“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war”
September 27, 2011 | Source: Monroe Gallery of Photography
Must Read, Must See: "Hell and Back Again" Afghanistan Documentary
Via The New York Times Lens PhotoBlog:
As the Afghan war neared a decade’s worth of combat, casualties and headlines, the photographer and filmmaker Danfung Dennis was looking to jolt people’s consciousness.
“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war,” said Mr. Dennis, who had covered Afghanistan as a still photographer in 2006. “I moved into video and new media to try to shake people up — to show the war’s brutal reality in an honest way.”
Did he ever. “Hell and Back Again,” his new award-winning documentary film about the war, is a tour de force that breaks new ground in the documentary tradition, combining chilling reportage with sometimes dreamy or drugged-up sequences. The film – with clinical precision – peels away the daily headlines to expose the reality of the Afghan war and the devastating burden carried by American service members back home.
Full post here with video.