LEWISTON TRIBUNE
Filmmaker looks 'Inside Iraq'
Documentarian brings his film to WSU for showing and discussion
November 5, 2004
JENNIFER K. BAUER
Like many Americans, independent filmmaker Mike Shiley's life is divided into before 9-11, and the dark shadow of after.
Before 9-11, he worked odd jobs between trekking the globe making
what he calls B-version Travel Channel adventure videos bought
mostly by senior citizens, "who didn't seem to know cable TV
existed." After 9-11, he talked his way into the Iraqi war zone
with his camera.
Footage of him climbing Everest and on elephant
safari in Thailand changed to him interviewing child victims of
Saddam's mine fields and firing a tank on a U.S. "harass and
intimidate" mission. These last are scenes in his 80-minute
documentary, "Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories," which he is taking
to universities and colleges around the country. He will be at
Washington State University in Pullman Sunday.
After getting a business degree in 1989 from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Shiley went to work at Burlington Northern Railroad in "the most boring job ever." He
saved his money, quit and began traveling around the world with his
camera. He guided scuba dives in Egypt, where he learned Arabic,
and biked 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico. He visited Russia in
its first year of nonrestricted travel and spent Christmas Eve in
Bethlehem.
Then 9-11 happened and Shiley felt called to do
something for his country. "I was too old to join the military and
I was not sure if that was the direction for me. I wanted to see if
I could get into Iraq and tell a story closer to what was going on
in the country."
He convinced the Portland branch of Northwest
Medical Teams International to take him to northern Iraq, where
teams were setting up medical clinics during the spring of 2003.
The organization first rejected, then accepted -- after more
persuading -- his offer to pay his own expenses and film the teams'
efforts. The Kurdish region was safely pro-American.
When he
returned to the United States he felt he had to get to Baghdad to
get the story. He contacted all the major media affiliates in
Portland and made a deal with ABC, the only one that replied, to
supply free images from Iraq. In return, he agreed to be embedded
with the Oregon National Guard -- who happened to be running the
largest base in the country, Logistical Support Area Anaconda.
Shiley was to leave before Christmas 2003. Kidnappings, beheadings
and car bombings were the daily headlines and he circled the
airport anxiously four times in his car. "I could not get myself
out of the car. It was like peeling myself off the seat."
His introduction to the war zone was ABC's weekly Saturday morning
"shuttle" -- 11 armor-plated, bullet-proof, white Chevy Suburbans
driving in wedge formation at 100 mph along Route 1 from Amman,
Jordan, to Baghdad. The 10-hour trip took them through Fallujah,
the country's most violence-prone city and part of the rebellious
Sunni Triangle.
Driving through Fallujah, the armed Jordanian
drivers didn't take any chances, bumping cars that got in their way
off the road. Shiley and the others had to don bullet-proof vests
and lay on the floor. "It was probably the scariest part of the
whole experience," says Shiley, who had begun filming.
His untold stories of Iraq include a day at Saddam's mine fields on the border
between Kurdistan and Iraq. The 30 million mines behind lines of
red flags printed with skull-and-crossbones symbols were being
removed by workers paid $10 a day. He spent Christmas Eve with U.S.
soldiers listening to gunfire and helicopters and visited an Iraqi
hospital for mine victims where children sit with faces, legs and
arms melted by the mines' sulfuric acid.
He finds a civilian bomb
shelter hit by a U.S. laser-guided, bunker-busting, smart bomb
during the first Gulf War. The shelter was lined with three layers
of 6-foot-thick, reinforced concrete. There were 345 people inside.
"The heat was so great when it detonated it literally seared people
to the walls. It burned them so bad you could see the outlines of
people. It's ghastly. It's like the shadow of a ghost." The shelter
now contains gravestones, photos of victims and a clock set at the
time of the explosion. "It's just one person's perspective," Shiley
says of his film. "I didn't try to push an agenda. It's my personal
experience. It's disturbing. It's sad. There are people out there
who don't want to think. They want to think that everything we (the
U.S.) touch turns to gold. "We're trying to make a neutral film.
It's so messed up over there. We are our own worst enemy in so many
ways."
Shiley believes he has a better perspective on what is going
on in Iraq than most soldiers stationed there. "I respect the
soldiers. I was embedded with them for two weeks, wore the uniform
of the military and trained to be a gunner on a tank. Even so, I'll
tell you that so many of them don't understand Iraqi culture. "Few speak two words
of the language and the vast majority never get off the base, never
get around the people. They just don't do that. They're up in a
tank or in a unit sweeping for insurgents -- although the people
that do that are a very small part of what they do over there. Most
know relatively little about the country and may or may not have
met an Iraqi."
Shiley says response to "Inside Iraq: The Untold
Stories" has been polarized at the universities and colleges he has
visited. In one place, a Vietnam veteran jumped on stage screaming
and cursing Shiley and his film. He had to be removed by security
guards. Other times, he says, people bought the video before the
show and demanded their money back afterward. Others have
approached him with tears in their eyes saying it's the greatest
thing they've ever seen. He is entering the film at the Sundance
and Cannes film festivals.
He is planning a new film about the
civil war in Sudan, Africa. "I feel I've done something far greater
than I ever thought," says Shiley. "I'm just one guy and his camera
... I just shot what I saw."
Bauer may be contacted at jkbauer@lmtribune.com