Defense and Military Forces

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares149 Views

    Jack Jennings, P.OW. Who Helped Build Burma Railway, Dies at 104

    by

    He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was one of thousands of prisoners whose hardships were the basis for the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”Jack Jennings, a British prisoner of war during World War II who worked as a slave laborer on the Burma Railway, the roughly 250-mile Japanese military construction project that inspired a novel and the Oscar-winning film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” died this month in St. Marychurch, England. He was 104.His daughters Carol Barrett and Hazel Heath told the BBC on Jan. 22 that he had died in a nursing facility, though the exact date of death was unclear.They said they believed their father was the last survivor of the estimated 85,000 British, Australian and Indian solders who were captured when the British colony of Singapore fell to Japanese forces in February 1942.A private in the 1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment, Mr. Jennings spent the next three-and-half years as a prisoner of war, first in Changi prison in Singapore and then in primitive camps along the route of the railway between Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).To build bridges, Mr. Jennings and at least 60,000 P.O.W.s — and thousands more local prisoners — were forced to cut down and debark trees, saw them into half-meter lengths, dig and carry earth to build embankments, and drive piles into the ground.In his 2011 memoir, “Prisoner Without a Crime,” Mr. Jennings described the dangerous process of driving the piles, using a heavy weight raised by the men to the top of a timber frame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Napoleon Didn’t Really Shoot Cannons at Egypt’s Pyramids

      by

      But scholars say that a trailer for Ridley Scott’s new film draws attention to the French emperor’s complex and lasting legacy on the study of Egypt’s cultural heritage.As Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” opens for Thanksgiving holiday viewing, scenes from the film’s trailers are making waves. That was especially true of a sensational depiction of French troops led by Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor firing cannons at the pyramids of Giza.“I don’t know if he did that,” Mr. Scott told The Times of London. “But it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt.”There is no evidence that French invaders launched artillery at the pyramids, or that Napoleon’s troops shot the nose off the Sphinx, another piece of popular apocrypha (evidence suggests that the nose was chiseled off centuries before Napoleon’s time).“From what we know, Napoleon held the Sphinx and the pyramids in high esteem and used them as a means of urging his troops to greater glory,” said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. “He definitely did not take pot shots at them.”While creative license is expected in Hollywood biopics, Mr. Scott’s cinematic choices prompted memes, discussion and lighthearted dunking, including riffs about Napoleon battling mummies.Some historians have criticized Mr. Scott, but many hope “Napoleon” will generate interest in the events that inspired the film. And while Napoleon didn’t literally hurl projectiles at the pyramids, his invasion of Egypt had a profound effect on Egyptian cultural heritage and how the world understands it today.“Ultimately, the campaign is a defeat — the French lose and get kicked out,” said Alexander Mikaberidze, a professor at Louisiana State University in Shreveport who specializes in Napoleonic history. But Napoleon’s invasion also resulted in a complex scientific and cultural legacy, he added: “the beginning of Egyptology, the beginning of this fascination with Egypt and the desire to explore Egyptian history and Egyptian culture.”The title page of the the multivolume publication Napoleon commissioned upon his return from Egypt.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportA drawing by Dominique Vivant, later Baron Denon, who accompanied Napoleon on the Egyptian campaign, of French scholars measuring the Sphinx.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportThe French campaign in Egypt from 1798 to 1801 was driven by Napoleon’s colonial ambitions and a desire to stymie British influence. But in addition to amassing an army of some 50,000 men, Napoleon made the unusual decision to invite more than 160 scholars — in fields like botany, geology, the humanities and others — to accompany the invasion.The scholars documented the cultural and natural landscapes of Egypt, which they eventually compiled into a seminal 1809 publication that contained detailed entries about the Giza pyramid complex. This is one reason historians know that Napoleon visited the pyramids, as shown in Mr. Scott’s film, though it is unlikely he regarded the structures as military targets.“There was a real interest on the part of the scholars and, I think by extension, a real interest by Napoleon to be able to understand these things that Europeans hadn’t really had unfettered access to since the classical period,” said Andrew Bednarski, a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo who specializes in Egyptology and 19th-century history.In their effort to document Egypt’s vast archaeological heritage, the French scholars seized many important artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, a rock inscribed with three languages that proved instrumental in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone and many other spoils ended up in British hands after the French hold on Egypt collapsed in 1801. By then, Napoleon had returned to France.Following the failed campaign, word of Egypt’s cultural wonders spread across Europe and powered a new wave of global Egyptomania. This insatiable appetite for Egyptian antiquities has resulted in centuries of exploration, excavation and exploitation of the region’s vast material culture. Since Napoleon’s invasion, countless artifacts have been removed from Egypt by prospectors and traders, many through clandestine and outright criminal channels.The Rosetta Stone, on view at the British Museum in London, was one of the spoils of Napoleon’s Egypt campaign.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe Nefertiti bust, found in Egypt by German archaeologists in 1912.Michael Sohn/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs a result, many of Egypt’s greatest treasures, including the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti, are in museums and private collections far from home. Egypt’s antiquities community has been working for years to repatriate as many artifacts as possible, with some success, while also developing new strategies to protect its cultural legacy within the nation’s borders.“There are more site management plans, an increase in museums and an upsurge in media coverage of antiquities, which is geared not only to attract tourists but also to fostering national pride and educating the general Egyptian public as to the significance of their heritage,” Dr. Ikram said.Egypt has also been confronting a resurgence of looting in recent years as a result of domestic instabilities. The Antiquities Coalition, a U.S.-based nonprofit, estimated that following the 2011 revolution, about $3 billion worth of relics had been illegally smuggled out of Egypt. The Institute of Egypt, a research center that Napoleon established in Cairo during his invasion, burned down in 2011 during the tumult of the Arab Spring. Erosive forces such as pollution and the effects of climate change, including extreme weather, pose another threat to Egypt’s monuments and artifacts.Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign ignited the modern demand for Egyptian antiquities that still rages today. Mr. Scott’s vision of Napoleon shooting cannons at the pyramids of Giza is just a continuation of this longstanding impulse to co-opt Egyptian symbols and market them to a new audience. Many experts have decried the inaccuracies in the film — prompting an expletive-laden response from Mr. Scott. But some see in “Napoleon” the opportunity to revisit the polarizing French emperor’s lasting effects on the world.“Anything that might spark people’s interest in the history of Egyptology, the effects of colonialism around the world, the Enlightenment — any of those things — I think is only positive,” Dr. Bednarski said. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Victor Jara Killing: Ex-Chilean Soldier Arrested in Florida

