Film Screenings on the Anniversary of the War

March 20: Film Screenings on the Anniversary of the War

Friday, March 20 at 7:00pm
Thomas Merton Center (5125 Penn Ave. in Garfield)

On Friday, March 20 – the anniversary of the war – Pittsburgh Organizing Group will be hosting a screening of two relevant films at 7pm at the Thomas Merton Center (5125 Penn Ave. in Garfield):

“ShutDown” documents a piece of the continuous struggle towards social justice. Using the March 20, 2003 occupation and disruption of the San Francisco Financial District as a case study, the film casts a thoughtful eye on one of the most successful actions of the current anti-war movement, facilitated by Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW). Created to gain insight, inspire, and draw lessons the movie tells the story of how social justice organizers and everyday people came together to plan and shut down the financial district of a major U.S. city.

“500 Miles To Babylon” (2008, 60 minutes) Filmed over the course of three trips to Iraq as an independent videographer, this is a documentary not about soldiers, not about governments, but about Iraqi civilians and a handful of independent journalists in a country being turned into hell. A cinema verite narrative of daily life, disintegration, and the humor that ordinary people adapt when living in a warzone. Narrated by the filmmaker, it addresses the current war not simply as a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company's coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project. Through impromptu interviews, glimpses of daily life, still photographs, and footage of car-bombs, demonstrations, night-time graffiti artists, Sufi rituals, and the celebrations following Saddam's capture, “500 Miles To Babylon” charts the early days of the U.S. occupation as it blundered its way and Iraqi society began to collapse. The story includes rare footage from inside besieged Fallujah, where the filmmaker went in April 2004 with a group of volunteers to deliver medical aid to the town's inhabitants and subsequently reported to the world about the conditions of civilians during the fighting. With a soundtrack of Iraqi Choubi songs compiled by Sublime Frequencies.

For more info:
Pittsburgh Organizing Group
pog@mutualaid.org
www.organizepittsburgh.org