LOOKING INSIDE AFGHANISTAN - Personal Stories of Everyday Life by James Longley

What is it like to live in Afghanistan? James Longley, photographer and award-winning filmmaker, speaks to his years immersed in the daily life of old city Kabul.  His exhibit at SJIMA combines vast panoramic images with portraits and film focusing on everyday life. This presentation will be on August 28, 5-7 at the Orcas Center in Eastsound, Orcas Island. 

Sponsored by the Orcas Island Community Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington State Arts Commission and KCTS Channel 9

About James Longley (from JamesLongley.com)

Documentary filmmaker and photographer James Longley has spent the past two decades conveying the stark realities and manifold inner worlds of civilians caught up in war zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza. Through his production entity Daylight Factory LLC, James works on ways to make the world kinder and more self-aware.

Fascinated by filmmaking and photography since early childhood, Longley’s international experience began in the Soviet Union and later Russia, where he studied at the Moscow film school. His student documentary film in Moscow, co-directed with Robin Hessman, took home a Student Academy Award™ in 1994. James lived and worked in Russia during most of the turbulent 1990s.

Longley produced his first feature-length documentary in the Gaza Strip during the second Palestinian uprising. The eponymous film, GAZA STRIP, released in 2002, enjoyed a broad festival run and critical success. The producer’s royalties from the DVD sales of this film allowed James to take on his second feature project in Iraq.

James filmed for two years in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. The resulting feature documentary, IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS, was widely heralded for its innovative and risk-taking approach, combining an expressionist aesthetic with intimate observational filmmaking that appears to erase the presence of the camera in order to create the sensation of unmediated, subjective experience.

At its premiere IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS took the Sundance Film Festival by storm, becoming the first and only documentary in Sundance history to be awarded all three of the documentary film craft awards for Cinematography, Editing, and Directing. The film received many accolades, including the Nestor Almendros award from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and an Emmy™ nomination for Best Cinematography. The film is included on many “critics’ picks” lists of documentary films, and in 2012 IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS was named by the Sundance Documentary Program as one of the 10 best documentary films of the past decade.