USA / Egypt,
2003, 84 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Jehane Noujaim
- prod
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Hani Salama, Rosadel Varela, Abdullah Shleifer
- cam
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Jehane Noujaim, Hani Salama
- editor
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Alan Oxman, Lileh Bankier, Julia Bacha
- source
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Noujaim Films, 130 W 67th St., New York, NY 10023. EMAIL: varelar@noujaimfilms.com.
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COMMENTS
Jehane Noujaim in person.
OTHER
Mention Al Jazeera three years ago and you’d likely get blank stares from most Americans; now the name of the Arab world’s most popular news outlet is well known for its reporting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for American television’s nearly obsessive coverage of that reporting. Charting the struggles of Al Jazeera, CNN and other journalists to cover, or create, news, Control Room takes audiences inside the war in Iraq, or at least the buildings where it was presented—like Al Jazeera headquarters, as well as U.S. Central Command, sight of the war’s most important battles: the press conferences. Egyptian American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com, SFIFF 2001) highlights the passion and intelligence of individuals on all sides, following not only the reporters hoping to cover the war, but the U.S. military officers anxious to control that coverage. For the journalists of Al Jazeera, the problem is twofold: getting information from an increasingly oppositional American military and then dealing with the fact that their network is suddenly “news” itself. Featuring fascinating interviews with Al Jazeera and American journalists, as well as with U.S. commanders, this is not only a proverbial behind-the-scenes look at the Iraq War, but a laying bare of the hidden battle for the real “enduring freedom”: to cover a war without being controlled.
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
