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Filmmaking in a War Zone

Published on November 15, 2006

With mainstream media's spotty coverage of America's wars abroad, independent mediamakers have an obligation to bring unheard voices to the forefront of popular culture. But how does one make a film in a war-torn nation? Making a documentary is difficult enough but making one in a war zone seems almost impossible. We talked to three filmmakers about how they handled working alone in a war zone, and we learned that they actually thrive in these challenging conditions.

Iraq in Fragments was shot in Iraq over the course of three years.

Iraq in Fragments is James Longley's second feature documentary and his second film about a country at war. "It was never my intention to make a 'war documentary.' I wanted to make a film about Iraq as a country, about the people of Iraq. Iraq is such a unique place, and for so long nobody could easily make films there; I could barely constrain my desire to document everything. I wanted to film ten stories at once, all in different parts of the country. In the end, I only filmed six different stories. Three of those stories made it into the final film."

Divided into three acts, Iraq in Fragments paints a vivid picture of a country divided by religion and ethnicity. It was an ambitious undertaking that took three trips over three years to create. Longley's first trip was a disaster. His second trip was a bit better but was shortened by his visa's expiration. "As I drove along the crowded streets of Baghdad toward the Jordan highway I was full of regret. The next time I saw Baghdad it might well be in ruins. I had no idea what would become of my friends in Iraq. Leaving Baghdad before the war was one of the saddest moments of my life." He waited out the war in Egypt and eventually returned to complete the film.

Working alone in Iraq over eight months, Laura Poitras created an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation in My Country, My Country. Her principal focus is Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of six and Sunni political candidate. The film is beautifully shot with clear sound in many complicated situations. It is the kind of film that it is shocking to find out was done by one person working along. (Poitras did bring in two other crew members for Election Day in Iraq, featured in the film's conclusion.)

A self-proclaimed tech geek, Poitras was adamant that good gear and knowledge of how to use it are paramount. "You really have to be good technically to do something like this...And I think everyone can assess that for themselves, and for some people it's not a good fit. They're better off having somebody to operate camera, to operate sound. It shouldn't be taken lightly. You should feel confident that you can get good sound because if you don't, you cannot release the film."

For My Country, My Country, Poitras used the 24P Panasonic DVX 100A. Her sound setup was fairly complicated. She consulted with a sound engineer before she left who made a Y cable so that she could go from three mini receivers. Her first channel was always linked to a Sanheisser 416 shotgun mic positioned on top of the camera. "I never mixed that channel -- I trust that mic, it has a certain amount of range." The second channel was able to be split into multiple channels thanks to the Y cable. This allowed Poitras to use several different microphones in situations where she wanted clear sound on multiple subjects.

Still from Carol Dysinger's work-in-progress, How Long (working title). Dysinger went through hostile environment training in preparation for shooting in Iraq.

Carol Dysinger has been editing feature-length documentaries for several years. When she decided to direct her first documentary, How Long (working title), about nation-building in Afghanistan, she made an unusual and brave decision -- to go it alone. "I think it was a wise, though not necessarily safe, decision simply because I was learning. Honestly, I'm not sure if I would have known how to use a crew. Being alone made things easier in many ways. Getting a seat on a military transport plane is a hell of a lot easier than getting two."

To prepare for the rigors of war zone journalism, all of the filmmakers went through hostile environment training, which teaches survival and first aid skills and trains journalists to handle hostage situations and to identify imminent dangers such as land mines. As Dysinger explains, "I know how to tell which direction gun fire is coming from, which is not as easy as it seems."

My Country, My Country was produced by Laura Poitras, a one-woman documentary filmmaking crew.

Both Dysinger and Poitras were surprised at how much being a woman benefited them. Poitras recalls, "There is one military scene [in My Country, My Country] where they are having a very high level video teleconference about elections. It was a situation where I walked in and thought I would be cleared by the UN, but nobody actually cleared me to be there, and I filmed for over an hour. I just walked in, and nobody stopped me. It's the fact that I acted like I belonged there and also I think being a woman. I work with small equipment so they sort of thought, 'Oh, this is a home movie.'"

It takes a lot of courage and strength of character to film in a war zone. Each of these filmmakers was compelled to tell stories that remain systematically untold by mainstream media outlets and hopefully they will inspire other independent filmmakers to do the same.

Iraq In Fragments opens in New York City on November 8th at the Film Forum. It opens in other cities on November 10th.

My Country, My Country was broadcast on October 25th on PBS's P.O.V. and is currently screening around the country.

How Long is currently in production.