Lights, Humvees, action. A new documentary shows the Iraq War from a unique perspective: through the eyes of a soldier.

Equipped with miniature digital cameras rigged to kevlar helmets or mounted on gun turrets, soldiers from the New Hampshire National Guard provided over 800 hours of footage for "The War Tapes."

The unflinching and harrowing end result won the best documentary accolade at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and is generating early Oscar buzz. As one critic said, if the audience was any closer, they would be dodging the bullets.

"It's a journey through the soldier's eyes, which is something we haven't seen before," the film's director Deborah Scranton said in an interview.

"I wanted to be able to crawl inside the soldier's experience and understand what it looked like, felt like, smelt like.

"The power of the film is that for an hour and a half you get to walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

Scranton managed the project around the clock from her farmhouse in New Hampshire, staying in contact with participating soldiers via instant messaging and video conferencing.

"I rigged up an old baby monitor at my bedside so I could hear and leap out of bed whenever anyone came on line," Scranton said, part of a production team that includes "Fog of War" producer Robert May and Steve James ("Hoop Dreams").

Forging close friendships with the men from Charlie company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry (Mountain) Regiment, Scranton admitted to having sleepless nights as she tracked their tour of duty day-by-day.

"It was nerve-wracking, I was up all night biting my fingernails," Scranton recalled.

"One time I got an e-mail to say that mortars had hit. And then I didn't hear anything for 24 hours. So I was sitting there wondering 'What happened? Did they all get wiped out?'"

While 10 soldiers out of the 180-strong company contributed footage to the movie, the film focuses on the separate journeys of three soldiers: Sergeant Zack Bazzi, a Lebanese-American university student; Sergeant Steve Pink, a carpenter; and Specialist Mike Moriarty.

Based in the deadly Sunni triangle, the unit travelled 2.2 million kilometres during their tour and lived through over 1,200 combat operations and 250 direct enemy engagements.

Bazzi said that the cameras were forgotten as soon as the "record" button on the camera was activated.

"I would screw the camera rack on the turret rack and mount the camera, and let it run," Bazzi said.

"No-one was really directing, it was up to us. I never thought about the camera. I was in a combat zone.

"When I was on patrol I was worrying about my subordinates, my superiors, my humvee, the insurgents, the civilians," Bazzi says.

Idea develops into reality

Scranton hit upon the idea after being contacted by the New Hampshire National Guard in February 2004 with the offer to embed as a filmmaker. When she suggested that soldiers be given cameras instead, the military agreed.

The results are memorable: the soldier's frustration at having to provide armed support to trucks owned by Halliburton, the soul-searching after the death of a civilian in a road accident, the madness of being ordered to deny hospital access to an Iraqi parent carrying a sick child.

Nevertheless, the film studiously avoids the temptation to make political points, choosing instead to present the soldiers' lives warts and all and leaving the audience to make up its own mind.

"The film has always been about the soldiers' point of view," Scranton explained. "From the beginning I promised them that we would tell the story, their story, wherever it took us, no matter what.

"I promised we would not twist their words."

The war in Iraq has been the most media-saturated military conflict in history, with the Internet explosion fuelling dozens of books, countless blogs and websites. Scranton was largely left alone by military censors.

Only one piece of footage, when Pink is filming the bodies of insurgents killed in Fallujah and commenting on the dead men, was withheld.

The concept of soldiers carrying cameras into battle and movies like "The War Tapes" are a natural by-product of the information age, Scranton says and they are here to stay.

"I don't think they can put the genie back in the box with the level of technology we have now. The cameras are so small, the stories will get out."

Ironically, Bazzi disagrees, and believes similar projects are unlikely to be repeated in future wars.

(China Daily 10/07/2006 page6)