Wayne Coles-Janess says, “The only thing in the western media that we see from the Middle East is angry men shouting ‘Jihad Jihad’ and very poor people on dusty dirty streets with a camel or donkey. An actual visual depiction of the world that we live in today doesn’t exist. So I felt the obligation to use my skills as a filmmaker to go to Iraq, to try to find more typical stories of people in their society rather than the stereotypical ones that are represented in the media in 30 seconds.”

Gizem Yarbil

Wayne Coles-Janess’s In the Shadow of the Palms is a genuinely filmed documentary about the Iraqi society before, during and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It gives voice to the ordinary Iraqi people on the street rather than the ministers, politicians and officials that we constantly see on the news. There is one and only one truth in this film, which is the truth of the people, something that one cannot witness on the western media. “I am not really interested in politics. I am more interested in people and how they do their manifestation of politics,” says Coles-Janess about filming a documentary on the Iraqi people. It is unfortunate that this important “document” on the state of the Iraqis, who used to be regular people, continuing their daily existence prior to the war, still doesn’t have an international distribution and is being effectively banned and harassed in its own country, Australia.

The representation is anything

Wayne Coles-Janess decided to go to Iraq to document the lives of everyday people since there is no real representation of anything to do with the whole Middle Eastern region on the mainstream media. The director says, “The only thing in the western media that we see from the Middle East is angry men shouting ‘Jihad Jihad’ and very poor people on dusty dirty streets with a camel or donkey. An actual visual depiction of the world that we live in today doesn’t exist. So I felt the obligation to use my skills as a filmmaker to go to Iraq, to try to find more typical stories of people in their society rather than the stereotypical ones that are represented in the media in 30 seconds.” When you watch In the Shadow of the Palms , one can see a very different version of the reality in Iraq than what is normally seen on the TV and this reality certainly does not justify the motives behind the actions of the US government.

In the Shadow of the Palms is the only documentary filmed in Iraq ahead of, during and after the war. It is the only documentation of the transformation that took place in the Iraqi society with the emergence of the unprecedented war. Through a broad range of characters such as a professor of classical poetry, a cobbler, a wrestling coach, and a translator from Palestinian origins, we witness shifts in the moods of the Iraqi people. At the beginning of the film, there is an atmosphere of ignorance. People continue their daily lives with a carefree nature. A teacher in a classroom asks her students whether they are afraid of the war in English. They answer is “No.” People are brave about the war. This is maybe the most heart-breaking part of the film for the viewer. Considering the current situation of the country and the society, it is poignant to see streets and buildings so beautiful, people so cheery and vibrant. They are normal humans, just like us, doomed to be the victims of the unfair chain of events and carefully planned scenarios that rule our world today.

“Probably about a week before the bombing started, that’s when the time really shifted. But up to that, I think people were either “Ah yeah they’ve been talking like this for years” or “this is another stage” or whatever. But the week before, people started really changing and preparing for the possibility of the war,” says the director about how the Iraqi people got a grasp of the whole situation. About a week before the bombings started – the director indicates the time frame of each segment in captions in the film - we start to see altering expressions on Iraqis’ faces. They start to prepare, pack food for the war and pray to God to protect them from harm.

“Shock and awe” on people

The viewer perceives the real “shock and awe” on the Iraqis’ faces when the actual bombing starts. Unlike the initial strategy of the US to bomb only military zones and areas with weapons of mass destruction, we witness the havoc after the bombing of an apartment in Baghdad through Coles-Janess’s camera. Panic-stricken people scream around as they move bodies under the rubble. As bodies come out, they get even more conscious of the situation that maybe most of them have been ignoring for a long time. They come into terms with the reality of war. “The truth is, lots and lots and lots of people die in war and each death has a multiplying effect. When human beings die, they’re just a piece of meat, but it’s the people, their family and friends that they leave behind where the truth comes in,” says the director. He follows the injured bodies to the hospital, where the doctor says that there aren’t any journalists going and reporting there. In one powerful scene, we see a little child dying on the hospital bed as the mother moans. “This is just the reality of war and trying to contextualize and humanize this suffering; it’s awful,” points out the director about documenting death and misery at the hospital.

