1.
Errol Morris
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Errol Mark Morris is an American film director primarily of documentaries examining and investigating, among other things, authorities and eccentrics. He is perhaps best known and most revered for his 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line, in 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War, Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He has also made short films under contract for the controversial lab diagnostic company Theranos, Morris was born on February 5,1948, and raised in a Jewish family in Hewlett, New York. After being treated for strabismus in childhood, he refused to wear an eye patch, as a consequence, he has limited sight in one eye and lacks normal stereoscopic vision. In the 10th grade, Morris attended The Putney School, a school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Morris graduated in 1969 with a B. A. in history, for a brief time Morris held small jobs, first as a cable television salesman and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for grad school included trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep and his concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his relationship with his advisor Thomas Kuhn ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short. Morris left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a Ph. D. student in philosophy, at Berkeley, he once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. Berkeley was just a world of pedants, I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it, he later said and he became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive. As Tom Luddy, the director of the archive at the time, later remembered and he claimed we werent showing the real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes, then, there was his habit of sneaking into the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he was doing it, inspired by Hitchcocks Psycho, Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975. While in Wisconsin, he conducted interviews with Ed Gein. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there, Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, although he had plans to either write a book or make a film, Morris never completed his Ed Gein project
2.
Danny Elfman
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Daniel Robert Danny Elfman is an American composer, singer, songwriter, and record producer. In 1976 Elfman entered the industry as an actor. In 1982 he scored his first film, Forbidden Zone, directed by his older brother Richard Elfman, among his honours are four Academy Award nominations, a Grammy for Batman, an Emmy for Desperate Housewives, the 2002 Richard Kirk Award, and the Disney Legend Award. Danny Elfman was born on May 29,1953 in Los Angeles and he is the son of Blossom Elfman, a writer and teacher, and Milton Elfman, a teacher who was in the Air Force. He was raised in a racially mixed affluent community in Baldwin Hills and he spent much of his time in the neighborhoods local movie theatre, adoring the music of such film composers as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman. Stating that he hung out with the band geeks in high school, after dropping out of high school, he followed his brother Richard to France, where he performed with Le Grand Magic Circus, an avant-garde musical theater group. He was never officially a student at the CalArts, nonetheless, Elfman stated, He just laughed, and said, Sit. I continued to sit and play for a couple years, at this time, his brother Richard was forming a new musical theater group. In 1972 Richard Elfman founded the American new wave band/performance art group and they played several shows throughout the 1970s until Richard Elfman left the band to become a filmmaker. As a send-off to the original concept, Richard Elfman created the film Forbidden Zone based on their stage performances. Danny Elfman composed his first score for the film and played the role of Satan, by the time the movie was completed, they had taken the name Oingo Boingo and begun recording and touring as a rock group. From 1976 and on, it was led by Danny Elfman, the semi-theatrical music and comedy troupe had transformed into a ska-influenced new wave band in 1979, and then changed again towards a more guitar-oriented rock sound, in the late 1980s. Oingo Boingo, still led by Danny Elfman, performed as themselves in the 1986 movie Back to School, in 1985, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens invited Elfman to write the score for their first feature film, Pee-wees Big Adventure. Elfman also provided the voice for Jack Skellington in Tim Burtons The Nightmare Before Christmas. Years later he provided the voice for Bonejangles the skeleton in Corpse Bride and the voices of the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie, one of Elfmans notable compositions is The Simpsons Theme. He composed the theme in 1989, and it has been in use ever since, in 2002 Elfman composed the opening theme for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series. This as well as altered versions made its way to all 3 Spider-Man movies, in 2004 Elfman composed Serenada Schizophrana for the American Composers Orchestra. It was conducted by John Mauceri on its recording and by Steven Sloane at its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York City on February 23,2005, after its premiere, it was recorded in studio and released onto SACD on October 3,2006
3.
