Description:
Big Sky Film Series #9 - FULL BATTLE RATTLE
When: August 1, 2008 - Screening at 7 p.m.
Where: Historic Wilma Theater/Missoula, Montana
Cost: Free Public Admission
Big Sky Films Series continues the 2008 season with the independent
feature documentary FULL BATTLE RATTLE. In California's Mojave
Desert, the US Army has built a "virtual Iraq" - a billion dollar
urban warfare simulation - and populated it with hundreds of Iraqi
role-players. FULL BATTLE RATTLE follows an Army Battalion through
the simulation, as they attempt to quell an insurgency and prevent
Medina Wasl, a mock Iraqi village, from slipping into civil war.
Comic, surreal and poignant, the film provides a revelatory look at
the soul of the American war machine, and, in the battle for Medina
Wasl, finds a potent allegory of the Iraq War and the cultural and
religious differences that confound America's efforts.
What reviewers are saying about FULL BATTLE RATTLE: "Coolly ironic.
An indelible vision of modern war, a not-so-fun fun-house mirror of
the Iraq occupation set in California's Mojave Desert. The film is
freaky, amusing, and sickening in equal measures - part
fly-on-the-wall verite, part multiple-perspective Altmanesque
tragicomedy. A catastrophic farce, a let's-pretend that ends with a
mass deployment to hell." - DAVID EDELSTEIN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE
"Remarkably thorough and detailed. The film emphasizes the
strangeness and complexity of the conflict." - AO SCOTT, THE NEW YORK
TIMES
"Like any documentary about putting on a show, FULL BATTLE RATLE
abounds with mirth- provoking incongruities between the effect aimed
for and the means used to achieve it. It's 'surreal comedy,' as more
than one reviewer characterized it when it premiered at the Berlin
Film Festival. Somehow, though, I don't much feel like laughing...
One of the most complete pictures yet to emerge of how an Iraqi town
fragments into civil war." - STUART KLAWANS, THE NATION
"A combat doc once removed from combat and twice mediated by
stagecraft, FULL BATTLE RATTLE depicts simulated war in a theme-park
reality....One of the many surreal aspects of this fabulously
disorienting movie: its representation of an Iraqi heaven that's an
American hell." - J. HOBERMAN, VILLAGE VOICE
"No documentary I have seen better portrays the mutual suspicions and
resentments of Americans and Iraqis. I still don't know whether to
laugh or cry." - RICHARD WOODWARD, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Just when I thought I had heard everything about the war in Iraq,
along comes FULL BATTLE RATTLE... The idea of spending big bucks on a
phony war sounds like something out of the Marx Brothers' DUCK SOUP,
but the stakes are, of course, much higher... a stroke of a genius or
a very expensive boondoggle." - V.A. MUSETTO, THE NEW YORK POST
"One of the most provocative documentaries about the ongoing war in
Iraq... Gerber and Moss collected over 350 hours of footage which
they've whittled down to a fascinating - and quite revealing - 85
minutes. The end result is a remarkable document." - KEN FOX, TV GUIDE
The Big Sky Film Series is a periodic monthly screening series
highlighting traditional and innovative nonfiction film and video. It
is held the first Friday of the month as part of downtown Missoula,
Montana's "Art Walk." All screenings are held in the Historic Wilma
Theater and are free and open to the public. The series is programmed
by the staff of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Age Group: All Ages Venue: The Wilma Address: N/A Phone: N/A
The Wilma