Coles-Janess says that although the reactions of the Iraqis to him while he was filming prior to the war had been generally fine, when the war started to approach, people got uneasy and arrests commenced: “Once the bombings started the arrests and interrogations have gotten more heavy duty, a lot more aggressive and a lot longer, I gave my decision to leave Baghdad.” He didn’t decide to leave Iraq for his own security but for the safety of the tapes: “It turns out that apparently this is literally the only documentary record of life in Iraq, the last days of the Saddam regime and the days leading up to the events of the war which has now perpetually changed the whole nature of the world. So I was getting more and more concerned over the safety of the tapes, hiding them in different places or carrying them with me or carrying part of them.” Wayne Coles-Janess had six weeks of footage and if they got confiscated or destroyed in any way that would have been the vanishing of a historical record. About his decision to leave Baghdad, Coles-Janess says, “I think there is a big responsibility to do what the word actually says and that’s to “document”. How would people make sense of the Iraq war in 10, 20, 40 years time if they look at Fox and CNN? So that was when I decided to get these tapes out.”

After the war

After the war ended, Wayne Coles-Janess went back to Iraq to continue his documentary. The mood of the film is completely changed now. People are in distress. Their already wobbly economy after the UN sanctions has now completely collapsed. Many people are unemployed. The Palestinian translator that we follow throughout the film has lost his Iraqi citizenship. About him, the director says, “His family had been there for 60-65 years. They were just Iraqis until when I got back and they said, ‘We don’t have a state, we don’t have Iraqi citizenship.’” They were born, educated there and now they had a UN refugee number and he needed to find a country where he can now bring up his family. So it’s three generations in Iraq and they are stateless.” Another character that the viewer identifies with throughout the film is the wrestling coach. After the war, we find out that he was arrested and has never been heard from again. His family is in despair. The other characters are all in misery, as well. They have no hope for the future. Their vibrant faces are not luminous any more.

“People come from abroad and cause explosions,” says a character after the war. Considering Christian and Muslim students going to the same school, girls with headscarves and girls without in the same classrooms, one wonders how this country is on the verge of a civil war at the moment. “I know when I was there, there were bombings and a lot of Iraqis were saying it’s not us. It’s people from outside Iraq coming in to cause problems. I can remember last November reading a very brief article about two British Troops who were dressed as Arabs in a car. They were approached by some Iraqi policemen, and they started firing at the policemen. Similar things happened in Vietnam and in any other conflict. It’s to destabilize. It’s better Mohammed and Hasan fighting than Mohammad and Hasan fighting Uncle Sam. So what I heard is that a lot of bombings in the mosques and the markets weren’t planned by Iraqis. It wasn’t really in their nature to do that,” says the director about the civil conflict in Iraq.

Australia refuses the film

This important film, the sole record on the Iraqi society before and after the invasion, unfortunately has no distribution at the moment. It’s been shown at many festivals around the world, however, no distributor or broadcaster contacted the production company for getting this film out to more people. “When it won at Yamagata which is one of the most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world, we thought we’ll be getting emails and phone calls and faxes from distributors and broadcasters to access this film. Nothing,” says the director. In its home country, Australia, the situation is even worse. The director says that dealing with the government destruction and the harassment in Australia has been more difficult than filming in Iraq: “Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Australian Film Institute Awards all banned it. In any kind of main stream media or in the consciousness of the country, this film doesn’t exist in Australia.” The director thinks that the motive behind this is the fear factor that the government is trying to constantly keep alive in order to justify their support of the war in Iraq. Coles-Janess says, “In Australia, everyday, if you pick up the newspaper, there is a politician or a government department passing a new law against terrorism or talking about some threat that might be happening. A lot of commentators in Australia have stated that the government is relying on creating fear and paranoia as an effective way to lobby for the elections and this has really changed the nature of the Australian society. It’s very much lining more and more, not just politically or economically, but socially with the US. I mean it’s going back to the concept which you might have heard of, the White Australia Policy.”

Another reason behind the country’s refusal of the film is that they are afraid to show ordinary Iraqi people living regular lives. “There is a war going on. They are spending two billion tax pay dollars to bomb Iraqis. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in creating propaganda; they don’t want a film that shows them ordinary Iraqi people. But these festivals in Australia are funded by the tax payers,” says the director about the rejection of the film by Australian film festivals.

This film is a crucial document that will inform the next generations about the situation of the Iraqi people prior to the war, the misery of them during the bombing, and the destitute and desolation they face in the aftermath. In order to get a real understanding of the war in Iraq, one has to come into terms with how the everyday people dealt with the reality of war. It is only when you see the suffering on the street and the misery on people’s faces that you really comprehend war. This film deserves to be reached out to more and more people around the world.