"After 9|11": Documentary Film Released On DVD: July 14, 2004
"The critically acclaimed documentary 'After 9/11' has been released for general audiences and is now available for purchase through the Information Technology, War, and Peace (InfoTechWarPeace) Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
Combining critical dialogue, conceptual analysis, and a montage of multimedia, After9/11 anticipates many of the recent revelations about the darker side of the war against terror, and, in a reflective postscript, provides a positive vision for moving America beyond 9/11. [...] the hour-long film tracks the emergence of an Age of InfoTerror, from the terrorist attack of September 2001 to the information war leading up to the Iraq War. Two opposing voices guide the viewer through a richly visual and openly critical appraisal of the current political landscape. The first is a selection of national security speeches by President Bush, which provide a chronology for the evolution of a US government policy after 911. The second voice is novelist and Brown professor, Robert Coover, who uses a powerful dream narration to frame a montage of the technologies of war, media, and surveillance that have overtaken more human concerns."
[After 9|11 Web Site]
"In their eye-opening new exposé, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, Rampton and Stauber take no prisoners as they reveal - headline by headline, news show by news show, press conference by press conference - the deliberate, aggressive, and highly successful public relations campaign that sold the Iraqi war to the American public. [...] Rampton and Stauber show us a brave new shocking world where savvy marketers, “information warriors,” and “perception managers” can sell an entire war to consumers. Indeed, Washington successfully brought together the world’s top ad agencies and media empires to create “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” - a product no decent, patriotic citizen could possibly object to. With meticulous research and documentation, Rampton and Stauber deconstruct this and other “true lies” behind the war..."
"War Feels Like War" is the story of an international group of journalists who refused to be "embedded." Motivated by the desire to get the 'real' story, the unilaterals ventured onto the battlefield without military protection and frequently without guides. They often found themselves reporting the stories that went uncovered in the wake of the triumphal columns of soldiers and embeds: civilian deaths, injuries, chaos in the streets, and a more mixed reception for the invaders than appeared in first reports. [...] Along the way, "War Feels Like War" gives riveting vérité portraits of the journalists themselves, whose conflicting feelings of attraction and repulsion to combat mirror the ambivalence of their audiences over modern-day "war as spectacle." The journalists are alternately cynical about human motives and seduced by the romanticism of being war correspondents. Thoughts of self-importance are punctured by the grim realities of war. Their daring is in constant tension with the impulse for self-preservation. 'This is the story of journalists caught up in a new era in war-reporting, says director and cameraman Esteban Uyarra, 'and of a media world now divided in two camps — 'embeds' and 'unilaterals' — and what that means for how we see and feel about war.'"
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