‘The Corporal’s Diary is a poignant look at the Iraq War’

The Seattle Times
Reviewed by: Tom Keogh

This locally produced documentary is a moving portrait of Bellingham native Jonathan Santos, a U.S. Army corporal killed in Iraq 38 days after his deployment.

Produced in Seattle, “The Corporal’s Diary” is a moving documentary about a young Bellingham native, U.S. Army Cpl. Jonathan Santos, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq 38 days after his deployment.

Co-directed by local filmmakers Patricia Boiko and Laurel Spellman Smith, “The Corporal’s Diary” has a genuinely charismatic subject in Santos, who died at 22. Wry, focused, professional but honest about his emotions in the war-torn nation (he was in Iraq in 2004), Santos kept both a written and video diary of his experiences.

The content of each journal is so entertaining and compelling that, if one didn’t know better, a viewer might assume “The Corporal’s Diary” was yet another faux documentary about the war told from the perspective of a fictional serviceman.

Santos had already been in the service several years, including a stint in Haiti, before going to Iraq. It’s no wonder his voice — captured on video and reflected in written excerpts read aloud by his brother Jared — is so mature. He was also quite literate and a voracious reader. Yet his self-deprecating humor cuts against self-seriousness.

Santos’ mother, Doris Kent, is a gentle and healing presence who reaches out to the mother of Santos’ friend Matthew Drake, a brain-damaged survivor of the blast that killed Santos. The bridge between the two families is shot with sensitivity and gives the film a sense of profound hopefulness.

Chicago Tribune
Reviewed by: Sid Smith

“Bab’Aziz (The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul)” is a spare but haunting movie extolling ancient faith via stark visual imagery, mythic fable and allegory.

The framing tale is straightforward and strikingly simple. Bab’Aziz (Parviz Shahinkhou), an aged, blind dervish, and his young granddaughter (Maryam Hamid) are on a pilgrimage on foot across a barren desert to join a religious assemblage that comes together every 30 years. To pass the time, and continue his role as her spiritual teacher, he tells her a parable about a worldly prince who one day followed a graceful gazelle and abandoned his throne to stare into a pool of water, seemingly in perpetuity.

The telling of the parable occurs in recurrent snippets throughout the journey of the pair, who meet up with various other characters along the way. Their stories become part of the narrative, and they include a hot-tempered, disheveled young man out to avenge his brother’s murder, a man who claims he dove into a well and found a palace and true love on the other side, and a poet hunting for a religious woman he loves.

Tunisian director Nacer Khemir’s picaresque structure and fabulist content are not the only reminders of Western tradition. The inclusion of the dreamlike and surreal recalls Federico Fellini, which is no surprise, because the screenplay by the director is said to include “participation by” Fellini scenarist Tonino Guerra (“Ginger and Fred”).

The movie’s strengths include cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari’s breathtaking but stern ode to desert imagery and composer Armand Amar’s plaintive score. Khemir’s approach to explicating Sufi religious tradition is understated and carefully tied to his characters and incidents, so that the philosophical gleanings are lean and nicely integrated into the story. This is spiritual filmmaking distilled enough to appeal to believers of all stripes and agnostics too. One exquisite mini-parable about three butterflies hovering around a flame is a searing exposition of human love. The cycle of youth and age and the trope of a journey come together inevitably, maybe predictably, but not without sparks of wisdom.

Bab’Aziz himself reveals the central theme of this serene, thought-inducing endeavor. “Everyone in this world,” he says, “has a great task to fulfill.”

San Francisco Weekly
Reviewed by: Michael Fox

In the shifting sands of the Middle East, the only constants are faith and fables. They coexisted quite happily before the rise of fundamentalism, and they find a soulful commonality in Nacer Khemir’s nostalgia-tinged Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul. The Tunisian filmmaker has conjured a unique and uniquely graceful blend of fairy-tale idealism and street-level realism that unfolds as a casual chain of stories.