      by

      Pedro Barrientos, 74, is accused of killing the popular Chilean singer in 1973. In a civil case, Mr. Barrientos was accused of bragging about shooting Mr. Jara twice in the head.A former Chilean Army officer accused of torturing and killing the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara and others during the bloody aftermath of a 1973 military coup was arrested in Florida, officials announced Tuesday.The former officer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos, 74, who moved to Florida in 1990, is wanted in Chile for the extrajudicial murder of Mr. Jara at a Chilean sports stadium. There, Mr. Jara and other dissidents had been detained after the coup on Sept. 11, 1973, that toppled the country’s president, Salvador Allende, and thrust Gen. Augusto Pinochet into power.Federal immigration officials and local law enforcement officers arrested Mr. Barrientos on Oct. 5 during a traffic stop in Deltona, Fla., about 30 miles southwest of Daytona Beach, according to a news release published on Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Mr. Barrientos is in ICE custody, officials said.“Barrientos will now have to answer the charges he’s faced with in Chile for his involvement in torture and extrajudicial killing of Chilean citizens,” John Condon, a special agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division in Tampa, said in the news release.Mr. Jara, who has been described as the “Bob Dylan of South America,” was a popular singer who hailed from the Chilean countryside and sang tales of poverty and injustice.He had supported the Allende government and was a member of Chile’s Communist Party when he was arrested at the State Technical University alongside hundreds of students and faculty members.Three days after his arrest, Mr. Jara’s bullet-riddled body was found outside a cemetery alongside those of four other victims. Before he was killed, soldiers smashed his fingers with their rifle butts and mockingly told him that he would never play guitar again.Mr. Barrientos’s arrest comes more than seven years after a federal jury in a civil case found him liable for Mr. Jara’s death and awarded $28 million in damages to the singer’s family, which had brought the case under a federal law that allows the victims of overseas human rights violations to seek redress.A former Chilean soldier testified in court that Mr. Barrientos had bragged about having shot Mr. Jara twice in the head.“He used to show his pistol and say, ‘I killed Víctor Jara with this,’” the soldier, José Navarrete, testified.A federal court revoked Mr. Barrientos’s U.S. citizenship in July based on a sealed complaint brought by the Department of Justice’s immigration litigation office.“The court found that Mr. Barrientos willfully concealed material facts related to his military service in his immigration applications,” the ICE news release said.It was unclear whether extradition proceedings for Mr. Barrientos were underway. The federal authorities could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday night, and it was unclear if Mr. Barrientos had retained a lawyer.Mr. Barrientos was the latest former Chilean official to be arrested in Mr. Jara’s killing. In 2018, eight retired military officers were each sentenced to more than 15 years in prison by a Chilean judge over Mr. Jara’s death. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Lynn Lynn’s Journey From Rocker to Dissecting Myanmar’s Coup in Film

