Professor Safia Swimelar’s POL389 class on International Human Rights is in their second month of their film screenings for their Human Rights Film Festival.
The fourth of their film series is “Standard Operating Procedure” and will be shown in KOBC 101 (Digital Theater) Monday Nov. 3 at 7:00 p.m. This is a great opportunity to get cultural event credit while learning about human rights.
To get a glimpse of the movie, click on the link to the right.
Or read the synopsis below:
Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America’s image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few “bad apples”?
We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—and the subsequent coverup—could happen? –From the director
If you have any questions at all, please contact Katie Meyer (kmeyer3@elon.edu) for more information!
Swimelar’s International Human Rights course (POLS 389) has organized this human rights film series in order to spread awareness at Elon of diverse and global human rights issues and to examine the role of images and film in our understanding of human rights. As part of their course requirements and for educational purposes only, students will briefly present on different aspects of the film and will lead a discussion with the audience.