years ago that the US would set up a camp, in Cuba of all places, to hold people for four years without trial or charges, then you would have thought he was crazy. 'Hard to sleep' "But the problem is, people have got used to it." Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed came to Berlin and said they were pleased with the film. "When you are first released it's hard to sleep," says Shafiq Rasul. "You keep hearing soldiers banging on the cells and you wake up sweating and thinking of soldiers and then you realise you're back home. But as time goes on, you have to move on and live your life." I don't think the film is anti-American because there are plenty of Americans who are against Guantanamo Bay too Film director Michael Winterbottom Winterbottom is no newcomer to Berlin. In 2003 he won the festival's top prize, the Golden Bear, for the documentary-style drama In This World, which followed two Afghan asylum seekers on their journey to the UK . But despite getting a lot of attention for the subject matter, not everyone is so impressed with the film itself. "I don't really know what the point of it is, as it doesn't tell you anything new," said Anne Troester, film critic for the Berlin-based magazine The Ex-Berliner. "It seemed very black and white, like all the Americans are bad and all the Muslim guys are good. "If you are an American who doesn't know the facts about Guantanamo Bay, you're just going to end up walking out because you'll feel alienated," she says. But Luke Harding, Berlin correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, said: "I thought the film was brilliant. You could really feel empathy for them." Judging from the amount of interest already generated at Berlin, distribution for the film is likely to be widespread. Winterbottom plans to release the film simultaneously online and on DVD, and in March it will be shown on Channel 4 television in the UK. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/4715474.stm Published: 2006/02/15 11:26:38 GMT © BBC MMVI The Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 863-9977 www.freedomarchives.org _______________________________________________ News mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! 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