Располагает ли кто вот этой мувей в электронном виде ?
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Краткая аннотация - преступное вторжение в Панаму под прикрытием лозунгов "защиты американских жизненных ценностей" ...
FILM REVIEW
The Panama Deception
by Susan Ryan
Cineaste v20, n1 (Wntr, 1993):43 (2 pages).
Produced by Barbara Trent, Joanne Doroshow, Nico Panigutti and David Kasper;
directed by Barbara Trent; written and edited by David Kasper; cinematography by
Michael Dobo and Masnuel Becker; narration by Elizabeth Montgomery; music by
Chuck Wild.
On December 19, 1989, most Americans were glued to their televisions
in disbelief as thousands of U.S. troops prepared to attack Panama with
the stated purpose of ousting the man the media loved to hate, General
Manuel Noriega. By early morning, they were reassured that Operation
"Just Cause" had achieved its goal of hitting twenty-seven targets, thus
making Panama safe for Americans living in that country as well as
those safely at home in front of their televisions. But the media failed to
investigate many crucial issues, including the fate of Panamanian
citizens and a detailed explanation of the just cause' for which American
troops were fighting. These are the questions The Panama Deception
sets out to answer, and, in so doing, it provides a provocative,
well-documented analysis of U.S. relations with Panama and a
devastating critique of the mainstream media and its complicity with the
official government line.
For those familiar with the findings of the report of the Independent
Commission of Inquiry see The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth
Behind Operation Just Cause, South End Press, 1991), the film's
exploration of the contradictions between the official reasons for the
invasion and the real motivations will come as no surprise, but for many
The Panama Deception will serve as a shocking illustration of the brutal
face of American foreign policy.
During the attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops equipped
with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a country with
an army smaller than the New York City Police Department. With
uncanny echoes of Grenada less than a decade earlier, this illegal
invasion against a sovereign nation was made in the name of "the
protection of American lives" as well as the defense of the Panama
Canal, the restoration of democracy, and the removal of Noriega and his
drug trafficking operation - reasons which might have sounded good at
the White House but failed to convince anyone with a knowledge of the
history of U.S.-Panamanian relations.
As a result of the controversial 1977 Carter-Torrijos treaties, the Canal
was scheduled to be turned over to Panama by the year 2000. The
treaty provided for the closure of all fourteen Southern Command bases
in Panama by 1999 which would make more difficult U.S. military
access to the rest of Latin America. Seen in these terms, the invasion
provided a convenient justification for continued U.S. military presence
in the area as well as the rationale for the renegotiation of the treaties.
From an international vantage point, the overpowering show of force
demonstrated that the U.S. retained control over its own backyard.'
The Panama Deception explores these contradictions as well as the
many other lies generated to deflect criticism of the attack which
violated both the U.N. and O.A.S. charters. Using archival footage and
interviews with a wide range of both Panamanian and American
authorities, the film puts the invasion in context by showing the troubled
history of the Canal's construction at the beginning of the century, the
resulting confrontations over the years between the U.S. military and
Panamanians, and the problematic relationship during the Seventies with
Panama's popular leader, General Omar Torrijos. The montage of
archival images reprising the historical relationship includes several
which foreshadow the events of 1989. Of particular note is the televised
segment of a soon- to-be-elected Ronald Reagan recreating the role of
Teddy Roosevelt as he compares the Canal Zone to the acquisition of
Alaska in saying, "We bought it, we paid for it, and General Torrijos
should be told we're going to keep it."
The film also chronicles the rise and fall of Noriega as he was courted,
then rejected, by the American government after he became a political
liability. The sequence on the U.S. media's demonization of Noriega,
including Bush's inarticulate rambling about "Mr. Noriega, the
drug-related, drug-indicted dictator of Panama" would be comical if we
didn't know that this was just the prelude to a bloody confrontation. As
an interview with an ex-CIA analyst reveals, the invasion was intended
to "reverse Bush's image as a wimp," a rather large price for the
Panamanian people to pay for the sake of his political viability.
In addition to analyzing the invasion and filling in many specific details
about the excessive force used, the film also presents the Panamanian
perspective, the side we never saw on the nightly news. Eyewitness
accounts of the bombing and the fear felt by the people as they saw
their families killed, their homes destroyed, and their city devastated,
powerfully convey the human suffering caused by this act of aggression.
In contrast to the images of Panamanians welcoming the Americans as a
liberating force which the mainstream broadcast media presented, the
angry voices of Panamians describe the horror, pain, and continued
disruption of their lives. While some might call it heavy- handed, the
ironic juxtaposition of official commentary by government spokesmen
with actual footage of the invasion and its aftermath succeeds in
revealing that lies were created on every level - the sites of the bombings
in civilian neighborhoods, the search and destroy methods of the U.S.
military in the days following the attack, the number of Panamanians
killed, and the continued impact on the people in the form of
homelessness, unemployment, and political instability.
Various regional and international human rights commissions estimate
that between 2,500 and 4,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion,
a far cry from official U.S. reports of only several hundred. Many of
those interviewed in the film - like Isabel Corro, a Panamanian human
rights worker - continue to raise money for the exhumation of bodies
from mass graves which Pentagon spokesmen deny exist.
As the film makes clear, the U.S. government was not solely responsible
for the deception. The mainstream media was shamefully complicit in
passing on government press releases as news. Interviews with media
analysts Michael Parenti and Mark Hertsgard discuss the total
collaboration of the media in this dress rehearsal of restrictions on the
press later repeated during the Gulf War. Several cleverly edited
sequences mesh the images and voices of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw,
Peter Jennings, and other arbiters of information as they use virtually
the same language to describe the invasion and what it means' to the
American public.
In this respect, The Panama Deception is not only a visual analysis of
the events of December 1989, it is also an indictment of the news
apparatus in a society where alternative interpretations of events rarely
reach the public at large. In Panama, the suppression of information
included the destruction of photographs and videotape documenting the
high number of civilian casualties.
Through the efforts of The Empowerment Project, The Panama
Deception had opened theatrically in over sixty cities across the U.S.
even before it won an Academy Award this year. Utilizing their past
experience in community organizing, the filmmakers created a unique
distribution strategy in which post-screening discussion sessions were
held in theaters, not only to answer questions but also to redirect the
audience's rage over the invasion into positive political action, such as
appearing on local radio talk shows or writing letters to the editors of
their local newspapers in order to challenge their own sources of
information.
Stylistically, the film has several drawbacks. The continuous use of
voice-over narration to explain most of the imagery assumes that the
audience is not able to make connections on its own. The animated
maps and some of the video graphics seem better suited to a didactic
instructional film than an investigative documentary. Still, these
objections are minor in comparison with the overall significance of The
Panama Deception as an impressive source of information on an event
our government would sooner have us forget.
