Echo of war movie6/27/2023 It’s sort of a metaphor for the whole war, I guess.Ĭombat camera is sort of like a PR tool for the military. We had to clear a route there to fix the dam. It was missing a third turbine. It was heavily occupied by the Taliban. It basically powers the whole Helmand province with electricity. And we didn’t know it at the time, because they don’t really tell you anything when you’re going to these places, but there’s a dam in Kajacki. We were in the Sangin-Kajacki area of Afghanistan in 2011. But it’s a lot of kids that are just on the fringe. A lot of people think the military’s just these patriotic kids - guys that just want to serve their country. I think the military offered that easy, very direct path to another place. I was a huge movie buff when I was a kid, and I saw “Full Metal Jacket” a bunch of times, and I was like, “Oh, you can just join the Marine Corps, they’ll give you a camera, and you just film for the military.'” And I always wanted to cover the war as a journalist. I had this preconceived notion that going to war would give me a perspective on life that I wouldn’t get somewhere else. I think I was just kind of directionless. What made you decide to enlist in the Marines right out of high school, when you were 18? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Intercept talked to Lagoze about why he made the documentary, the legal process that preceded the film’s release, and his feelings about having taken part in the war. troops and an excruciating lament for the needless loss of life caused by the American war in Afghanistan. The film amounts to a deft 110-minute condemnation of the behavior of U.S. “Combat Obscura,” which was released March 15 with Oscilloscope Laboratories, is almost entirely comprised of footage Lagoze and another combat cameraperson, Justin Loya, shot for the Corps. His job in the Corps was what’s known as combat camera, a role that entails capturing footage of Marines for operational use on the battlefield and for PR back home. Photo: Courtesy of Oscilloscope LaboratoriesDirector Miles Lagoze, 29, joined the Marines just after graduating from high school and quickly deployed to Afghanistan. The Marine hands one of the boys a chocolate bar, but it does not feel like a kindness. They look back in fear and incomprehension. “Where’s the fucking Taliban? Where’s the fucking Taliban?” he screams in their faces. At one point in the film, a Marine points his gun at children passing by on donkeys. In “Combat Obscura,” Marines shoot guns and patrol, but they also insult women, shake their weapons at children, die needlessly and with little dignity, murder innocent people and cover it up. In “ Combat Obscura,” a new documentary set in Afghanistan, Marines don’t do what they normally do in American-made documentaries about war – they don’t echo narratives of God and country, kill bad guys, and win hearts and minds. “Holy shit!” he yells again he is gleeful, fascinated now. “That’s the wrong building!” Another explosion sounds, and a fireball billows. A man yells, in English, as the cloud grows past the top of the frame. But most frightening of all is what’s happening behind the camera. Half a second later, a great column of smoke materializes in the distance, quickly doubling and then tripling in size.
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