DANFUNG DENNIS, “HELL AND BACK AGAIN”

By Brandon Harris

Originally published in the Director Interviews section on Oct. 6, 2011. Hell and Back Again is nominated for Best Documentary.

Perhaps the most viscerally harrowing documentary account of the war in Afghanistan yet, Danfung Dennis‘ Hell and Back Again is an intense visual experience, one that with the dynamism and fluidity of a narrative film takes you into the heart of the conflict in this troubled corner of the globe. Dennis, who left behind a career in economics to become a war photographer in the middle of the aughts, focuses on Sargent Nathan Harris, a Marine infantryman in Echo Company 28 and fearless young southerner from rural North Carolina who was seriously wounded during an ambush in 2009. Taking us from the frontlines of the conflict, where nearly pointless tribal councils feature American soldiers trying to convince men twice their age to abandon their villages and way of life while their children starve, all the way back to the home front, where broken soldiers try to readjust to the banalities of American life, Dennis has crafted a startling document concerning the costs that America and Afghanistan have incurred in a decade of war.

Dennis, who was among our 25 New Faces in Independent Film last year, won a Documentary Cinematography prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where the film received its world premiere the past January. He has shot prize-winning photographs in combat zones for Newsweek, The Associated Press and The New York Times. Currently he is at work on apps and virtual reality platforms that will bring the experiences of war zones into our living rooms. Hell and Back Again opens at Film Forum in Manhattan today.

Filmmaker: You’ve worked as a war photographer for quite some time. How did this project grow out of your works as a still photographer?

Dennis: I had been working as a field photographer, mostly for Newsweek and The New York Times. I had been covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006. I felt that, after ten years of war, the imagery wasn’t … Read the rest

DANFUNG DENNIS: FROM AFGHANISTAN TO SUNDANCE

By Stewart Nusbaumer

Originally posted in the Web Exclusives section on February 11, 2011. Hell and Back Again is nominated for Best Documentary.

“At first my view of war was boyish and romantic,” Danfung Dennis told me in his Brooklyn loft five years after we initially met in Kabul, “but that view of war was based on video games and Hollywood.”

In the spring of 2006, Danfung flew from Beijing to Kabul and was driven to the Le Monde Guest House. I remember when he arrived. His clothes were neat, his hair stylish, he wore an easy smile and had soft brown eyes. Gentle and inquisitive, Danfung was a “newbie.” It was his first day in his first war.

Our unbalance in age and experience brought us together, his questions and my answers, his lack of war experience and my abundance of war experience. Freelance journalists and photojournalists tend to cover wars for a variety of reasons. They hope war will lead them to career advancement, they know it will give them some heavy adrenaline rushes, and the have a strong desire that war can somehow fill a personal void in their lives. I never understood what pushed Danfung at the age of only 24 to come to Afghanistan. On the other hand, I never asked him. War journalists never ask that question.

After a few weeks, I left the comforts of the Le Monde Guest House and returned to the battlefield, traveling back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan. Although I no longer remember the order of where I was, I certainly remember where I was. Dublah with an-attack-a-day, the bombed-out compound in the middle of Heet, “The Street without Joy,” in the mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and in the desolate desert next to Iran….

And Danfung went his way. When Baquba turned into ground zero for violence, Danfung was there. When foreign fighters turned Mosel into an urban bloodbath, Danfung was there. He worked his way into the infamous Korengal Valley, site of Restrepo, last year’s Sundance documentary film winner. He was jumping all over Afghanistan and Iraq. Then … Read the rest

“HELL AND BACK AGAIN” — A HAMMER TO NAIL REVIEW

By Paul Sbrizzi

(Hell and Back Again premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Its official theatrical run begins at the Film Forum on Wednesday, October 5th. As a selection in the DocuWeeks 2011 program, it opens theatrically in New York City at the IFC Center on Friday, August 19th, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 on Friday, Sept. 2nd. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.)

In recent years American war docs have largely moved away from exposés on corruption and bad government policy. Instead, the focus has shifted to small, largely apolitical stories about life in the military and the human cost of war. Hell and Back Again raises the bar for the subgenre, taking the viewer front and center on the physical battlefield and deep into the complex and troubled psyche of a charismatic young soldier.

