INDENTURED, my doc short about labor abuse on U.S. military bases in Iraq will screen tomorrow at the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai. The location and RSVP info:
NKM International House, 5thFloor, Behind LIC Headquarters Yogakshema, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400020
RSVP: Dhaval Desai –dhaval.desai@orfonline.org Tel: 022-61313800
The INDENTURED webpage includes the film (10 min) and links to most of the major articles done by American publication on the subject.
INDENTURED, my short doc film about labor abuse on US bases in Baghdad, now has a web page. Please take a look and send the page link on to your representation in D.C. Reform is a slow process, so even though the war is technically over, this has to be held up to the light for years to come if it's ever going to be addressed.
I took this photo in 2008 inside the US State Dept facility in Baghdad where I worked for two years. These men all paid four thousand dollars to illegal labor brokers in Nepal to get their jobs on the base. They made about $1.50 an hour and they worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week. That means they worked about a year to pay their loans off (their loans all have usury interest rates). Basically everything about their status is illegal in America. The bitter part for me was that I was working at a facility run by the State Dept and shared by the DOJ. These are the two agencies that write and enforce the rules on human trafficking, yet guess who was inside EVERYDAY cleaning the office and the bathrooms? It's the absolute height of hypocrisy. The cherry on top is that every year the State Dept writes a report in which it makes recommendations to other countries to identify and address human smuggling and human trafficking problems in those nations - because we are the gold standard.
We had/have 70,000 of these laborers in our war zones at any one time. To put that in perspective, in 2009 we had a total of 30,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. The New Yorker was right to call it an Invisible Army. Please do send the web page URL to your reps (there's a button on the page that will take you there) because they really do care about the opinions of their constituents.
I was prompted to go ahead and put INDENTURED online after reading Sarah Stillman's piece The Invisible Army in the New Yorker magazine. From the article (June 6, 2011 edition): The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls [...] A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.
It's an important article that I hope you'll take a few minutes to read.
Below is the film that I made on the same subject and sent to my representation over eighteen months ago (Rep Davis, Senators Feinstein and Boxer). I'm still waiting for a reply - any reply - from all three offices. Might be time to write some more letters.
If you or anyone you know has any suggestions on who to send this film to, either as a link or a DVD please write to me at cysfilm@gmail.com. The on-line version is linkable and embeddable - please don't hesitate to share it, blog it or email it to your representation in D.C.
The film (10 min):
http://vimeo.com/13404671
I'm hopeful. Still working.
It really shocks me every time an audience sees a film I made but I guess I'm extra shocked about Indentured since it's so unconventional. It makes me feel really optimistic actually because as films go, Indentured asks a lot from the audience. There are long passages of text, and no sound/picture effects for fun or any moments of levity. So when people respond to it, it's kind of proof to me that people are smart and that there are audiences with appetites for the tough stuff.
Hopefully, the film will clear the legal obstacles that remain and I can either put it on the web myself or try and get the story picked up by a media organization. UNAFF was really a great place for it to start. Thanks UNAFF, really.
If you saw the film or are interested in the subject matter please join the INDENTURED group on facebook.
If you're a filmmaker, blogger or citizen journalist dealing with a legal question and you're unfunded here are two amazing resources you should know about:
New Media Rights (In San Diego)
It's a rainy day in Palo Alto, CA. The United Nations Association Film Festival has a really nice, intimate atmosphere. I met a filmmaker tonight named Anjoo Khosla who made a short doc film called Wahid's Mobile Bookstore, the URL is pasted below (10min). It's about a charming little boy in India who reminds me for some reason of the boy in The 400 Blows - hmm. I guess it's because they're both charming self-sufficient kids.
It looks like Iraq is back in the news with the release of all those docs from Wikileaks. It's good timing for Indentured to come out - I really hope it finds its place in the larger dialog about Iraq.
The rain, new surroundings and film festivities have got me slipping in and out of imaginary film scenes. I ate dinner in an empty sushi place on an empty rainy street and swore I was in a Wong Kar Wai movie for a second.
Indentured screens tomorrow night at 920pm at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto, CA.
The INDENTURED group on facebook.
Watch Wahid's Mobile Bookstore here:
The United Nations Association Film Fest just released it's official schedule. The lineup looks great. I'm excited Indentured will premiere at the festival and also excited to (try to) visit the d.school at Stanford. They do a lot of very interesting design projects many of which serve people in developing countries. Every time I see one of their agriculture projects I think of Chatwa, the farmer in Bush League. He's such a great farmer and I'm dying to see what he can do with new and better technology.
Some new shots from Baghdad. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/3671172034/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/2911981311/
This, for me, is the untold story of this war. All the labor; cleaning, cooking and washing is done by S. Asian laborers. Their pay is meager. The guys who clean at the Dining Facility work 12 hours per day seven days a week and make, in total, $350.00 per month. If Nike or Coca Cola made a fat profit off their backs the way KBR (Halliburton) does, people would be up in arms. But nobody knows about this, and it's happening at every base in Iraq. In our Dining Facility there are NO Americans serving food. Maybe one now and then. The staff is well over 25 guys per shift and they serve thousands of meals per day. They clean the floors, take out the trash, pour the coffee, they work the registers at the PX, they do everything except fight.
The truth is, for many of these people it's a great opportunity but what I wonder about are their labor rights and how many of them are indentured servants.