Participant Media
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Participant Media is an American film production company founded in 2004 by Jeffrey Skoll, dedicated to entertainment that inspires and compels social change. The company finances and co-produces films, and its hub, TakePart serves millions of socially conscious consumers each month with daily articles, videos. The companys name descriptively politicizes its basis on currently topical subjects presented to induce awareness in social aspects. The company has produced, financed, or co-produced over 75 films and its films have been nominated for 50 Academy Awards, and have won 11, including Best Picture for Spotlight. The company was founded in January 2004 as Participant Productions by Jeffrey Skoll, with $100 million in cash from Skolls personal funds, Skoll was the companys first chief executive officer, but stepped down from that position in August 2006. Participant Productions initial plans were to produce four to six films per year, the company focused on films in six areas – the environment, health care, human rights, institutional responsibility, peace and tolerance, and social and economic justice. It evaluated projects by running them past its creative executives first, assessing their cost and commercial viability second, once the decision was made to go ahead with production, the company reached out to non-profit organizations to ask them to build campaigns around the release. In some cases, the studio has spent years creating positive word-of-mouth with advocacy groups, the new company quickly announced an ambitious slate of productions. Its first film was the drama film American Gun, with equity partner IFC Films, two weeks later, the company announced a co-production deal with Warner Bros. on two films – the geopolitical thriller film Syriana and the drama film Class Action (later re-titled North Country. Participant Productions contributed half the budget of each film and its fourth production, a documentary film, was announced in November 2004. In 2005, the company suffered its first stumble and it again agreed to co-finance a picture with Warner Bros. this time Vadim Perelmans second feature, Truce. Although Perelman claimed he had never been moved by a script to such an extent, North Country did poorly at the box office despite having recent Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron in the lead. The World According to Sesame Street never found a distributor for theatrical release, the company announced in March 2005 that it would executive co-produce the Warner Bros. drama film Good Night, and Good Luck. A month later, it bought the rights to the documentary film Murderball in return for an equity stake in the film. It also executive produced and co-financed Al Gores global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, as heavier production scheduling grew, the company added staff. Ricky Strauss was named first president in March 2005, with oversight of production, marketing, diane Weyermann, director of the Sundance Institutes Documentary Film Program, joined the company in October 2005 as Executive Vice President of Documentary Production. The companys non-film-production efforts continued to grow as well, the company provided an undisclosed amount of financing in February 2005 to film distributor Emerging Pictures to finance that companys national network of digitally equipped cinemas. The company had a very successful 2005 awards season, with eleven Academy Award nominations, Good Night, and Good Luck garnered six nominations, including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Original Screenplay
4.
Sony Pictures Classics
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Sony Pictures Classics is a film production and distribution studio division of Sony Pictures founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produces and acquires specialty films such as documentaries, independent and art films in the United States, as of 2015, Barker and Bernard are co-presidents of the division. Sony Pictures Classics was founded on January 1,1992, by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, the model of the company is to produce, acquire and/or distribute independent films from the United States and internationally. Sony Pictures Classics has a history of making investments for small films. It has a history of not overspending and its largest commercial success of the 2010s is Woody Allens Midnight in Paris, which grossed over $56 million in the U. S. becoming Allens highest-grossing film ever in the United States. Leviathan Love Is Strange The Lunchbox Magic in the Moonlight Mr
5.
Documentary film
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A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record. Documentary has been described as a practice, a cinematic tradition. Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film and he wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de lhistoire and La photographie animée. Both were published in 1898 in French and among the written works to consider the historical. Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect, the American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as a factual film which is dramatic. Others further state that a documentary stands out from the types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion. Documentary practice is the process of creating documentary projects. Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism, advocacy, early film was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film, a train entering a station and these short films were called actuality films, the term documentary was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length. Films showing many people were made for commercial reasons, the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half, using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States, in May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film few surigical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited Bolesław Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and they started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898. Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations, Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. These and five other of Doyens films survive, all these short films have been preserved. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me, unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way. Travelogue films were popular in the early part of the 20th century
6.
Military police
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Military police are law enforcement agencies connected with, or part of, the military of a state. In the Second World War, the police of the German Army still used a metal gorget as an emblem. Naval police members are sometimes called masters-at-arms and shore patrol, Military police in Brazil has two meanings. There are provost corps for each of the Brazilian Armed Forces, Army Police for the Army, Navy Police for the Navy, the second type are the civilian preventative police, with military organization comparable to gendarmerie, called the Military Police. Each State has their own Military Police, there is also a joint National Public Security Force, created in 1999. This force is composed of the most qualified State Military Police personnel from all the states and they have the power to arrest anyone who is subject to the Code of Service Discipline, regardless of position or rank under the National Defence Act. If in fact a crime is committed on or in relation to DND property or assets, MP have the power to arrest and charge the offender, military or civilian, under the Criminal Code. It is important to note though that the purpose of the CFMP is not to replace the job of a police officer. MP also have the power to enforce the Provincial Highway Traffic Acts on all military bases in Canada pursuant to the Government Property Traffic Regulations, in Colombia, MPs are very common. They can be seen guarding closed roads, museums, embassies, government buildings, in the National Army of Colombia they are assigned to the 37 Military Police Battalions, wearing green uniforms with the military police helmet. A Naval Police battalion is in service in the Colombian Marine Corps, Each branch of the military of the United States maintains its own police force. The U. S. CGIS primarily investigates and charges those in its own population with serious crimes, such as rape, assault or forgery, Navy, designated as Naval Security Force, primarily responsible for law enforcement and force protection. NSF personnel are led by Naval commissioned officers from the Limited Duty Officer and Chief Warrant Officer communities, additionally, a host installations Security Force are augmented by Sailors on Temporary Assignment of Duty from their parent units, as part of the Auxiliary Security Force. Prior to the 1970s, Master-at-Arms and Shore Patrol were used synonymously to refer to Sailors assigned to law enforcement. Air Force Security Forces —United States Air Force Each service also maintains uniformed civilian police departments and they are referred to as Department of Defense Police. These police fall under each directorate they work for within the United States Department of Defense, for example, the Department of the Air Force Police operate under the Air Provost Marshal. The police officers duties are similar to those of civilian police officers. They enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, federal and state laws, the United States Constabulary was a gendarmerie force used to secure and patrol the American Zone of West Germany immediately after World War II
7.
