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Qatar TV station Al Jazeera has belonged to the most controversial news channels in the world since its establishment in 1996. The American president, George W. Bush, has labeled it as the mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, and several Arab countries banned it after criticisms were made against their regimes. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Al Jazeera has become the most popular source for news in the Arab world. The documentary film Control Room, awarded the Fipresci prize from the film festival in Sydney, gives a unique behind-the-scenes perspective into the media during the war in Iraq. We are guided by the former BBC reporter currently working for Al Jazeera, Hassan Ibrahim. Differing from American news stations, which concentrated on the victorious movement of their own military units to Bagdad, Al Jazeera concentrated its reporting on the impact of the military operation on the Iraqi civilians. This is exactly what the Bush´s government did not want to open to the public. By juxtaposing the intriguing ideas of several news reporters, Iraqi people themselves, and official announcements from members of the American press corps, the film reveals in depth the differing approaches utilized during the daily formation of media images depicting the military conflict. At the same time it contemplates the question of media ethics and examines on one hand the methods of war propaganda in the 21st century and on the other the difficulties associated with the efforts to provide the most objective information. Director Jehane Noujaim, who lives alternately in Egypt and the USA, in contrast to Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11, withholds her own commentary and lets the compiled information and footage speak for itself.
In May of 2004, photographs in which American soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison rapidly spread all around the world. In the pictures of the naked and exhausted Iraqis, which shocked the worldwide public and increased disagreement with the American intervention in Iraq, there often appeared, in addition to several male American soldiers, one woman: Lynndie England. It is precisely these pictures, in which the young woman smiles as she poses near a pile of naked bodies, mockingly pointing to the genitalia of the prisoners, or in which Lynndie holds a leash attached to a bound and prostrate man, that aroused the most attention and outrage. This film from the Netherlands is a portrait of the woman, who does not feel any responsiblity for her actions, and does not have the feeling that she did anything wrong. She defends herself by saying she was only following the orders of her superiors.
The five creators of this film, led by Iraqi exile writer and poet Sinan Antoon, set off to Baghdad in June of 2003, three months after the fall of the Hussein regime, to find out how the years of oppression, war, and the current chaotic situation affected the life of average Iraqis. In a diversely arranged collage of interviews the creators tried to go beyond the traditional media coverage and understand the complexity of the voices of the Iraqi people, who had mostly been marginalized. Crowds of unemployed, angry and frustrated men, artists, taxi drivers, zealous communists, professors from the local bombed-out university and former prisoners of Hussein's concentration camps all come forth to share their ideas in front of the camera, giving voice to those people from the outside world who have not listened to them before. In an effort to objectively reflect the turbulent relationship between the Iraqis and the USA, the creators of the film also give space to the views of American soldiers working in the "Green Zone". From the wide spectrum of ideas the viewers are able to create a complete picture of the past, the difficult present, and the hope for the future of the Iraqi people.
In his time Samir Peter was the most well-known Iraqi pianist, and enjoyed a very sizable income. Nine months after the fall of the Hussein regime only a handful of visitors to the luxury hotel restaurant in the center of post-war Baghdad come to see him play. "There was a time when the liberation of Iraq by the Americans had been my dream, now it is a nightmare," says the charismatic Samir about the current situation in the Iraqi capital. He, like approximately 600,000 Iraqis, is a Christian. Because of safety concerns, he would rather stay after work in the hotel basement than drive his car to his luxury apartment. Even if he has the possibility to travel to the USA at the invitation of his daughter, he does not want to leave his country. This is true even after a woman is gunned down by an armed man in his presence. This documentary film by director Sean McAllister, which received an award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, shows in the case of Samir and his family the diversity of opinions and the understandable disillusionment of the Iraqis about the current situation in their country. The musical background of the film is presented in the piano melodies of Samir Peter himself.
Before the American bombardment of Iraq only 3 % of the media in the USA, despite massive anti-war demonstrations, were unambiguously against the war. The journalists preparing to go to Iraq underwent a special training course organized by the Pentagon and when the well-known reporter Peter Arnett was discovered on Iraqi television, he became a national traitor and public enemy. The American documentary filmmaker and journalist Danny Schechter, using a very personal and in places clip-like style, delves into a thorough analysis of the role of the American media in the Iraq War. Bitter irony, humorous juxtapositions, pictorial metaphors, and a sharply critical tone towards the politics of American President George W. Bush make this picture an interesting variation on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. In thematically divided chapters we see examples of news from the major American television channels, humorous internet sites, and the ideas and reflections of individual journalists. Schechter's documentary film, which received awards at festivals in Denver and Austin, uses concrete examples to examine whether the key American media in the case of the War in Iraq fundamentally failed to fulfill its role as "watchdog", which according to custom has always objectively and critically examined the words and actions of politicians. The filmmaker himself points to the fact that even the most respected American media for a certain period of time became a means of manipulating and deceiving the public, and undertakes to discover if such behavior was knowingly organized by media owners and editors, or rather arose out of the exceptional situation caused by the wave of patriotism and fear stemming from the events of September 11th.
