Upon 'Rendition': Things Aren't What They Seem Here
December 12th 2006 17:36
Category: No Category
Do you think that abducting terror suspects from the street, clandestinely flying them to developing countries such as Jordan, Egypt or Morocco, where they are subject to torture tactics in an attempt to force a confession, and aren't even told where they are and how long they will be kept should be a state-sponsored activity? When forced to make a statement in the face of increasing public awareness of 'renditions', Condoleeza Rice's simply offers that they "take terrorists out of action, and save lives."
Yet terrorists are not the only people who have been subjected to this brutal act. From the American Civil Liberties Union website:
In a history-making lawsuit, the ACLU has challenged the CIA on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an entirely innocent victim of rendition who was released without ever being charged.
The lawsuit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct Mr. El-Masri, beat him, drug him, and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. The corporations that owned and operated the airplanes used to transport Mr. El-Masri are also named in the case. The CIA continued to hold Mr. El-Masri incommunicado in the notorious "Salt Pit" prison in Afghanistan long after his innocence was known. Five months after his abduction, Mr. El-Masri was deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania.
The judge dismissed the case after the government intervened, arguing that allowing the case to proceed would jeopardize state secrets. On Tuesday, November 28, the ACLU will appeal the dismissal.
Amnesty International and ACLU are just two of the organisations trying to draw attention to the human rights violations of this ghastly procedure (sometimes called 'extraordinary' rendition), the use of which has been significantly enlarged under Bush's control, stressing that its claims to legality are dubious at best. I can't help but think of Robert Downey Jr's line in A Scanner Darkly, "You have to admire an institution that can bring so much integrity to evil."
Rendition practices can be traced back to the mid-1990s, somewhat influenced by the CIA's reluctance to disclose its methods of attaining information in a formal court of law when dealing with 'difficult' terrorist suspects.
According to Wikipedia,
Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote: "an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture." Gerard Baker of The Times commented that this "must rank as euphemism of the year. [In] 2005 ["extraordinary rendition"] became notorious as the term used by the US to describe what it does when it hands over terrorist suspects and other enemies to third countries that are rather less scrupulous about human rights than we are."
You can find two books that deal with this subject matter already on the market (Stephen Grey's "Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program" and A.C. Thomspon & Trevor Pagen's "Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights" - both were published this year), and the film industry is not to be outdone - two projects called "Rendition" are planned to make their way to your megaplex or independent theatre in 2007.
The first of these is a UK production shot in England and Spain written and directed by Jim Threapleton, starring Andy Serkis (King Kong, The Prestige) as an interrogator. Shot on a £20,000 budget, the film has an official blog, and was shot using unconventional methods which prioritise the role of improvisation, a technique seldom introduced to dramas or thrillers.
IMDb provides the following short description:
A man is snatched from the streets of his home city and transported to an unknown destination. Held in a tiny cell with no access to legal representation, he is cut off from the outside world. Advanced interrogation techniques are used to break him down. His life deconstructed with such manipulation that even he begins to question his innocence. Transported again, in a small jet marked only 'N379P', to the searing heat of an unspecified locale where interrogation is quickly replaced by sophisticated torture. No reason is offered for his detention and no timetable is set for his release. No governments are mentioned, no radical factions named, no fingers pointed. There is nothing for him to hang onto. The man has fallen out of the world and only questions remain.
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Serkis:
Serkis: I’m playing a Jordanese interrogator. It was an amazing filming experience, actually, because the whole film was improvised. [It’s about] this unfortunate man who is just whisked away off the street and doesn’t know where he ends up, in some Middle Eastern country. It’s a Kafka-esque nightmare. We spent some time in rehearsals and the stuff we built up was quite scary, quite frightening. I think it’s going to be a really powerful piece.
I think it’s a really important story to be told. It’s actually about the creation of a terrorist; through what happens to him he becomes more radical.
Interviewer: Was it the improv or the story that drew you to that project?
Serkis: When I met the director, James Threapleton, he talked to me about why he wanted to make it. It was this sense that anybody could be grabbed at any moment off the street because of being suspected of being a terrorist. When we talked about it we said we didn’t it to just be a drama/documentary – there is actually a sense of illusion, oddly enough. These people disappear into these systems. You have no idea what happens to them. Gradually it’s coming out in the news, but these people become these grey, ghostlike things that end up in a machine and are spat out at the end – or are not. Some of them are still there. It’s terrifying.
