Six months after Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government was still scrambling to find Osama bin Laden, hidden somewhere in the bowels of Afghanistan. Convinced there was something more behind the deadlocked dilemma, five American filmmakers bribed their way into the war-torn country in search of answers.
"September Tapes" is based on eight unedited tapes of documentary footage "discovered" in the desert, left behind by a fictional journalist who went into Afghanistan to search for Osama bin Laden himself. The producers call the film a hybrid that blends the reality of international conflict in a war zone and the fiction of Hollywood-style invention. The story of the journalist and his expedition follows a script, but since the movie was filmed entirely in Afghanistan, an active war zone, it also incorporates real Afghan people as characters and actual events as part of the plot.
The College Democrats hosted the movie's writer and director, Christian Johnston, and Wali Razaqi, who helped produce "September Tapes," for a screening and discussion in Hughes Formal Lounge Sept. 13. Although the screening was hosted by a group of Democrats, the filmmakers said they deliberately avoided making the movie partisan. Instead, they were working to answer questions and document a more realistic image of the socioeconomic and political situation in Afghanistan than the image available from the American media.
"We didn't want to make this a heavily overstated movie about politics as much as we wanted to make people question," Razaqi said.
Uncertainty about the events of Sept. 11 prompted Johnston's idea for the film. He approached Razaqi, a producer and director he met while working on a movie in September 2001, with the idea. Razaqi is a native of Afghanistan and speaks fluent Farsi. Through family, he has connections with the Afghan government and Northern Alliance commanders. Johnston said he knew Razaqi's support was critical to putting his vision on film - and filming in Afghanistan.
"Chris told the idea to me, and I was convinced that it wasn't trying to take advantage of the situation; it wasn't going to vilify Afghans," Razaqi said. "I said to him, 'This is a story that I can support.'"
Johnston created a plotline, based loosely on the books "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad and "Dispatches" by Michael Herr. It follows a fictional journalist, Don Larson (George Calil), his Afghan guide and translator, Wali Zarif (Razaqi), and their cameraman into the country. Larson is trying to learn the truth about the war while tracking down Osama bin Laden to avenge his wife, who was killed on Sept. 11. Razaqi likened Larson's motivation to go to Afghanistan to the filmmaking team's own purpose in creating the film.
"We went over there with the assumption that we were going to come across something in the same way that Don Larson goes in there with a lot of bravado and collateral damage that motivates him to go there," Razaqi said. "Don Larson was like a representative of the average American, an example of what might happen if the average American got off the couch and went to Afghanistan."
After the screening, both Johnston and Razaqi discussed the movie with students and answered questions about the details and process of filming a movie in Afghanistan.
According to Johnston, the filmmakers were on their own to deal with the biggest concerns - safety and funding. Both the U.S. government and the Unitd Nations denied requests for security. Without any type of financial support, Razaqi said they each maxed out their personal credit cards and went in with their own cash, prepared to offer the bribes they needed to gain access and any sense of safety. They didn't even have an official clearance to enter the country, and getting in proved to be a risky and challenging ordeal.
"It was hard to get all of us on a flight into Kabul. Wali went ahead, but he had a Taliban-issued passport," Johnston said. "We were stuck in India during the nuclear crisis with Pakistan, and the vice president was assassinated while Wali was just a few hundred yards away. We couldn't communicate by phone, so we were all concerned the Taliban might be taking over.
"We knew we hadn't been getting all the information," Johnston said. The American media was making it out to seem like everything was fine and under control, but what if we got there and it was chaos?"
Johnston and the crew of three finally were able to enter the country with a U.N. press pass after two days of waiting in limbo. But unlike Calil's character, there was no Farsi-speaking native there to guide them when they arrived.
"I had convinced my actors and [co-writer] Christian Van Gregg that we would have some sort of journalistic support that would be at the airport [in Kabul] and we were going to be fine," Johnston said. "We got there, and they weren't there. There were no Westerners. It wasn't like we could go up to anyone and ask a question."
The actors, in character as Larson and Zarif, were able to gain cooperation from the police, a Northern Alliance commander and even a real bounty hunter in search of bin Laden for their "documentary." The cameras kept rolling the entire time, in order to get as much realistic footage as possible. According to the production notes, "Most of the locals, including the Taliban, had no idea this was anything other than an unscripted documentary being made by a crazy group of Americans." Only the actors knew the scripted plot, and much of their interaction with others was created "on the fly," Johnson said in another question-and-answer session.
"There was a detailed outline developed in the States with some dialogue, but the director and crew were fully aware that only their team could be scripted," Johnston said. "Everyone they would encounter might act, or react, differently."
According to Razaqi, about 25 percent of the final film drew from material that was dictated by chance, circumstance and improvisation, not script. Razaqi said that because the crew was so limited inside the country, any elements that in a regular production might be stunts or special effects were completely real in "September Tapes." Fights, gunfire, explosions and even a police chase scene were filmed as they happened, with only one chance to capture the exact moment of action on camera.
The movie "intentionally blurs the lines between what is real and what has been staged," according to the producers. The process of interweaving characters and real events as if they were interchangeable drew the most confusion and criticism from the screening audience.
Amanda Lamb, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, said extracting the actual facts was complicated, even after talking to the filmmakers.
"The fact was so parallel to the fiction that it would be hard for a layperson, not really looking hard at the film, to determine the difference between the two," Lamb said.
Lamb said her initial reaction after the film was disgust with the stereotyping of Afghans.
"They also stereotyped anyone who was Muslim as being a terrorist extremist who didn't understand, didn't try to understand, and was only after killing men," Lamb said. "I feel like when the film is put into mass production, there is going to be a lot of propaganda and a lot of 'jump to conclusions' because of the portrayal of Muslims. And that's what worries me."
The violence in the movie offended other members of the audience. Liza Lieberman, a sophomore in the School of International Service, criticized the reality of the fighting.
"In the middle of the gunfire, I was watching and thinking, 'This is ridiculous,'" Lieberman said. "This is the real thing, and I'm sitting here watching it on tape. It was almost mocking. Why would they go to a country that is so clearly war-torn, and create more violence?"
When asked about the message in the film, Johnston's reply seemed intentionally vague for a film that raised so many questions.
"There are a lot of little messages, a lot of things we camouflaged inside of [the film], and by looking deeper you can find them," he said. "I think you always want a movie that exists on different levels."
Many students at the screening found their own message, from political to personal.
"What I think the film does very well is portray the situation in Afghanistan with greater accuracy than the American media has, especially since attention has shifted to the quagmire in Iraq," AU College Democrats President Greg Wasserstrom said.
Lieberman's reflections were based on the emotional aspect of the film.
"It's interesting that they took this story of a guy trying to take matters into his own hands," Lieberman said. "It's totally the stereotypical American thing, saying, 'Well my wife died, so I'm going to go find Osama myself.' Clearly, he wasn't going to find him, and clearly it's fictional, but taking it to that point, where he was willing to die for this, brings it back to the personal feelings, and everyone has a personal story about 9/11."
During the question-and-answer session, Johnston and Razaqi fielded question after question on their opinion on the war to how they shot their film, which is what they were hoping for, Johnston said.
"I think the main message [we wanted] was that we would create a new dialogue," he said, "that at the end of the day, we would have created a dialogue about the movie"