      by

      Lynn Lynn was a musical idol when he volunteered in 2015 to protect the life of Myanmar’s new civilian leader. Forced to flee after 2021’s coup, he has reinvented himself as a film director.Long before he became an award-winning filmmaker, Lynn Lynn was already a star.His voice was ubiquitous on the radio, belting out rock songs, and he played sold-out shows in stadiums across the country. Everywhere he went, fans hounded him for selfies and autographs.But all that fame was confined to Myanmar, a country he had to flee after a February 2021 military coup.It wasn’t only his lyrics about the suffering of people under military rule that had made him a target of the country’s generals. He was also close to the country’s now-imprisoned civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, having once served as her bodyguard.Now living in the Thai city of Mae Sot, bordering Myanmar, the 39-year-old rocker has taken on a new identity: refugee.Despite the drastic changes in his circumstances, he has not given up on art, but he has changed his focus: to film.His first short movie, “The Beginning,” whose main characters are a fictional group of people from Myanmar, focuses on the importance of good will in building a democratic nation. Five months later, he followed with “The Way,” which captures the trauma and despair of a family suffering from a nation’s conflict; despite the dark themes, the movie is a musical — the first by a director from Myanmar.Both films have won multiple honors at international film festivals, with “The Way” also earning multiple accolades for its soundtrack.“I want to give the message that the military junta can oppress an artist physically, but the spirit and art cannot be oppressed,” Mr. Lynn Lynn said, speaking from his spartan music studio, a bedroom in a rented house in Mae Sot.Mr. Lynn Lynn walking behind Daw Aung San Suu Kyi when he was one of the bodyguards of Myanmar’s civilian leader.Lauren DeCicca/Getty ImagesMr. Lynn Lynn’s life story has been shaped by his country’s convulsive recent history, shifting from dictatorship to democracy to the present-day resistance.The youngest of four boys, he was born in the city of Mandalay to a railway worker father and a mother who stayed at home.When he was 5, he saw close at hand the brutality of the army whose leaders ruled the nation: soldiers pulling passengers from a boat and commanding everyone — regardless of age — to kneel. That scene of dominance and humiliation, he says, has stayed with him throughout his adult life.As a 9-year-old, he taught himself how to play guitar. After high school, he moved to Yangon, the capital at the time, where he cycled through a series of jobs, including bus conductor and security guard, while trying to start a musical career.His big break came in 2001, after he walked into a recording studio to drop off his demo tape and was soon hired to compose songs for some of Myanmar’s most famous singers. He established a reputation for composing original songs, a rarity in a country where nearly all the songs were copied from abroad.In 2007, he marched daily with the country’s monks during the Saffron Revolution protests. He read over and over again “Freedom From Fear,” a book of essays by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, at the time the leader of the country’s opposition, who was under house arrest.He learned how to navigate the country’s censors. Out of every five songs submitted, he was instructed to change the lyrics of three. Sometimes, he submitted different lyrics and then later swapped back in the original words, without anyone seeming to notice.“He is a rebel,” said his wife, Chit Thu Wai, a well-known actress and singer.Mr. Lynn Lynn with his wife, Chit Thu Wai, a well-known actress, in his music studio in Mae Sot.