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Control Room

2004, Movie, NR, 84 mins

Control Room: Review

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It's hard to say what's more amazing: That documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (co-director of STARTUP.COM) dared to make this bold and admirably unbiased look at the way in which the 24-hour Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera covered the American war in Iraq, or that an American distributor had the cajones to pick it up. Broadcasting out of a small studio on the tiny Persian Gulf peninsula of Qatar, little Al Jazeera (which is actually watched by some 40 million viewers around the world) has made a big noise over the past few years. When the network aired the first videotape of Osama bin Laden to surface after September 11, 2001, the Bush administration condemned the channel, of which few non-Arab audiences had ever heard, as nothing more than a terrorist mouthpiece. But, contends Al Jazeera's senior producer, Samir Khader, it's always been the network's aim to educate its audiences, respect conflicting opinions and encourage open debate — all the ideals of a free press in a democratic society. In fact, this approach has probably made Al Jazeera more enemies in the Middle East, where a number of governments have banned the network's broadcasts, than anywhere else in the world. So when in March 2003 the Bush White House announced that Sadaam Hussein and his sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq or else, Al Jazeera journalist Hassan Ibrahim joined journalists from CNN, MSNBC and Fox News at the U.S. military Central Command, a stone's throw from Al Jazeera's studio in the city of Dohar. Noujaim and his camera followed. The gutsy little film he constructs out of the footage he shot as CentCom, headed by press officer Lt. Josh Rushing, disburses information while obviously attempting to manage the news is both gripping and filled with bewildering moments, some of which are more surreal in retrospect than they were when first reported: Bush's demand that American P.O.W.s be treated with the same respect American troops are showing their Iraqi counterparts; Donald Rumsfeld's angry dismissal of Al Jazeera's footage of wounded Iraqi women and children as lies and "pretending"; and CentCom's obvious use of Jessica Lynch's rescue to bury the day's much larger story: the supposed entrance of U.S. troops into Baghdad. Of films that should be required viewing as the conflict in Iraq continues to drag on and be reported, this is surely among them. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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