Shot by soldiers on consumer-grade digital video cameras, the documentary offers an immersive, sobering and often shocking slice of life (and death) in Iraq. It premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens in select cities this summer.
Director Deborah Scranton described War Tapes as the result of a "virtual embed." She gave cameras to 10 Iraq-bound soldiers, and then used e-mail and instant messaging to provide them with advice on technique and technical issues.
By the end of their yearlong tour of duty, the soldiers, all from New Hampshire's National Guard, had sent Scranton 800 hours of what she considered thoughtful, often beautifully shot, footage.
"They became journalists," Scranton said. "This isn't like soldiers making home movies. This was a process, a conscious effort for us to together tell the experience of what it means to go to war."
Most of the footage, including hours of road shots, was mundane. But with their cameras constantly rolling, the soldiers captured plenty of revealing and terrifying moments of the kind a drop-in journalist couldn't.
In one scene, soldiers are caught in a firefight. The camera spins wildly while we hear the harrowing cries of "Man down! Man down!" In another, GIs are ambushed during the siege of Fallujah. They chase down and kill the insurgents, then photograph and film the corpses.
And upon arriving on the scene of a vicious car bombing in Taji, an obviously shaken Steve Pink, one of the film's three main subjects, continued to film.
"We made the news," said Pink while watching CNN footage of the bombing later that night. "I feel exploited and proud at the same time."
Frontline producer Martin Smith said TV coverage of Iraq has been severely constrained by war's danger and unpredictability.
"It's so unlike any other war, and I've heard this from people who covered Vietnam," said Smith, who has been to Iraq four times since the U.S. invasion and is preparing for a trip to Afghanistan. "There is no place you can retreat from the danger. Print journalists and photojournalists are relying heavily on Iraqi and Arab stringers to do the work."
The film is another example of participatory journalism, Smith said, made possible by cheap cameras and the growing number of people who know how to use them.
With the Pentagon shutting down unauthorized blogs, it's no surprise that some of the footage shot for the film didn't survive the military's vetting process. One confiscated tape included a graphic scene from the Fallujah firefight.
But plenty of mind-blowing content did find its way into War Tapes, thanks mostly to its filmmakers' unprecedented access.
"I'm not supposed to talk to the media," one soldier said when Pink tried to interview him. "I'm not the media, dammit!" Pink replied.
Sgt. Zack Bazzi, another of the film's three main subjects, paid little mind to the camera while on patrol. In an interview with Wired News, he said he'd strap Scranton's Sony PC109 camera onto the dash of his Humvee and then go about his business.
"Sooner or later you forget about it," he said. "Especially in a combat situation, when there are many different things you worry about -- the soldiers I'm in charge of, possible bad guys out there on the road.
"I'd be crossing the ethical boundaries if I acted a certain way in front of the camera instead of focusing my full attention on leading my men and accomplishing my mission. The behavior you see is genuine."
As a result, War Tapes feels far more raw and political than network coverage. One of its main targets is KBR, a Halliburton-owned military contractor that the soldiers suspect of war profiteering.
"Why the fuck am I out here guarding this truck full of cheesecake?" asked Mike Moriarty, another of the film's central subjects. "The priority of KBR making money outweighs the priority of our safety."
But War Tapes is no Michael Moore rant. Scranton said one of her main goals was to deepen and complicate our conception of the war, not politicize it.
Bazzi thinks the film succeeds in providing a more nuanced portrait of Iraq and of the soldiers fighting there.
"Are things rosy? Are there butterflies flying around little squirrels and people hugging us?" he said. "No. But are we killing babies and destroying the whole country? Absolutely not.