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesIn 2008, Mr. Lynn Lynn released “Think,” an album with love songs that he had written initially for other singers. It was an instant hit and catapulted him to stardom.In 2011, the military initiated a range of sweeping political changes, including releasing Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who convened a gathering of the country’s artists at her house.There, Mr. Lynn Lynn told the Nobel Peace Prize winner he would be willing to do anything for her. He became one of her bodyguards during the 2012 by-election and the 2015 general election.After she won in 2015, becoming the country’s civilian leader, Mr. Lynn Lynn returned to music. Able to sing openly about the generals, he released an album called “The Fourth Revolution.”Then, in February 2021, two months after Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi won the 2020 election in a landslide, the military detained her and announced it had taken power in a coup.The junta charged dozens of actors and musicians, including Mr. Lynn Lynn and his wife, with “incitement.” After months in hiding, the family decided reluctantly to leave Myanmar.Mr. Lynn Lynn went first in August 2021, trekking across a jungle and then swimming to Mae Sot. Ms. Chit Thu Wai and their twin daughters, now 6, followed a week later.Mae Sot, the Thai border city where Mr. Lynn Lynn fled with his family.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn had never wanted to make movies in Myanmar. While he dabbled in script writing and supported independent filmmakers through a production company he owned with his wife, he considered most of the movies made in Myanmar to be too lowbrow to much interest him.He says he turned to film in part to “challenge” his artistic peers back home, many of whom allow the generals to use them for propaganda.Myanmar’s Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare has always exploited actors and actresses, using them in films to portray soldiers as honorable heroes. In return for staying silent, these celebrities enjoy perks, like being paid to attend galas such as the Myanmar Academy Awards.Mr. Lynn Lynn says he has noticed that the timing of these celebrity events often coincides with reports about more military atrocities. Nearly every week brings horrific news: 100 dead in an airstrike. Bombs dropped at an outdoor concert. Eleven children killed at a school.Midway through an interview in Mae Sot, Mr. Lynn Lynn lifted up his T-shirt to reveal his back. In neat, cursive script, there were 700 tattooed names and ages of some of those killed in the coup’s aftermath.Aung Myint, 32. Tun Win Han, 25. Khin Myo Chit, 7.“There are so many more to come,” Ms. Chit Thu Wai said.Mr. Lynn Lynn’s back is tattooed with the names and ages of 700 of those killed after the coup.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn says he looks at the names in the mirror to “compel a sense of urgency upon my consciousness.” The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights group, said more than 4,000 people had been killed in Myanmar since the coup.Mr. Lynn Lynn knew that shooting movies in Mae Sot, so close to Myanmar, was dangerous. Seventeen of 20 cast members of “The Way” stood accused of “incitement,” and they feared Myanmar military’s spies were everywhere, raising concerns they could be abducted or killed. In the movie, members of the central family sing about their suffering from conflict and their quest for peace and justice. Myanmar is never explicitly mentioned because, Mr. Lynn Lynn says, he wants the story to be universal.Two weeks before the shoot, he was still not sure how he would pull it off without the sophisticated equipment typically needed to make a film. He decided to borrow a friend’s iPhone 13 Pro to use as the camera. For the music, he gave himself a crash course in sound mixing.Mr. Lynn Lynn with a wooden ship that was used as a prop in his film “The Way.”Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Lynn Lynn’s cast members had never acted before, but some had backgrounds similar to the stories that he wanted to depict. His directorial advice was to read the script and “feel it in your heart,” recalled Aung Lun, one of the actors, who had left his 5-year-old son and wife behind in Myanmar when he fled in 2021.Mr. Aung Lun’s character in “The Way” leaves his baby daughter at a school as soldiers set fire to their village. Years later, his character confesses that secret to his family.During that scene, Mr. Aung Lun cried so hard the crew had to pause the shoot for an hour.As Mr. Lynn Lynn waits to hear whether he and his family can be resettled in the United States, he has more film projects in the works, including a satire set in Myanmar before the coup.Wherever he finds himself, he intends to keep making films.“I want to use a language understood by the entire universe,” he said. ”I want to show that even while we are on the run, our art will continue to live powerfully.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Music Videos Promote Niger’s Military After a Coup