Jim T tells Netribution: We used a point of view camera as often as possible, to draw the audience into the scene. It was important to make it as visceral and arresting as possible. We want to literally place the audience in amongst these moments of torture and interrogation.
The movie is now in post-production, but it won't be the only movie coming out with the title "Rendition" - another production is currently being shot in the USA, Morocco and South Africa by Gavin Hood (who picked up the Academy Award for Tsotsi), who has assembled the diverse talents of Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard.
According to the Hollywood Reporter:
The multilayered New Line project story centers on a CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) based in Cairo who finds his world spinning out of control after he witnesses the interrogation of a foreign national by the Egyptian secret police. Witherspoon is playing the pregnant American wife of the national. Alan Arkin also has been cast, playing a senator.
Streep is a government official who orders the rendition of the national. Shooting is under way in Los Angeles. The production also will shoot in Washington, Morocco and South Africa. Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") is directing.
According to former CIA case officer Bob Baer, Egypt has a particularly disreputable reputation amongst rendition sites: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."
Written by Kelley Sane and produced by Steve Golin, founder and CEO of the visionary company called Anonymous Content, which represents such acclaimed avant-garde directors as David Fincher, David Lynch, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, this film is likely to make a greater impact at the box office and be seen by more people.
Both films, while based on real-life events, offer fictionalised narratives and aim to get audiences thinking about the controversial actions that have been taken by governments all around the globe (Europe is known to collaborate with the US, if just by assenting their secretive movement) in the name of 'freedom', 'liberty' and 'safety'.
Peace, love and postmodernism,
PMC
Yet terrorists are not the only people who have been subjected to this brutal act. From the American Civil Liberties Union website:
In a history-making lawsuit, the ACLU has challenged the CIA on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an entirely innocent victim of rendition who was released without ever being charged.
The lawsuit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct Mr. El-Masri, beat him, drug him, and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. The corporations that owned and operated the airplanes used to transport Mr. El-Masri are also named in the case. The CIA continued to hold Mr. El-Masri incommunicado in the notorious "Salt Pit" prison in Afghanistan long after his innocence was known. Five months after his abduction, Mr. El-Masri was deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania.
The judge dismissed the case after the government intervened, arguing that allowing the case to proceed would jeopardize state secrets. On Tuesday, November 28, the ACLU will appeal the dismissal.
Amnesty International and ACLU are just two of the organisations trying to draw attention to the human rights violations of this ghastly procedure (sometimes called 'extraordinary' rendition), the use of which has been significantly enlarged under Bush's control, stressing that its claims to legality are dubious at best. I can't help but think of Robert Downey Jr's line in A Scanner Darkly, "You have to admire an institution that can bring so much integrity to evil."
Public Art: LA billboard installed on Beverly Hills/West Hollywood this October
Rendition practices can be traced back to the mid-1990s, somewhat influenced by the CIA's reluctance to disclose its methods of attaining information in a formal court of law when dealing with 'difficult' terrorist suspects.
According to Wikipedia,
Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote: "an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture." Gerard Baker of The Times commented that this "must rank as euphemism of the year. [In] 2005 ["extraordinary rendition"] became notorious as the term used by the US to describe what it does when it hands over terrorist suspects and other enemies to third countries that are rather less scrupulous about human rights than we are."
You can find two books that deal with this subject matter already on the market (Stephen Grey's "Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program" and A.C. Thomspon & Trevor Pagen's "Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights" - both were published this year), and the film industry is not to be outdone - two projects called "Rendition" are planned to make their way to your megaplex or independent theatre in 2007.
The first of these is a UK production shot in England and Spain written and directed by Jim Threapleton, starring Andy Serkis (King Kong, The Prestige) as an interrogator. Shot on a £20,000 budget, the film has an official blog, and was shot using unconventional methods which prioritise the role of improvisation, a technique seldom introduced to dramas or thrillers.
