Taxi to the Dark Side wins Oscar
Ha! “Taxi to the Dark Side” won the Oscar award for best documentary feature last night. I saw the film last week at a National Archives screening; it is an excellent, thorough, unflinching look at the way this administration has turned the United States, its armed forces, and its intelligence services into torturers and apologists for torturers.
And we have done better, in more dire circumstances. In accepting the award, director Alex Dibney dedicated the film to Dilawar, the young man who died at American hands in custody in Bagram, but also his father, noting that “My father, a navy interrogator … urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law.” As the credits roll at the end of the film, Dibney added a shot of his father saying so. I remember a Washington Post article from last fall where veterans of a World War II interrogation team based in the District made similar remarks.
Naturally, the award was presented to weirdly inappropriate triumphal music, and a clip of Afghans gazing skyward in awe as B-52s circle overhead. But whatever. On a final note: hey, nice going, Discovery Channel! How does it feel to be the @$$h01es who unloaded a documentary for “controversial content” just before it won an Oscar?
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NOTES: “noted” — Melbourne Sun, “It’s an Oscar for Eva”; Eva Orner was the documentary’s producer., “weirdly inappropriate” — ThinkProgress has the video of the award presentation and accompanying clip. “article” — “Fort Hunt’s Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII,” Petula Dvorak, 10/6/07: “We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture.”
CROSSPOSTED from newsrack