      by

      Music videos praising the military have proliferated since generals seized power, highlighting the army’s longstanding importance in Niger and popular dissatisfaction with civilian rule.Nigerien music videos praising the country’s military produced both before and after the July 2023 coup.In one video a famous trio of female artists dressed in fatigues lauds soldiers who they say are as fast as antelopes.In another, pickup trucks race through the desert to intercept suspected criminals.And in a third, a dragon from “Game of Thrones” flies through the sky as a well-known pro-military singer likens it to men in uniform, commending their “strength, wisdom, intelligence.”A music video by Maman Sani Maigoichi that aired on Nigerien state television after the coup in late July.On July 26, as a military coup was underway in the West African nation of Niger, the airwaves of Télé Sahel, the state television station, filled with upbeat music videos praising the military. Some of these videos had been circulating for years, but since a group of generals toppled the democratically elected president in July, Niger has witnessed a revival of both old and new military propaganda, now remixed for the TikTok era.In interviews, a dozen artists, academics and entertainment executives plugged into the Nigerien music scene said that what could be seen as a paradox in the West — an outpouring of new videos and music under military rule — made sense in a country with a long history of griot culture, where storytellers and keepers of oral history praised figures of authority. Fear and respect toward the military are also deeply entrenched within the society, analysts said.It is not clear how many Nigeriens support the military takeover. But the widespread appeal of these songs and videos provides a window into the layered history and sentiments that exist between Nigeriens and the military, which has been omnipresent in the country’s political life through five coups in 50 years and, lately, a struggle with Islamist insurgencies.They also shed light on why many in Niger have in part welcomed the end of democratic rule that they associated with endemic corruption, economic hardship and limited freedom of expression, including for artists.Drums of war and the silence of censorshipAs thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Niamey, in early August in support of the new junta Souleymane and Zabeirou Barké, two brothers, joined the crowds to shoot their latest music video.Among throngs of men assembled in front of the country’s national assembly, the green and orange Nigerien flags, raised fists and defiant messages against Western countries provided an ideal backdrop for their new song, “Niger Guida,” or “Niger My Home” in the Hausa language.The threat of a military intervention by a bloc of West African countries has only strengthened the resolve of young Nigeriens to defend their country and prompted some artists to denounce the threats in scathing songs.“Niger is our home, whoever tries to attack us will face the consequences,” the Barké brothers, who are in their 30s and make up the popular rap group MDM, say in the song, which has been broadcast on Télé-Sahel. “We are not afraid of death, come and kill us.”The rap group MDM shot their latest music video on the streets of Niamey in early August.
      “Democracy in Niger was already gone,” said Souleymane Barké, who welcomed the shift to military leadership. “We want new forms of governance.”Many artists have remained silent since the coup. At least one well-known group, Mdou Moctar, invited fans at a concert in New York’s Central Park to show their support to Mr. Bazoum, the ousted president.But in Niger, the junta has only authorized pro-military gatherings.“The majority of voices we’re hearing now are the voices that are allowed,” said Ousseina Alidou, a Nigerien professor of linguistics and cultural studies at Rutgers University. “If you’re not hearing other voices, what does it mean? That there’s a lot of censorship.”A civil society activist in Niger, speaking on condition of anonymity after being threatened by the junta, said, “We either show our support for the putsch or we shut up.”Pro-military music for a new generationOne of the more prominent pro-military videos that has resurfaced on TV and online in recent week’s is “Sodja” (“Soldiers” in the Hausa language), which was released in 2009 by the late singer Hamsou Garba. The video, which features both women and men dressed as soldiers, praises the virtues of the country’s military.“Soldiers are known to rule the nation. Soldiers ensure the safety of the nation,” Ms. Garba sings. Singer Hamsou Garba’s 2009 song “Sodja” praises members of the military for their patriotism and loyalty.It’s a message that has resonated with many Nigeriens. “We love and we support our soldiers,” Bouchra Hamidou, a 32-year-old protester, said at a gathering in Niamey last week.The Nigerien Army itself has long been a favored audience for musicians, with bands touring military camps across the country. Most military coups in Niger have led to a resurgence of pro-military songs, said Abdourahmane Oumarou, a former lawmaker and the owner of the largest music television channel in the country.Now, aging bands are passing the torch to hip-hop artists like MDM, with an uptick in songs and videos calling on Nigeriens to strengthen Niger’s autonomy and independence, Mr. Oumarou said.The takeover in July was the first since 2010: many of the 25 million Nigeriens, half of whom are under 15, are experiencing military rule for the first time.“Young folks might struggle to eat three meals a day, but they watch TikTok and follow the news,” said Mr. Oumarou “They have 4K cameras and they make their music in home studios with the help of YouTube.”Over the past month, hundreds of young people have stood guard every night, checking suspicious-looking cars as they heed a call by the junta to protect the country against a foreign invasion. Pro-military songs have been a frequent soundtrack.Blasting through a speaker at a traffic circle on a recent evening was a song from Sgt. Mamane Sani Maigochi, Niger’s best-known pro-military singer and a former member of the armed forces, who said in a telephone interview that he has put out around 60 pro-military songs over the last decade.“Soldiers are mighty,” Sergeant Maigochi sings. “They defeat aggressors and fix our nation.”Sergeant Maman Sani Maigochi is a performer employed by the Nigerien Armed Forces. The Nigerien military recently shared one of Sergeant Maigochi’s songs on Facebook interspersed with footage of Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani and his allies, the military leaders who claim to be in power.On a recent Sunday, Sergeant Maigochi performed for the junta in the country’s largest stadium, drawing thousands of fans and some military officials. “The goal is always the same: galvanize our soldiers, lift up their spirits,” he said.He refused to disclose how much he had been paid for his concert, or whether it had been financed by the junta.Freedom of expression faces a renewed testThe cheerful songs in Niger, touting patriotic fervor and military might, hide the darker prospect of strengthened censorship under military rule, as has taken place in neighboring in Mali and Burkina Faso, where military coups also prevailed in recent years.Niger’s junta has vowed to work more closely with those two military-led governments. It has also arrested officials from Mr. Bazoum’s government, and forced others to go into hiding. Several teachers have been arrested since the coup, and journalists harassed online and attacked.But artists argue that they also faced limited freedom expression under the rule of Mr. Bazoum and his predecessor, Mahamadou Issoufou.“As soon as democracy doesn’t work, people think of the military,” said Aichatou Ali Soumaila, the lead singer of the band Sogha, who made a song dedicated to the army in 2016 that has found a renewed popularity lately.”Soldats de FANs” or “Solders of the Nigerien Armed Forces” was shown on Télé-Sahel, Niger’s state television channel, in the days following the coup. Still, some artists said that their songs weren’t a free pass to the generals in power. Souleymane Barké from MDM warned that they would also target the military leaders in their music if they went against the people’s will.“Griots could make kings fall,” said Ms. Soumaila. “We can still play this role.”Elian Peltier More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ Review: Ukrainian City Under Siege