A blind elder named Bab’Aziz, walking to a mystical gathering of dervishes in the desert with his granddaughter, starts the ball rolling with the tale of a wealthy prince who unexpectedly becomes obsessed with the meaning of life. The prince’s existential journey overlaps with less rarefied pursuits — of revenge, of a vanished lover — propelling men whom Bab’Aziz and his ward encounter along the way.

Poetry, music, and prayer fill the soundtrack of this seductive road movie with no discernible road, as Bab’Aziz offers wise lessons for anyone on the path of peace and self-knowledge.

Gambit Weekly / bestofneworleans.com
Reviewed by: Will Coviello

Director Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz is a fable not about a (conceptually more Westernized) search for meaning, but a quest to have beauty and love revealed, in the sense that they represent spiritual truths to some Islamic mystics. Bab’Aziz is an old, blind dervish accompanied on his trek into the vast and shimmering desert by his feisty granddaughter Ishtar. He tells her that they are going to a meeting of dervishes, wanderers for whom poverty is part of the quest for enlightenment. He doesn’t know where or when the meeting is but tells her, ‘People at peace are never lost.” Along the way, he shares with her the story of a prince who rejected his wealth to go into the desert and contemplate his soul while staring into a pool in an oasis.

The ever-shifting sands of deserts in Iran and Tunisia provide beautiful and mysterious settings for the film, and Khemir uses them as a telling metaphor ” particularly set against small pools or bowls of water ” for the infinite universe and the search for elusive spiritual fulfillment and knowledge. The film does not deal with the contemporary politics of Islam, but the director labored to show what the religion is to some of the one billion Muslims worldwide who are not adherents of fundamentalist extremism. His fables (this is the third in a trio of desert films) offer an intriguing look into some of the cultures of the Middle East, and how they see the world differently than the West

Nestled below the rugged peaks of the Northern Rockies in Montana lies the worst case of community-wide exposure to a toxic substance in U.S. history. In the small town of Libby, many hundreds of people are sick or have already died from asbestos exposure. “Libby, Montana” takes a long working day’s journey into a blue-collar community, and finds a different reality — one where the American Dream exacts a terrible price.

* DVD Release & National broadcast on PBS’ POV 8/28/07

A visual poem of incomparable beauty, this masterpiece from director Nacer Khemir (Wanderers of the Desert) begins with the story of a blind dervish named Bab’Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape. To keep Ishtar entertained, Bab’Aziz relays the ancient tale of a prince who relinquished his realm in order to remain next to a small pool in the desert, staring into its depths while contemplating his soul. As the tale of the prince unfolds, the two encounter other travelers with stories of their own–including Osman, who longs for the beautiful woman he met at the bottom of a well, and Zaid, who searches for the ravishing young woman who fled from him after being seduced by his songs. Filled with breathtaking images and wonderful music, Nacir Khemir has created a fairytale-like story of longing and belonging, filmed in the enchanting and ever-shifting sandscapes of Tunisia and Iran.

Click here for the trailer on YouTube (smaller)

(2006 | 96 minutes | 35 mm | 1:1.85 | Dolby SR | DTS)

Encounter Point is an 85-minute feature documentary film that follows a former Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their lives and public standing to promote a nonviolent end to the conflict. Their journeys lead them to the unlikeliest places to confront hatred within their communities. The film explores what drives them and thousands of other like-minded civilians to overcome anger and grief to work for grassroots solutions. It is a film about the everyday leaders in our midst.

From the award-winning Director of Iraq In Fragments

American documentary filmmaker James Longley (Academy Award nominee, Iraq In Fragments) traveled to the Gaza Strip in January of 2001, planning to stay for two weeks and collect preliminary material for a film about the Palestinian intifada. He threw away his return ticket and stayed for another 3 months, shooting over 75 hours of material throughout the Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip follows a range of people and events following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the first major armed incursion into “Area A” by IDF forces during this intifada. The film is filmed almost entirely in a verite style, presented without narration and with little explanation, focusing on ordinary Palestinians rather than politicians and pundits. More observation than political argument, Gaza Strip offers a rare look inside the stark realities of Palestinian life and death under Israeli military occupation.