In July of last year during the American occupation of Iraq, nine people from different parts of the world collected seventy hours of footage over the course of four weeks that they would attempt to boil down into one ninety minute documentary entitled, About Baghdad. The production company composed of these nine people, InCounter, brought this film to the World Fellowship Center for quite a secluded screening. One of the women who worked on the film delivered a brief lecture to set up the screening, during which she identified and explained the two main motivations of the production company. The first was to give the Iraqi people a stage on which they would have an opportunity to speak freely about their lives and situations. The other reason was to isolate and examine the dichotomy that comprises the rock-and-hard-place that the Iraqi people are found between. This dichotomy consisted of the diametrically opposed positions of “Love of America” and “Love of Saddam,” such that if one does not subscribe to one, then they are necessarily allegiant to the other and vice versa. Of course, the differences between these opposites are becoming more and more difficult for the Iraqis to discern. It was to the squeeze of this dichotomy that most of the Iraqis interviewed were willing to talk. One of the impressions of this film that struck me most was the predominant feeling among a lot of the people interviewed that under the rule of Saddam, circumstances had become so extreme that the Iraqi people were (and I quote the film) “willing to extend a hand up to the devil.” What they didn’t know was that Americans planned to take that hand and drag them through the streets of Baghdad by it. It was not as if the Iraqi people did not at one time feel grateful to the Americans. In fact, the film showed that there are many Iraqi people who still are grateful to the Americans. However, even these people have their criticisms. The audience found out through the interviews and, incidentally, through a congressional report referred to during the introductory lecture, that the availability of resources, such as security, electricity and clean water, are actually less than they were before the war. Once this film established our sympathy on a political and humanitarian level, it besieged our sense of progress by showing the ruins of an advanced, civilized society that had been blown backward about two to three hundred years. The rough, hand-held footage of the architectural skeletons of hospitals, schools and universities really served to pronounce the overwhelming sense of loss brought out by these images. The museums that were blown apart incite a cultural travesty reminiscent of the Dresden fire-bombing.Maybe it’s because I am a writer, but this documentary captured my full attention when it interviewed an Iraqi poet. Some of the things that he reported revealed a chaotic society that shocked me. He included details like the fact that with Iraqi freedom came total lawlessness, that a single book will often cost more than the monthly salary of the average school teacher and, most disturbingly, that any newspaper reporting even the slightest opinion against the occupation is immediately shut down by the Americans. We are eliminating free speech in Iraq. Please explain to me how you build a democracy around that. It was the interview with this poet that really helped me understand the dichotomy with which the lecturer began her evening. But by the end of the film, I felt that I actually had more questions About Baghdad than I did before. Of course, it may have simply been a matter of calculated camera work, emotional montage and a myriad of other shifty cinematic techniques aimed at tugging the heart string of a liberally willing audience. But even if that were the case, it still seemed more accurate than the recycled, prepackaged messages that are cleaned up and broadcast over Fox airwaves. For anyone who finds themselves, as I do, now suspicious of all the information fed to you in the guise of legitimate journalism, I encourage you to check out www.aboutbaghdad.com to learn more about this provocative independent film.