      by

      While the Ukrainian city was under siege by Russian forces, a team of journalists recorded the brutal war, resulting in this essential documentary.Everyone else was gone: the authorities, the aid workers, the other journalists too. One week into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov was still in the port city of Mariupol, watching from a high floor of a hospital as a tank emblazoned with a white Z pulled up alongside. Smoke kept rising, bitter and black, from the shelled housing blocks a short distance away. There was no way out. Mariupol was surrounded now. Chernov kept his cameras rolling.“20 Days in Mariupol,” a relentless and truly important documentary, engulfs us in the initial ferocity of Russia’s siege of a city whose name has become a byword for this war’s inhumanity: My Lai, Srebrenica, Aleppo, Mariupol. The A.P. journalists were the last from an international news organization in the city, and for three weeks they documented pregnant women fleeing a bombed maternity hospital, the elderly and the displaced boiling snow to obtain fresh water, the freshly dug ditches where children’s corpses were laid to rest. The reporting would win Chernov, along with his colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant, this year’s Pulitzer Prize for public service, but because internet connections were sparse to absent in the city, Chernov could only transmit a small fraction of his footage during the siege. It all comes out in “20 Days in Mariupol,” in which the battle to survive in southeast Ukraine becomes entwined with the struggle to tell the world what’s happening.This film is very hard to watch, and so it should be, though its episodic structure makes it somewhat easier to endure: Day 1 through Day 20, one at a time, from the first bombs to the team’s flight to safety. On the morning of Feb. 24, Chernov and his colleagues head toward Mariupol, a city of half a million people on the Sea of Azov, and drive by Ukrainian military bases whose antiaircraft systems are burning — the first Russian targets, to prepare the path of their war planes. Many residents doubted the violence would reach Mariupol, and evacuation trains were leaving the city half-empty. Now we follow them into improvised shelters: a cold cellar, a CrossFit gym. “I don’t want to die,” says one young boy. “I wish it would all end soon.”But by Day 4 the fighter jets are overhead, and Chernov is stationed at one of Mariupol’s remaining open hospitals, about a mile from the front line on the edge of the city. He’s there when an ambulance rushes up, and paramedics perform C.P.R. on a 4-year-old girl named Evangelina, severely injured after a Russian shell landed near her home. The medics race her to the modest emergency room, where her blood pools on the floor as they try, and fail, to resuscitate her. (Chernov blurs out her face here, though The A.P. published uncensored images at the time.) “Keep filming,” the head doctor insists — and a minute later, we see the same footage of the doctors at work in grainy reproduction on an MSNBC broadcast and Britain’s ITV News.This blending of high- and low-resolution video registers is a critical tool of Chernov and his editor, Michelle Mizner of “Frontline,” who in many chapters of “20 Days in Mariupol” suture together three kinds of imagery. First comes drone footage of the city — its Khrushchev-era housing blocks, its huge Azovstal steel plant — whose devastation becomes more visible as winter passes to spring. Then follows unique documentation of the war’s early atrocities, shot on high-definition video, but often askew or rocky as Chernov runs after a hospital gurney or flees from the aim of snipers. Finally, at the end of many days, the footage repeats as broadcasts on CBS News, France 24, Deutsche Welle and other AP clients.Even if they feel a touch self-congratulatory, these rebroadcasts underscore two things: the rarity of Chernov’s footage, and the immense challenge of getting it out of Mariupol. The port city’s internet is basically gone by Day 11, when the Russians blockade it from all three sides, and the A.P. journalists risk their lives to hunt for wireless connections after curfew. And there is the matter of Chernov’s nationality. Though he has covered wars in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, he is a native of Kharkiv, Ukraine, and as he whispers at the start of the film, “I have no illusions about what will happen to us if we are caught.”Day 20 comes, and with it a harrowing drive past a dozen Russian checkpoints, with the journalists hiding cameras and hard drives under the seats. One day later, on March 16, 2022, Russian forces bomb the city’s Drama Theater, where hundreds of adults and children have taken shelter. This documentary is more, therefore, than a unique record of particular crimes; it’s a synecdoche for a much larger atrocity, and a model of how we discover the larger truth of war in images of one hospital, one grave, one child.“With every new war, the ethics of war photography are debated again,” regretted the Ukrainian art historian Kateryna Iakovlenko in a recent essay on our self-serving doubt of depictions of horror, made acuter through Russia’s parallel disinformation campaigns. The only moral question before us is whether we take these images seriously, or whether, with a skepticism also known as cowardice, we turn away.20 Days in MariupolNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Trial in ‘Argentina, 1985’ Began Quest for Justice That Continues Today

