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INDIE FILMMAKING, IRAQ STYLE
Anybody else check out the ABC News Nightline tonight? I’m watching as I’m blogging here about Ted Koppel’s interview with Cyrus Kar, an American documentary filmmaker who was held in an American detention center in Iraq for 55 days after the cab he was riding in was pulled over. When U.S. soldiers found a collection of washing machine timers in the cab’s trunk, suddenly his camera equipment, microphone wires and the cab driver’s timers all seemed elements of potential Improvised Explosive Devices. Kar was held briefly at Abu Ghuraib before being transferred to a prison near the airport that also hosts Saddam Hussein.
Kar was legally in Iraq making a historical documentary about the Persian King Cyrus the Great, an explanation that didn’t seem to convince the young soldiers who pulled him over. After being held in prison for a few days, his story checked out in the States with the FBI, but it would then take him 47 days to get the administrative hearing that would see him released. Now, Kar has gone public with his tale of the “wanton hostility” he experienced while incarcerated.
If you missed it tonight, Koppel has a part two tomorrow.
One other strange, not so random thing: Nightline’s “closing thought” is sponsored by Ambien.
