Fallujah - a Lost Generation?

In one of the many alternative mini-cinemas that have sprung up in Bristol City, we enjoyed a one-off showing of this vital documentary set in Fallujah, by Feurat Alani. Fallujah was chosen over Baghdad as it was the city, it's explained, that put up the strongest resistance to the invasion.


The results of the US/ UK invasion are, of course, well-known: the enforced dismantling of the army and the civil service which left the whole country open to the most negative of anarchies, for instance - and more of that side is revealed in the film. But the immediate effects of the attack have been treated as less newsworthy and also have been subjected to stringent censorship wherever possible. Inevitably rumours and facts have leaked out, but this film looks like the most substantive indictment to date. The use of white phosphorous, a close relation to napalm, has led to accusations of war crime, but the depleted uranium, used in shells, bullets and armour plating for its extreme hardness (and probably because it spontaneously combusts under heat), goes beyond that in many ways. Years after it was used, it continues to cause cancers  locally and doubtless has contributed to the World's general atmospheric pollution, while leading to the regular birth of children with seriously disabling defects. This is all revealed in the film, whose makers, we can't forget, were braving considerable danger in making it. They, at least, were able to work without the threat of American sniping, unlike the concerned doctors and scientists who tried to determine the source of the increasing cancers and birth defects in the early days.
Inevitably, the director's  concern for his subject didn't stop with the camera's rolling. He's not the only one: our hostess for the evening revealed that she had found that children, made homeless by the bombing, were playing in an abandoned army vehicle heavy with the above DU (- let's call it by what it is, really: nuclear waste-)  and tried to get the truck removed, but she couldn't get America, Iraq or Britain to accept responsibility. Eventually, she told us, it was moved from the centre of the square to the side - creating two contaminated areas out of one.
Well, that's it. A documentary that works like a home movie for the Humans. I hope.

Acker Bilk

JazzServices.org.uk

The clarinettist and band leader who came close as anyone could to making Trad Jazz look cool, Acker Bilk has died at the age of 85. He will always be associated with 'Stranger on the Shore', the major hit in both the UK and US, ahead of the British pop-rock invasion. After he gave up touring, and a good while after the height of the Trad boom, he returned to one of his other careers and enjoyed some success as a painter, concentrating on small landscapes. More: