Project Z: The Final Global Event

From April 4 to April 6, the University of San Francisco hosted the International Human Rights Film Festival (http://www.usfca.edu/artsci/hrff/program/). Knowing that I had limited time to watch a film, I decided to forego several appealing options (The Invisible War, Justice for my Sister) to attend the much-touted finale: Project Z: The Final Global Event. My feelings about it are best summed up in the concise conversation I had with my sister about the film afterwards. Having not attended herself, she asked what it was about. “Well,” I said, “I’m not really sure.” The film’s synopsis, found on its website http://www.projectzmovie.com/ gave me the idea that the film would trace and analyze the patterns and processes in conflict history from the Cold War to the Arab Spring. Opening the screening, the film’s primary filmmaker, Phillip Gara, iterated that Project Z documented the military-industrial-media-insertotherinstitutionsIcan’tremember complex. I find this premise incredibly interesting. In class we’ve discussed how the media frames violence and how it has developed a pattern of victim-blaming (see, “Why Doesn’t She Leave,” Ann Jones).  Other work by Ann Jones has also pointed the finger at the military-industrial complex (Winter in Kabul).  My own research paper is on how the solider has become the epitome of virtue in America (and looks at media like news articles and political cartoons) as a result of hegemonic masculinity and imperialism, so I really appreciate the films synthesis of the media and entertainment industry with the military-industrial complex. It showed the development of technology in the military and the use of video combats and simulation to train servicemembers. However, overall, I did not feel like the film made its point clearly enough. I also found it hard to follow. Viewers were forced to jump from a staged and dramatized discovery of a top-secret film archive, to interviews, to scenes of military training, to clips of conferences, and back again. Our class has also given me the tools to study the silence, and I wondered where women were in the movie. The experiences of men in the military were presented as the status quo, the norm. Lastly, like many who study war are wont to do, I thought the film drew too distinct of a line between what war is and what peace is.

Jones, Ann (1994) “Why Doesn’t She Leave?” In: Next Time She’ll Be Dead. Beacon Press: pp. 129-166.4

Jones, Ann (2009) “In The Prisons” In Winter In Kabul: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (pp. 91-203). New York: Picador.

PROJECT Z: THE FINAL GLOBAL EVENT US, 2012, 75 min, Filmmakers: Phillip Gara and James Der Derian


-Laur