      by

      “Argentina, 1985” has resurrected the country’s military rule, which ended 40 years ago. The quest persists to hold those accused of crimes against humanity accountable.BUENOS AIRES — The bones of a man, brought into light in a laboratory, had spoken.For years, he was kept inside a blue plastic box on a shelf with hundreds of other boxes containing unidentified human remains believed to belong to victims of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.Lying on a table in the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, his skeleton told a story: He was about 25 years old and stood 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet tall. Five gunshot wounds, one to the head and four to the pelvis, had killed him.And now, more than 30 years since his discovery in a mass grave, he is on the verge of being identified.“When they pass from having a number to having a name, it’s wonderful,” said Patricia Bernardi, a forensic anthropologist and a founder of the team, a nonprofit that works on cases related to abuses committed under military rule.“When they pass from having a number to having a name, it’s wonderful,” said Patricia Bernardi, a forensic anthropologist, seen among bins of human remains.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe identification of victims is part of a broader effort to deliver justice and accountability 40 years after the end of the dictatorship, a traumatic chapter that is in the spotlight again because of “Argentina, 1985,” a film that has earned an Oscar nomination for best international feature.A historical drama, it depicts a real landmark case that a team of lawyers pressed against military leaders in a trial that ended with the convictions of five members of the military junta, including the dictators Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, who received life sentences. Four others were acquitted.The military unleashed a wave of repression to eliminate so-called subversives, a category that came to include political dissidents, student activists, labor organizers, journalists, intellectuals and clergy members. Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship.Ricardo Darin, background center, and Peter Lanzani, right, in a scene from “Argentina, 1985,” an Oscar-nominee for best international feature.Amazon Studios, via Associated PressIn a pivotal scene in the movie, a character based on a real-life prosecutor tells a panel of judges that the trial can help forge a peace based on justice and memorializing the atrocities.“This is our opportunity,” he says. “It may be our last.”Rather than an end, those words, taken from the real closing arguments, were a beginning. To this day, in courtrooms across Argentina, roughly 180 former military officials, police officers and civilians are being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.With more than 300 open investigations and 14 trials, the process is “permanently alive,” said Estela de Carlotto, the president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organization started by women searching for their grandchildren who were born in captivity to political prisoners and then given to other families.Some investigations are focused on crimes committed in clandestine detention centers where hundreds of people were tortured and killed. In one case, a former marine captain is on trial for orchestrating the illegal adoption of his brother’s daughter, who was born in a detention center and raised by another member of the military. Her parents are still missing.Jorge Videla, center right, was sworn in as president in Buenos Aires in 1976, accompanied by Emilio Massera, second from left.Eduardo Di Baia/Associated PressIn total, more than 1,100 military personnel, police officers and civilians have been convicted of crimes against humanity since 2006, including 58 last year.Argentina’s reckoning with its past has been far more extensive than that of neighboring countries also scarred by repressive military rule, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Amnesty laws in Brazil have blocked military trials, while a small number of trials have occurred in Uruguay. Many top officials convicted of dictatorship-era crimes in Chile received reduced sentences.“These trials are right and necessary,” said Maria Ángeles Ramos, one of the lead federal prosecutors of dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina.“These trials are right and necessary,” said Maria Ángeles Ramos, one of the lead federal prosecutors of dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina, seen last month.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York Times“We made this decision that what happened is unforgivable and Argentina cannot afford to ignore its past,” Ms. Ramos said. “That is a very big self-critique as a society. It’s a value that puts us in a distinctive place in the world.”The pursuit of justice has not been easy. After the 1985 trial of leaders of the junta, the government enacted laws that blocked most other prosecutions. A former president also pardoned the convicted military commanders.In the 1990s, victims and relatives of those who had disappeared staged protests outside the homes of former military rulers and others believed to have violated human rights.Teresa Laborde’s mother, Adriana Calvo, a physicist and university professor, was a key witness at the 1985 trial. She described having been handcuffed and blindfolded and calling out for the baby she had just delivered in the back seat of a Ford Falcon as she was moved from one clandestine detention center to another.Teresa Laborde in the arms of her mother, Adriana Calvo, in a family photograph. Ms. Calvo and her daughter were held in clandestine detention centers.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe newborn was Ms. Laborde, now 45. She and her mother were eventually released.“That trial that everyone says was an example, in my house we lived it as the gateway to impunity,” Ms. Laborde said, referring to the acquittal of four of the leaders and light sentences for some others. “Justice meant holding the last torturer responsible.”A pivotal moment came in 2003, when the Argentine Congress, responding to mounting public pressure, abolished the laws that had halted prosecutions of dictatorship-era crimes. In 2006, a court handed down the first sentence under a relaunched prosecution process.“In some sense, it was all of civil society that built this,” said Natalia Federman, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. “It became impossible for the state to say, We’re not going to do anything.”The forensic team’s work has been a key part of trials. More than 1,400 bodies have been recovered, with around 800 identified — some washed up on beaches after being hurled from planes during so-called death flights. Others, like the man in the forensic team’s laboratory, were discovered in unmarked graves.Ms. Bernardi measuring a bone at a laboratory of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe team is keeping details about the man confidential until his identification is confirmed, but he is believed to have been a prisoner of one of the dictatorship’s detention centers. Evidence that emerged in trials involving people he was buried with helped analysts piece together a hypothesis about his identity.It underscores how trials are a crucial part of “building memory,” Ms. Ramos said, “so we all know what occurred and we talk about it.”Argentina’s military generally does not discuss the continuing investigations and trials, and its rank and file are now made up entirely of officers who joined after the dictatorship.“We do everything possible — and the continuity of the trials has to do with that — to ensure that what happened is not forgotten,” said Eduardo Jozami, who works as director of human rights at the Defense Ministry and who was imprisoned during the dictatorship.But time is a looming enemy: More than 1,000 people under investigation have died, and so have victims and their relatives.“There is a slowness, sometimes an indifference,” Ms. de Carlotto said of the pace of justice. “But our permanence and resistance is present.”A view of “Capuchita” (“Little Hood”), the attic of the Officer’s Club at the Naval Mechanics School, where people were secretly detained. Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesAt a trial of crimes at clandestine detention centers, Laura Treviño recalled the early hours of Sept. 11, 1976, when she was 18. Six men in civilian clothes arrived at her family’s home in a city near Buenos Aires and took away her 17-year-old brother.The men claimed to be part of the army and asked about the teenager, Victor Treviño, a left-wing activist agitating for lower student transit fares.The men, some of them wearing ski masks and carrying guns, went to the back of the home, Ms. Treviño testified.She heard a commotion as they ordered her brother to dress. As the men led him out, his mother asked where he was being taken.“‘You’ll find out soon,’ they told her,” Ms. Treviño testified. But they never did.“That’s what we all want: to know what happened to him,” she testified. “To all of them.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Kenneth H. Brown, Playwright Best Known for ‘The Brig,’ Dies at 85

