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Baghdad Holiday
'It's a brilliant piece...very moving...beautifully shot and edited...I love it' Jon Snow British newscaster Seja Majeed
is a 21 year old British Muslim of Iraqi origin living in North London. In
December 2007 she combined a holiday to visit her family in Baghdad and Basra
for the first time with delivering humanitarian supplies to the civilians trying
to lead a normal life in the middle of a warzone. Over the two
weeks of her trip, Seja, an aspiring writer, artist and student at London
Academy of Film and TV, will recorded her journeys through the streets and homes
of Baghdad, gathering relaxed and informal interviews with those trying to lead
a normal life in the aftermath of a war and conversations at home with her own
family. Through a
short series of films which combine documentary journalism with the most
eccentric form of holiday video, the audience is granted an insight into the
real Baghdad of 2007/2008, concentrating not on the horror and drama of war, but
on the daily lives of the people struggling for normality. This is also
a story of Seja’s personal journey through a homeland she sees for the first
time, only to find it in the direst of states. Structured as a kind of road
movie as Seja travels through Basra, Baghdad and Najaf, we see, through Seja’s
eyes, Christmas day being celebrated in a Christian church in Basra, the
frustrations of two female judges trying to balance the authority of the new
constitution against the power of the community leaders, New Years Day in
Baghdad Zoo, the thoughts of soldiers in Iraq’s fledgling security services,
the trials of the family of a girl, losing her limbs one by one through
untreated cancer, and a number of other events and characters, all of which
combine to force Seja to question her own ideas of home, family and identity. Due to her young age and family ties in the cities, Seja was in a unique position to talk to these contributors on a human level rather than a professional, investigative one. The feeling of the film is that the audience is engaging in these conversations personally, being invited into homes, cars and cafes, and seeing the cities of Baghdad, Basra and Najaf as only a local could. View the Baghdad Holiday gallery page here Seja Majeed is an aspiring writer and artist and you may read some of her writing on her experiences in Iraq here and here. Seja also has a blog on the amnesty website which can be viewed here.
Baghdad Holiday Trailer
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Last modified: February 03, 2009
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