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Baghdad ER
(64 minutes) Iraq/USA
Directors/Producers: Jon Alpert and Matthew OíNeill
Description:
The hour-long verité documentary Baghdad ER offers a raw and rarely seen look at the day-to-day hardship, humanity, heroism, and sacrifice of the U.S. Military and medical personnel "just doing their jobs" in Iraq. Allowed unprecedented access over a two month period in 2005 to the 86th Combat Support Hospital, producers/directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill followed the doctors, nurses, medics, soldiers, chaplains, and others in the Army's premier medical facility in Iraq. Thanks in part to the skill and dedication of trauma center teams like the one depicted in the film, wounded troops in Iraq have a 90 percent chance of survival, the highest rate of war survivors in U.S. history. At times graphic in its depiction of combat-related wounds, Baghdad ER is a socially relevant account of war in our timeóemotional, devastating, and honest.
Biography:
A filmmaker, Jon Alpert has won eleven National Emmy Awards for News and Documentary Programs and one National Emmy for Sports Documentary. After the Vietnam War, he was the first American TV crew to film in Vietnam. When Fidel Castro came to address the UN in 1979, his team was the only non-Cuban media allowed access to Castro. After the Gulf War, he was the only reporter to have interviewed Saddam Hussein. Alpert is the co-founder and co-director of the Downtown Community Television Center, Americaís largest and most honored nonprofit community media center, located in a landmark Tribeca firehouse.
Matthew O'Neill is a video journalist, producer, and director currently working for DCTV in New York. He worked on Bolivia: Coca and the Congressman for PBS's Wide Angle, as well as To Have and Have Not: The Changing Face of China. In the spring of 2004 he was awarded the Pew Fellowship. His documentary Venezuela: Revolution in Progress aired on the Discovery Times Channel in April 2005. In the summer of 2005 he spent over a two month period in the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq for filming Baghdad ER. He won two local Emmy Awards for Best Political Journalism and Best Youth Programming. Matthew grew up on Long Island in New York State and graduated from Yale College.
Contact Information:
Reina Higashitani, Festival Coordinator
Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV)
87 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10013-4435
reina@dctvny.org
www.dctvny.org
©2006 United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF)
FILMS
America's Brutal Prisons
Are the Kids Alright?
Baghdad ER
Between Two Stones: Nepal's Decade of Conflict
Beyond Iraq
Beyond the Call
The Blood of Yingzhou District
Blowing Up Paradise
Busting Out
Bystander
Epitaph
In the Tall Grass
Independent Intervention
Interview with an Executioner
La Sierra
Lessons in Fear
Lima's Streets
Malaria: Killer Number One
The Man Who Saved a Million Brains
The Peacekeepers
Pilgrimage
Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border
Rosita
The Shape of Water
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars
Small Town Gay Bar
They Chose China
Thin
The Tribe
True Whispers
The Tsunami Generation