The film opens with the deployment of a company of Marines behind Taliban lines in Afghanistan, and the subsequent bloody battle. There’s something shockingly new and different about this footage — director Danfung Dennis fearlessly takes his Steadicammed Canon 5D into the thick of the fighting, right in the line of fire alongside the actual soldiers, capturing a POV of stunning immediacy. We’re used to the war camera in some way expressing an emotional reaction or commentary; Dennis’ footage is cool and clear, de-romanticized, unsentimental. Death comes suddenly; there’s no Spielbergian emoting.

Dennis then cuts to his main storyline: Sergeant Nathan Harris, the leader of that mission, has had his right hip and leg badly injured in an ambush just before the end of his deployment. He returns home to a life of doctor’s visits, long-term physical therapy, and vast quantities of meds. But he’s no pity party — even in a wheelchair he’s got plenty of swagger and charm. He can be a straight-faced comedian, playing to the camera: at Walmart he shows an old lady the horrifying scar on his butt, and gets a hug. His wife, Ashley, with her belabored two-tone hair and mall fashions, is a sweet and patient caretaker, and his vapid comedic foil.… Read the rest

CONDITION ONE REINVENTS WAR JOURNALISM IN LIBYA

By Scott Macaulay

At the end of my profile of filmmaker Danfung Dennis in our 2010 “25 New Faces” feature, I touched on what was then his next project. After completing Hell and Back Again — winner of the World Cinema Jury Prize and World Cinema Cinematography Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival — Dennis embarked on Condition One, which he told me “will use a network of journalists, filmmakers and servicemen to send a stream of high-quality video to millions of mobile devices.”

Danfung’s new venture now has a website, a Facebook page and a proof-of-concept video that’s also 90 seconds of frontline reporting. Condition One’s reinvention of war journalism for the mobile age is provocative, mindblowing, awesome and even kind of scary in a Strange Days kind of way. Check it out below — and make sure to watch the whole clip.

From the Vimeo page:

The Libyan desert near Ras Lanouf
March, 2011

Demonstrations have given way to bloody conflict. Battle lines sway back and forth as the Benghazi-centered ragtag rebels combat Tripoli’s mercenaries and loyalists. Pro-Gaddafi forces mount their first coordinated offensive, exposing the rebels as woefully untrained and unorganized. Defiance turns to anguish when casualties mount. Slivers of hope rest on defecting army generals and foreign intervention.

Photojournalist Patrick Chauvel brings us this immersive video from the rebels’ front lines. “It’s a very sad story,” he says. “These guys are students, they’re hairdressers, they’re bakers, bankers, philosophers, teachers. They are no military.”

Chauvel is concerned for his safety. Gaddafi loyalists target the media and could cut off any escape. Four New York Times journalists are missing at the time and an Al Jazeera cameraman dies in the days that follow. Patrick says fighting in the flat, open desert divides the rebels into two camps: lucky and unlucky. Shelling hits at random, missing by hundreds of meters one moment and striking a direct hit the next. Chauvel fears the misses are the warning shots. He plans to escape before the battle becomes a massacre.

(If it doesn’t appear, click the headline to see the video.)

… Read the rest

JAMIE STUART’S SUNDANCE “MASTERPIECE”

From the shards of our experience shooting interviews and seeing movies at Sundance 2011 comes Jamie Stuart’s “Masterpiece.” With appearances by: Miguel Arteta, Alrick Brown, David Carr, Paddy Considine, Nekisa Cooper, Phife Dawg, Danfung Dennis, Andrew Donsunmu, Sean Durkin, Liz Garbus, Paul Giamatti, Megan Griffiths, Colin Goddard, Rutger Hauer, John Hawkes, Azazel Jacobs, Miranda July, Tom McCarthy, Peter Mullan, Adepero Oduye, Elizabeth Olsen, Jessica Oreck, Lindsay Pulsipher, Michael Rapaport, Calvin Reeder, Dee Rees, Amy Seimetz, Kim Wayans, Vilmos Zsigmond. Shot on the Canon 7D. Download the Quicktime here. (Contains adult language — NSFW.)

