45th NYFF- "Redacted" - October 11, 2007

45th New York Film Festival
Redacted
October 11, 2007

Press conference with De Palma for RedactedPhoto Credit: GODLIS

Last night at the New York Film Festival, I saw Brian DePalma’s latest film Redacted, which has been met with controversy, not only for its dark, unsettling portrait of a fictionalized account of an actual incident that occurred during the Iraq War where U.S. soldiers raped an Iraqi woman, but also for a dispute that occurred a few days ago at a NYFF press conference where DePalma charged the film’s distributor, Magnolia Pictures, with censoring, or “redacting” if you will, the film’s final moments where pictures of actual wounded and dead Iraqis faces were covered with black bars. Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles spoke out during the conference to defend the distributor’s rights to make that decision. Not 24 hours later, DePalma gives up his fight. Karina Longworth of SpoutBlog has been all over this story like white on rice. Read her latest coverage here.

There was no Q&A after the screening last night, but DePalma did speak briefly before the film began saying, “Normally, I don’t do this because you’re supposed to think these guys are real.” He was referring to the cast of Redacted. DePalma did a “role call.” Present from the cast were Patrick Carroll (Reno Flake), Ty Jones (Master Sergeant Sweet), Mike Figueroa (Sargeant Jim Vasquez), Kel O’Neill (Gabe Blix) and Izzy Diaz (Angel Salazar).

DePalma concluded by saying Redacted was a very exciting movie to make. It’s similar to his 1989 film Casualties of War, but he found a whole new way to tell the story by using the Internet.