Abu Ghraib prison
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The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. The prison was built by British contractors in the 1950s, the prison held as many as 15,000 inmates in 2001. In 2002, Saddam Husseins government began a project to add six new cellblocks to the prison. In October 2002, he gave amnesty to most prisoners in Iraq, after the prisoners were released and the prison was left empty, it was vandalized and looted. Almost all of the documents relating to prisoners were piled and burnt inside of prison offices and cells, known mass-graves related to Abu Ghraib include, Khan Dhari, west of Baghdad - Mass grave with the bodies of political prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Fifteen victims were executed on 26 December 1998 and buried by prison authorities under the cover of darkness, al-Zahedi, on the western outskirts of Baghdad - Secret graves near a civilian cemetery contain the remains of nearly 1,000 political prisoners. According to an eyewitness,10 to 15 bodies arrived at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and were buried by local civilians, an execution on 10 December 1999 in Abu Ghraib claimed the lives of 101 people in one day. On 9 March 2000,58 prisoners were killed at a time, the last corpse interred was number 993. Until August 2006, the known as the Abu Ghraib prison was used for detention purposes by both the U. S. -led coalition occupying Iraq and the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has controlled the area of the facility known as The Hard Site, the prison was used to house only convicted criminals. Suspected criminals, insurgents or those arrested and awaiting trial were held at other facilities, the U. S. housed all its detainees at Camp Redemption, which is divided into five security levels. This camp built in the summer of 2004 replaced the three-level setup of Camp Ganci, Camp Vigilant, the remainder of the facility was occupied by the U. S. military. Abu Ghraib served as both a FOB and a detention facility, when the U. S. military was using the Abu Ghraib prison as a detention facility, it housed approximately 7,490 prisoners there in March 2004. The U. S. military initially held all persons of interest in Camp Redemption, some were suspected rebels, and some suspected criminals. Those convicted by trial in Iraqi court are transferred to the Iraqi-run Hard Site, the story included photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners. The events created a political scandal within the U. S. On April 20,2004, insurgents fired 40 mortar rounds into the prison, killing 24 detainees, commentators thought the attack was either an attempt to incite a riot or retribution for detainees cooperating with the United States. In May 2004, the U. S. -led coalition embarked on a policy to reduce numbers to fewer than 2,000
8.
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
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These violations included physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the soldiers received support from conservative media within the United States. The administration of George W. Bush attempted to portray the abuses as isolated incidents and this was contradicted by humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. Several scholars stated that the abuses constituted state-sanctioned crimes, the United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and March 2006, these soldiers were convicted in courts-martial, sentenced to military prison, two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten and three years in prison, respectively. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel. Several more military personnel who were accused of perpetrating or authorizing the measures, documents popularly known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, several subsequent U. S. Supreme Court decisions, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, have overturned Bush administration policy, and ruled that Geneva Conventions apply. The September 11 Attacks in the United States led to demands from the public that US president George Bush take actions that would prevent further attacks and this pressure led to the launch of the War on Terror. In addition, these tactics created the perception that the techniques used in the cold war would not be of much use. US vice-president Dick Cheney stated, for example, that the US to work sort of on the side. The Iraq War began in March 2003 as an invasion of Baathist Iraq by a led by the United States. The Baathist government led by Saddam Hussein was toppled within a month and this conflict was followed by a longer phase of fighting in which an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. During this insurgency, the United States was in the role of an occupying power, the Abu Ghraib prison in the town of Abu Ghraib was one of the most notorious prisons in Iraq during the government of Saddam Hussein. The prison was used to hold approximately 50,000 men and women in poor conditions, the prison was located on 280 acres of land 32 kilometers west of Baghdad. After the collapse of Saddam Husseins government, the prison was looted, following the invasion, the U. S. army refurbished it and turned it into a military prison. It was the largest of several centers in Iraq used by the U. S. military
