Invisible War (2012) Human Rights Watch FIlm Festival 2012

The statistic is that over 20% of all women in the military have been raped or sexually harassed. The percentage of men who try to rape someone in the military is 15%, which is twice the national average.

If those numbers don't make you want to reconsider joining up just watch this film and odds are if you're a woman you'll be running for the hills.

Mind blowing film about sexual abuse in the military will curl your hair and outrage you. Its not so much that the abuse is happening, its that the cover up is on going, thanks to the old boy network, the desire to covers ones ass and general bad social skills by the brass who publicly claim that the they are taking steps to step the tied, but are telling the victims they asked for it and that they should just suck it up.

You will be outraged, especially after you meet the women and men who have been raped while on duty. You need to see this film because this shit has got to stop. Rape should not be an occupational hazard of military service, which is what one court recently held in denying lawsuit for damages.

See this film.

I hesitate to say this because this is an important issue, but taking the film on it's own terms, the film is a bit too long. I was about 40 minutes into the film and I realized that the film had pretty much covered everything. I'm pretty sure that you could trim the film down by 20 or 25 minutes and not miss anything.

The has been given the Nestor Almendros Award by the festival It will screen June 18th and 20th.

Brother Number One (2012) Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2012

Rob Hamill's story as he travels to Cambodia to testify at the trial of Comrade Duch, the man who ran the infamous S-21 Prison. Duch had been in charge of the prison when Rob's brother's was brought in to be tortured before being executed. Detailing Rob's efforts to find out what happened to his brother and to seek justice, the film tells the story of Rob's family which was wrecked by the killing and of Cambodia which is still struggling to come to terms with what happened almost 40 years ago.

 Good but too long film is a nice look at how the madness of one country filtered out into unexpected places in unexpected ways. Kerry, Rob's brother had never intended to go near Cambodia but his boat was blown that way, thus sealing his own doom. An eye opening film it shows how Cambodia is trying to rebuild it self as it comes to terms with its past. Amazingly we see how some people still cling to the belief that things would have been  better had Pol Pot and his mad cohorts had continued their destruction.

As I said the films 100 minute running time is too much. Rob's quest to find out his brother's fate is much too leisurely. You could easily chop a half hour out of this and not lose anything.

Reservations aside there is a wonderfully bittersweet moment when Rob finds his brother's confession in the archives and finds that his forced confession was full of messages poking fun at his captors, chronicling his torture and sending coded messages to his loved ones, just in case. While the Cambodians didn't care that it was all lies, they never caught on to the unbroken spirit they were going to snuff out.

Definitely worth a look.