Death of a president
p2pnet.net OT News:- “An unknown gunman assassinates George W. Bush,” writes Noah Cowan on e.bell.ca.
“A couple of years later, an investigative documentary is made. It features all the people involved that fateful day: the protestors outside a Chicago hotel; the suspects in the shooting and their families; the Secret Service men who failed to protect their charge; the press; and an array of experts, desperately seeking meaning in this horrible act of violence. We learn, agonizingly, what happened to America after the death of a president.”
High-end digital media techniques were used to insert new and archival footage of US president George W. Bush into Death of a President, an imaginary documentary by Britain’s Gabriel Range, premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“Range has taken a contentious subject and used it to invite introspection about America, the media and society in general,” says The Toronto Star, going on, “It is neither coincidental nor insignificant that the film arrives for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, an event which prompted Range to take a closer look at the country he sometimes calls home and to question its values in times of war and unrest.”
Range, “so effectively speaks the language of documentary film, it is hard watching it not to think that Bush has actually died,” says the story.
But, “Six years into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink?” – wonders Jeff Jacoby in Townhall.com.
“George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the ‘interesting theory’ that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a ‘fraud’ that Bush ‘cooked up in Texas’ for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a ‘lying bastard,’ a ‘filth spewer,’ an ‘evil maniac,’ a ‘fuehrer,’ and a ‘terrorist’ guilty of ‘blatant genocide’ – and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.
“What’s left for them to say about Bush? That they want him killed?”
Bush’s Republican party has branded the film “shocking” and “disturbing”, says the BBC, going on:
“John Beyer of UK TV pressure group MediaWatch said the film ‘may well put ideas into people’s heads’. But Range said he did not believe the film glorified the president’s death.
“I think the film makes it clear it would really be a horrific event,” he told the Associated Press news agency, according to the story. “I really don’t think that anyone would get the idea of assassinating Bush from this film.”
Collaborating with, “some of the finest special effects wizards in the world,” Range, “inserts his characters seamlessly into existing footage,” says Cowan. “His narrative is also airtight. Cautionary tales are too often flights of fancy; as they push the envelope of credibility, the lessons gleaned from dark speculation become somehow tarnished. Not here. Every moment is completely believable, every comment is somehow appropriate to the point of chilling, horrifying certainty.
“As one might expect, Range is ultimately interested in addressing today`s political issues through the lens of the future. Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age all come under the microscope. The film is never a personal attack on Bush; Range simply seeks to explore the potential consequences that might follow from the President`s policies and actions.”
It was being screened in Toronto in the hope of finding a US distributor, observes the BBC.
Also See:
The Toronto Star – DOAP terrifies with realism, September 11, 2006
Townhall.com – A new low in Bush-hatred, September 11, 2006
BBC – Bush assassination film defended, September 11, 2006
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September 19th, 2006 at 4:06 am
I don’t understand why someone would want to pick this kind of subject matter. There are countless other ways to be creative & express oneself. It would appear that something so precise would imply wishful thinking on the part of the director and / or others involved in the production of this. Why this would be allowed to be aired on any medium is beyond me.