Chico Peace and Justice Center

April 4, 2009

Though U.S. news media have reduced their coverage of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, understanding the conflict is as crucial as ever for U.S. citizens. Independent media such as Big Noise Films help fill that gap. Filmmaker Rick Rowley screened three short films that originally aired on Al Jazeera English.

After the screening, director Rowley answered questions.

The films:

"Beyond the Wall: Inside the Sadr Movement in Iraq"
Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, the Mehdi Army, have been America's most intractable opponents in Iraq. But after attacks launched by the U.S. and Iraqi military against Sadr strongholds, cease-fires were negotiated and the Mehdi Army melted away from the streets. Has the Mehdi Army been defeated, and is this the end of the armed Shiite resistance to the occupation?

"Re-awakening Saddam's Tribal Strategy"
After four years of bloody insurgency in Iraq, the course of the war changed abruptly when America formed an alliance with a confederation of Sunni militias known as the Awakening movement. But is the U.S. just re-empowering the same tribal elite Saddam used to run the country? And will it lead to long-term stability?

"The Detention Imperative: An Inside Look at the U.S. Detention System in Iraq"
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been detained by the U.S., 1.5 million Iraqis have had an immediate family member detained, and almost every Iraqi knows someone who has been through the U.S. detention system. Few American institutions affect the lives of ordinary Iraqis more directly and profoundly, and once Iraqis are swept up in the system, there is no clear way out.

The film showing was co-sponsored by the Chico State Peace Institute.

Richard Rowley
Activist, Filmmaker, Journalist

Media is a weapon of war. We watch the wars our country fights filmed from the noses of bombs and narrated by generals. Rowley and Big Noise have spent the last 15 years putting cameras on the ground on the other side of the military and media machine. Rowley's work as a filmmaker, a journalist, and an activist has been to go where the mainstream media can not go - to build human connection against a politics of fear and isolation.

While still a student at Harvard, Rowley co-founded Big Noise Films and completed his first two award-winning feature documentaries - Zapatista - which follows the indigenous peasant rebellion in Southern Mexico, and Black and Gold - the story of New York's largest street gang. Later, he was a founding member of the Independent Media Center - the grassroots media project at the heart of the 'anti-globalization' movement. His documentaries This Is What Democracy Looks Like and Fourth World War won awards at dozens of festivals and are considered by many to be the definitive films of the anti-globalization movement.

Rowley and Big Noise have focussed on Iraq since the lead up to the invasion in 2003. Collectively, they have made 6 trips to Iraq and have completed 5 half-hour films on the war, along with dozens of television segments. Most television coverage comes from crews embedded with American troops, or filming inside the 'Green Zone'.  Rowley travels unembedded to places American television has never been - inside war-torn Falluja, behind the wall in Sadr City, in the tents of Iraqi prison families on the edge of Umm Qasr.

As a journalist, he has reported from the front-lines of wars and the inside of social movements in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, South Africa, Mali, Niger, East Timor and South Korea. His work has appeared on BBC, PBS, CBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera International, MBC, MTV, and Democracy Now.

He has received a Rockefeller Fellowship along with two fellowships from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

As a video artist, his work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial, the Berlin Transmediale, and at Barcelona's CCCB among dozens of gallery shows and video art festivals.

His films include: Beyond the Wall (2008), Guantanamo X 100 (2008), Re-Awakening Saddam's Tribal Strategy (2008), Winter Soldier (2008), The Jena 6 (2008), New Orleans: Man-made Disaster (2008), Voter Suppression in the US (2008), Nazihunters (2008), Iran: Elections Under Threat (2008), Dangerous Allies (2007), Iraqi Journalists at War (2007), The Battle For Basra (2007), The Ghost of Anbar (2007), Deserter (2007), Vulture Funds (2007), The Attorney Scandal (2007), Welfare Rebel (2007), African Debt Speculation (2006), Reconstruction in Lebanon (2006), Letters From Beirut (2006), Chavez’s Venezuela (2006), The Other Campaigns (2006), I Know I’m Not Alone (2005), Famine in Niger (2005), World Bank Famine (2005), World Tribunal on Iraq - Istanbul (2005), Fourth World War (2004), Our World Is Not For Sale (2003), Kilometer Zero (2002), The Independence of East Timor (2002),  This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), Storm From the Mountain (2000), 9.11- Another World Is Possible (2001), Breaking the Bank (2000), Showdown in Seattle (1999), Black and Gold (1999), Zapatista (1998)