Look for the longer edits of these individual pieces throughout the year.

… Read the rest

DSLR-SHOT FILMS WIN PRIZES AT SUNDANCE

By Scott Macaulay

With a hat tip to Photo Cine News, here are clips from two Sundance 2011 prizewinners shot on DSLR cameras. The first, the Grand Jury Prize-winning Like Crazy, was shot on the Canon 7D. (Felicity Jones, featured in this clip, also won a Special Jury Prize for her acting.) The second, Hell and Back Again, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize as well as the World Cinema Cinematography Award. It was shot on the Canon 5D with custom-built rigs.

Hell and Back Again clip from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.… Read the rest

“HELL AND BACK AGAIN” | director, Danfung Dennis

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 12:00 pm -- Holiday Village Cinema IV]

“Down, down, down!” yelled a U.S. Marine as bullets whizzed overhead and machine-gun fire rattled. We had been drawn into a coordinated ambush deep behind enemy lines. In these difficult situations, I use intense concentration to keep operating my camera system. As we ducked to the next mud berm for cover, I focused on keeping my movements smooth and my distance to the Marine ahead of me constant so I would have a steady tracking shot that would remain in focus.

Pinned down by incoming fire, the insurgents triggered their trap. A horrific explosion roared over us, rocking the earth and sending a massive cloud of dust and dirt into the sky. Maybe I would have reacted differently if I had known that the Afghan soldier next to me had been killed, blown high into the sky. At that moment, I directed my attention to the light levels. The enveloping dust cloud that had blocked out the sun. I needed to correct the exposure on my camera. I gently turned the filter on the front of my lens to let in more light to continue working.

The intensity of fighting in Afghanistan did not shock me as much as the reactions I had when I returned home. The first time I showed this footage from Afghanistan to a small audience, midway through, I was asked by the organizer to turn it off. I replied that the scene was almost over, but they insisted that I turn it off. I left angry and humiliated that my experiences and those of the Marines that were risking their lives were deemed not suitable to even be seen. I had come back from a struggle of life and death to a world where no one had any connection to the war their country was fighting. No one even wanted a glimpse of it.

After that, I only showed my work to a careful selection of people. The most common reaction was, “Is this real?” What had been almost a daily existence for those at war could not even be … Read the rest

25 NEW FACES – PART 5

By Filmmaker Staff

Susan Youssef

At the IFP Narrative Lab, a mentor said of Susan Youssef’s first feature, Habibi Rasak Kharban (literally, “Darling, Something’s Wrong with Your Head”): “It’s a classic story, like Romeo and Juliet.” True, but the roots of Youssef’s story go back far further. The film is an adaptation of the 12th-century Sufi parable Majnun Layla, which was itself based on a 7th-century Arabic story. Over the years, the tragic tale of undying love between a woman and the wandering poet her family forbids her to marry has formed the basis for countless works of art, from Shakespeare’s classic to several Indian films of the 1920s to even pop songs like Eric Clapton’s “Layla.”

Youssef is currently in post on her feature, and it’s been a long road. “I’ve been working on the film for eight years, continuously,” she says. “I’ve never fought for something so hard before — I’ve defined my whole existence around this film.” The feature began in 2002 when Youssef traveled to Gaza while in post on a short documentary, Forbidden to Wander. She noticed all the graffiti on the walls there, and decided to make Majnun Layla’s poet one who scrawled his works on walls for all to see. She received a Fulbright scholarship to work on the script and, later, brought on an Islamic specialist as a co-writer. In 2007 she traveled to Gaza with the intention of shooting the film there, but the violence was too heavy. Realizing she needed a backup plan, she visited the West Bank and figured out ways she could cheat it for her Gaza locations. She also cast Palestinians with Israeli passports so that she’d be able to shoot in the West Bank if she had to. “In 2009 I finally raised enough money to make the film, and I had an organization sponsoring my application [to shoot] in Gaza, but it was denied. We went ahead and finally shot in the West Bank, although the film is still the first film set in Gaza in 15 years.”

Youssef was born in Bay Ridge, … Read the rest

25 NEW FACES

By Filmmaker Staff

The 25 new faces of independent film.