Meeting Resistance - with the Insurgents in Iraq

There has been much comment about the role and place of journalists who are "em-bedded" with the US/Coalition forces in Iraq.

In this documentary Meeting Resistance, two western journalists - Steve Connors and Molly Bingham spent ten months filming the stories on the other side, of the Iraqi insurgents

I haven't seen the film yet (you can view a few sections here), but definitely want to track it down. Steve Connors is one of my oldest friends, who - as a photojournalist - photographed in Bosnia (if you recall the harrowing pictures of starving prisoners from Trnopolje and Omarska...) the war in Sri Lanka, Rwanda, the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan. I'd lost track of him over the last couple of years, so it was doubly interesting to find out what he was up to... (even if it seems partly insane!)

From the blurb:

MEETING RESISTANCE is a verité-style non-fiction feature-length film set in the streets, alleyways and ubiquitous teashops of the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad. It enters the physical and psychological heart of the "insurgency" against the American occupation. Photojournalists/directors Steve Connors and Molly Bingham spent ten-months among the insurgents there to create this exclusive, unique, and at once horrifying, compelling and insightful film about their lives, motivation, and goals.

MEETING RESISTANCE focuses on eight "insurgents", each with his or her own tale and reasons for opposing the American-led occupation, yet all people who within days of the fall of Baghdad were arranging themselves into resistance cells, finding the money and weapons to fight against the American military. The film witnesses how they began to organize themselves, reveals why they have decided to violently oppose the occupation of the country, and hears in their words the underlying ideological foundations to their fight and how and why those have changed over time.



MEETING RESISTANCE is a fascinating journey through a tumultuous period with diverse members of the Iraqi resistance. Their personal stories as well as their ideological ones are at once dramatic, eye-opening, and concerning - and they challenge the notion that those opposing the occupation are simply "dead enders," "common criminals," "Al-Qaeda operatives" and "die-hard Ba'athis."

And you can listen to a very good MP3 interview here (50min) with Connors and Bingham