      by

      He drew on his own experiences in the Marines to depict brutality within the corps, drawing acclaim Off Off Broadway.Kenneth H. Brown, a New York playwright whose acclaimed 1963 Off Off Broadway play “The Brig,” based on his experiences as a Marine, portrayed dehumanization inside a military prison during the Korean War, died on Feb. 5 at a hospice in Queens. He was 85. A friend, the performance artist and writer Penny Arcade, said the cause was cancer.After growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s as something of a street tough, Mr. Brown, eager to serve his country, enlisted in the Marines at 18. But stationed in Japan, he found himself rattled by military life and was thrown into the brig for insubordination.There, by his account, he was humiliated and abused. Guards called him “maggot”; he was punched in the gut for even minor infractions. Mornings started with garbage-can lids being banged on bunk beds, and he and his fellow inmates were ordered to jog around their claustrophobic quarters for hours until they were breathless.“I was always in trouble in the Marines,” he said in an interview with the Lower East Side Biography Project. “I went to the brig twice. The first time I did 25 days.” Of his military service, he said, “By the time I got out, I was a complete pacifist.”Back in New York, Mr. Brown worked as a bartender and studied at Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. In his spare time he wrote “The Brig,” a hyper-realistic play depicting a grueling day in the life of 10 imprisoned Marines and the guards who brutalize them.Mr. Brown, left, with Judith Malina and Julian Beck, founders of the Manhattan avant-garde troupe the Living Theater, in 1964. The company had given “The Brig” its premiere.Mr. Brown didn’t have any theater connections. But through a friend his manuscript made its way to the Living Theater, the revered avant-garde repertory company founded in the 1940s by Julian Beck and Judith Malina. They were captivated by “The Brig” and decided to produce it.“I was a guy from the neighborhood,” Mr. Brown said. “I never met people like Julian and Judith.”“The Brig” made waves when it opened in 1963 at the Living Theater in Greenwich Village.“If what happens on the stage of the Living Theater is a true representation of conditions in the brig, the president or his secretary of defense ought to order an investigation,” Howard Taubman wrote in his review for The New York Times. “Mr. Brown’s obsessive script does not spare a detail of the devastating indictment.”The play won three Obie Awards and toured Europe. Jonas Mekas directed a film version.“The Brig” became one of the Living Theater’s great successes, but it also became inextricably linked to the company because of its anarchic last performance there. During the play’s run, the authorities shut down the playhouse for delinquent taxes, but the cast and an audience broke into the padlocked theater for one final show.“The play accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish,” Mr. Brown said. “It revealed the horror of this condition, and it revealed it very clearly not through commenting on it, but doing it. Actually performing the ritual of sadism that was the Marine Corps.”A scene from the film version of “The Brig,” directed by Jonas Mekas, in 1964Harvard Film ArchiveKenneth Howard Brown was born in Brooklyn on March, 9, 1936, to Kenneth and Helen (Bella) Brown. His mother was a bank officer, his father a police officer.Growing up in the Bay Ridge section, Ken was known to brawl with youths in the neighborhood. But he also wrote poems and short stories in his teens while attending the Jesuit-run Brooklyn Prep.After the success of “The Brig,” Mr. Brown enjoyed the life of a celebrated young playwright. “I was off and running, with grants and fellowships, teaching jobs and jaunts to faraway places,” he wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1986. “Maybe I could make a go of it in the rarefied atmosphere of literature.”But “by the time the smoke cleared,” he continued, “I was broke.”He went back to tending bar. He worked at Bradley’s, a jazz club on University Place, and helped run Phebe’s, a Bowery haunt for the downtown theater crowd. In an essay published in the Times in 1972, he wryly addressed the realities of a writer’s life in the city:“That’s right, I’m the guy who wrote ‘The Brig.’ What am I doing here running this restaurant? Well, I’ve got to pay the rent, you know. No, I can’t get any fellowships and grants. I’ve had them all, and nobody will renew them until I make theater history again. Oh, yes, you have to do it again and again.”But Mr. Brown kept writing. In 1970, he published “The Narrows,” an autobiographical novel about high schoolers growing up in Bay Ridge in the 1950s. “Nightlight,” a drama set in a bleak city apartment, was staged in 1973. “Hitler’s Analyst,” a novel about a Park Avenue psychiatrist who treats a couple who believe they are Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, was published in 2000.Mr. Brown grew old in Bay Ridge, living in a rent-controlled apartment passed down to him by his parents, and for years he headed into Manhattan to tend bar. He kept busy writing a sequel to “The Great Gatsby” titled “Carraway,” based on the character who narrates the Fitzgerald novel. (Information on survivors was not immediately available.)In 2007, long after the Living Theater’s playhouse was closed and years after the company began moving from place to place, it settled into a new home on the Lower East Side. To Mr. Brown’s surprise, he received a call from Ms. Judith Malina, then 80, who told him that “The Brig” would be the inaugural production.The play’s revival was widely publicized, and Mr. Brown savored the triumph. But as Americans were still reckoning with reports of torture at the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the revival was starkly timely. The coincidence wasn’t lost on Mr. Brown.“‘The Brig’ has always been relevant,” he said in an interview in 2010. “I guess as long as there’s war and as long as there’s a military and especially as long as one questions the ethical right to wage war.”“It’s going to stay relevant,” he added, “until there’s peace throughout the world.” More