The War Tapes

Filmmaker Deborah Scranton's idea for capturing a more immediate picture of life for U.S. soldiers in Iraq's harrowing war zone was simple yet novel: She gave video cameras to five National Guardsmen from her native state of New Hampshire and asked them to shoot whatever they could during their one-year deployments. Communicating via the Internet, Scranton "directed" the film by the most indirect means imaginable, hoping that what her soldiers/cameramen were getting on tape — more than 1,000 hours of footage she subsequently edited down to 97 minutes — was a more accurate depiction of the war between coalition forces and the growing insurgency than anything...