Arts and Lectures Series

Film Festival Day 2:

The first movie of the second day was "Taxi to the Dark Side".
"The Oscar-nominated documentary from Alex Gibney is a stunning inquiry into the suspicious death of an Afgani taxi driver at Bagram Air Base in 2002. Incident records and candid eyewitness testimony uncover an unmistakeable link between the tragic occurrence and U.S. policy."

I had been wanting to see this movie ever since I saw the preview for it at apple.com, and it did not disappoint. This documentary was a little misleading in that I thought it was only going to talk about the incident at Bagram. What ensued was an in depth look at the Bush White house and the steps they took to enable what happened at Bagram. If you didn't like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Alberto Gonzales before you definitely will not be big fans of them after screening this film. One of the most intriguing parts of the film was the end right before the credits were rolling. In this small span of time Alex Gibney; the director, was videotaping a conversation with his father. His father used to be a military interrogator. His fathers message was basically this: the Bush Administration had broken his trust in the government. I felt that this was an appropriate ending to the film because his sentiments mirrored my own after watching this film. In a nutshell this film delves into the issue of getting intelligence from prisoners in U.S. custody and how the Bush Administration enabled the military and CIA to resort to torture.


The second film of the night was "Hot House".
"Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, this rare look inside Israel's highest security prisons features interviews with incarcerated Palestinians, from political candidates to suicide bombers. The film exposes how the prisons have become incubators for political education and influence Palestinian society at large."

This film was pretty intense. Some of the interviews revolved around detail accounts of suicide bombings that the prisoners had planned and executed. It was amazing to hear that they had no remorse for what they did. That was a point that I continue to struggle with. I think that the main reason for this is because I have no frame of reference for what the Palestinian people are fighting for. This film was a good insight into the conflict and was very interesting because it seems that inside the prison the Palestinians and the Israeli guards are able to co-exist in way that seems impossible in the outside world. With that said however, it is important to note that the Israeli's are the ones in control, but there is at least an open dialogue between the Israeli's and the Palestinians.