IMDb provides the following short description:
A man is snatched from the streets of his home city and transported to an unknown destination. Held in a tiny cell with no access to legal representation, he is cut off from the outside world. Advanced interrogation techniques are used to break him down. His life deconstructed with such manipulation that even he begins to question his innocence. Transported again, in a small jet marked only 'N379P', to the searing heat of an unspecified locale where interrogation is quickly replaced by sophisticated torture. No reason is offered for his detention and no timetable is set for his release. No governments are mentioned, no radical factions named, no fingers pointed. There is nothing for him to hang onto. The man has fallen out of the world and only questions remain.
A shot of Omar Berdouni's 'Zaafir' from Jim T's Rendition
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Serkis:
Serkis: I’m playing a Jordanese interrogator. It was an amazing filming experience, actually, because the whole film was improvised. [It’s about] this unfortunate man who is just whisked away off the street and doesn’t know where he ends up, in some Middle Eastern country. It’s a Kafka-esque nightmare. We spent some time in rehearsals and the stuff we built up was quite scary, quite frightening. I think it’s going to be a really powerful piece.
I think it’s a really important story to be told. It’s actually about the creation of a terrorist; through what happens to him he becomes more radical.
Interviewer: Was it the improv or the story that drew you to that project?
Serkis: When I met the director, James Threapleton, he talked to me about why he wanted to make it. It was this sense that anybody could be grabbed at any moment off the street because of being suspected of being a terrorist. When we talked about it we said we didn’t it to just be a drama/documentary – there is actually a sense of illusion, oddly enough. These people disappear into these systems. You have no idea what happens to them. Gradually it’s coming out in the news, but these people become these grey, ghostlike things that end up in a machine and are spat out at the end – or are not. Some of them are still there. It’s terrifying.
Jim T and Andy S on the set of the UK Rendition
Jim T tells Netribution: We used a point of view camera as often as possible, to draw the audience into the scene. It was important to make it as visceral and arresting as possible. We want to literally place the audience in amongst these moments of torture and interrogation.
The movie is now in post-production, but it won't be the only movie coming out with the title "Rendition" - another production is currently being shot in the USA, Morocco and South Africa by Gavin Hood (who picked up the Academy Award for Tsotsi), who has assembled the diverse talents of Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard.
Jake G and Reese W on the LA shoot of Gavin H's Rendition
According to the Hollywood Reporter:
The multilayered New Line project story centers on a CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) based in Cairo who finds his world spinning out of control after he witnesses the interrogation of a foreign national by the Egyptian secret police. Witherspoon is playing the pregnant American wife of the national. Alan Arkin also has been cast, playing a senator.
Streep is a government official who orders the rendition of the national. Shooting is under way in Los Angeles. The production also will shoot in Washington, Morocco and South Africa. Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") is directing.
According to former CIA case officer Bob Baer, Egypt has a particularly disreputable reputation amongst rendition sites: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."
Written by Kelley Sane and produced by Steve Golin, founder and CEO of the visionary company called Anonymous Content, which represents such acclaimed avant-garde directors as David Fincher, David Lynch, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, this film is likely to make a greater impact at the box office and be seen by more people.
Both films, while based on real-life events, offer fictionalised narratives and aim to get audiences thinking about the controversial actions that have been taken by governments all around the globe (Europe is known to collaborate with the US, if just by assenting their secretive movement) in the name of 'freedom', 'liberty' and 'safety'.
Peace, love and postmodernism,
PMC
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Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
http://backspace.com/notes/2006/09/17/x.html
www.n379p.com
www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/854/267
&
www.iheartjake.com
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
The improvised film sounds very interesting. Thanks for mentioning it. Would love to know how exactly the improvisations were created.
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
I wish we had more information on Gavin Hood's Rendition because it sounds like it has a lot of potential. Steve Golin has Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich and Babel under his belt, amongst others.
I make it a point to question everything, especially the concepts commonly held sacred.
Comment by LaurenD
Thank you.
LaurenD
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
What so-called democratic countries will do in order to pursue terrorists scares me a hell of a lot more than the terrorists themselves.
Thanks for the heads up on these movies!
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I only hope these films are done with an objective eye and don't end up repeating themselves.
Have you seen Road To Guantanamoyet? It tackles a lot of these issues head on by telling the tale of the Tipton 3.
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Kylie - Couldn't agree with you more...
JohnDoe - No, I haven't seen Road to Guantanamo yet, and I really must.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD