Documentary Analysis

The Invisible War, a documentary by Kirby Dick, is about Military Sexual Assault. The movie shows the awful military sexual assault through several interviews with real-life Military rape victims. The 97-minute-long film is about the experiences and consequences of seven or eight Veterans that were victimized during their service. There were almost 100 people interviewed in total for the film.

The interviews captured the vulnerable experiences that these veterans had and helped the viewer empathize with them. The movie brings forth a wave of emotions from the viewer with the miserable testimonies from the relatives of the rape victims who explain how hard it was for that person. The interviews were also very emotionally effective because they usually ended with the interviewee crying.

The film uses archival footage (WWII videos of the military happily asking women to join), which is a bitter contrast to the image that the victims give. The main interviewee was Kori Cioca, a military rape victim who has PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, and a facial injury that left her unable to chew. She was raped during her deportation by one of her superiors and she then had to report the rape to the rapist.      

The movie addresses the issue of the military’s failure to support the veterans working for them. What this issue basically is is that the military requires soldiers to put their lives in jeopardy for the country but refuses to give them the most basic protection against rapists in the armed forces. Most likely for legal reasons, the movie doesn’t disclose the names of rapists, only the location and rank of each officer connected with the victim. During the documentary, high military officials tried to defend the system by showing unprofessional military videos that warn soldiers about sexual assault.

The director incorporated text by putting in statistics of the number of people affected by sexual assault in the military. The movie uses several cinematic effects throughout it that makes it a very interesting documentary to watch. There is no real plot but there is definitely a structure to it. The victims and their families are interviewed first, followed by interviews with people somehow related to the story. An example of this was when Kori was interviewed about the legal part of her assault and the next interview was with a military executive about the legal procedure for prosecuting a military official.

       The director decided not to reenact any part of the film for obvious reasons, so there wasn’t really any dramatic aspect. The music was only really noticeable during the interviews where soft music played in the background. This is an excellent and compelling documentary and I strongly recommend it.

Here's the trailer:

Pippin (for the last time)

Alright, I know I've posted a lot recently about Pippin but this is the last time I promise. This weekend was our three and only performances and they were all fantastic. There were a few mistakes in each one of course but overall the shows were amazing. We sold out all three nights which was fantastic to see a full house every time I looked into the audience.

Going onstage, especially opening night, was extremely nerve-wracking but also exciting. Once I got through half of my first song at the very beginning, the nerves went away. I can't really explain the awesomeness of the show in words it's something you had to have seen.

The past 2.5 years have been such an amazing experience and I'm so lucky to have been given this opportunity with this amazing group of people. There are fifteen of us which means we've only lost one person whereas most other conservatories lose five or six. Everyone in the cast has such an incredible personality and even though the show is over we'll all keep in touch and do shows together and meet up a few times per year.

All this past summer and this school year so far I had the plan to do a sport all three seasons (golf in the fall, track in the winter, and track in the spring) but now I realize that I thought this because I figured I'd still have conservatory to give me some aspect of theater. Since it's over I think a good balance will be doing the school musical, Into the Woods, in the spring. It would be a good balance having two seasons of sports and one of theater and maybe I'll do a show over the summer, who knows.



Here are just some pictures of me with some of the cast members before and after the show, and also a few all cast photos:

This is me (Leading Player, bottom left), Rees (Pippin, top left), Everleigh (Fastrada, top right), and Sydney (Louise, bottom right) on our journey to Starbucks before our final performance:

This is me and Rees after our last show: 

This is me, Zoe, Everleigh, Hannah, Olivia, and Sydney after our show (there are a few tears because it was our last performance):

This is me as Leading Player and Gill as Catherine before our second show:

This is our entire cast just smiling:

This is a slightly more representative picture of our group:

And finally, this is a picture of the Musical Theater Class of 2012 as our characters from Pippin:

I love each and every one of these people more than I ever would have thought and I'm so excited to have future adventures with them :)

Pippin! (again)

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Pippin, the show that I'm in as part of the Musical Theater Conservatory at Imagination Stage. This week is our last week rehearsing until the show opens on Friday so our tech week started today and we have rehearsal today, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Tech week is just where instead of running through the show completely we focus primarily on where the lights are and when the sounds come in and how the scenes change smoothly. We only got through about a third of the show today cause we had to stop multiple times in each scene but tomorrow we're finishing finding the lighting cues. That will leave Tuesday and Thursday for us to run through the show completely with all of the lights and sounds that are supposed to be there. Since this was part of tech week, we got to wear our costumes and makeup for the rehearsal which made me extremely happy and really excited because of how stellar my costume is. I'll explain it in some detail now. For a base top I have a pinkish-reddish and silver diagonally striped long sleeve shirt and for base bottoms I just have red leggings and jazz shoes. On the top next I have a black cropped sweatshirt with the arms cut off and silver spiked shoulder pads (I always have the hood on). Then I put on a skinny black tie and a leather collar with silver studs on it around my neck. Next there's a thick black waist belt with silver studs and another belt that's the same type as the seat belts on an airplane with old bottle caps on it. Now for my pants it's a bit hard to describe first they were just wide red and black tie-dyed jeans but then our ridiculously artsy and amazing costume designer cut out the part by my knee and put in a few leather straps so that those straps are the only things holding up the bottom part of my pants. That's my entire costume for everything except the last two scenes when I become more sinister and dawn a black opera cape. For my makeup it's black paint in two triangles facing down around my eyes and a black painted on smile sort of like the Joker's.


Here's a picture:

How great is that?! I absolutely love everything about my costume and I'm more excited for this show than I have been for anything else.

Come see the show this weekend, buy tickets here!
https://tickets.imaginationstage.org/public/show_events_list.asp?shcode=427

"Indoor Track"

This week I'll be talking very briefly about winter track, which most people refer to as "Indoor Track". I went into track thinking that we'd be running in the school and going to the weightroom but no, we run outside every day. It's still fun and not too hard but I was surprised that it was outside. There was a scrimmage yesterday at the PG Sports and Learning Complex with every school in Montgomery County. I ran the 55m but didn't do as well as I would have liked. I ran an 8.63s time which the people on my team said was good for my very first race but while I was running I knew I wasn't going my fastest. It was probably because I was really nervous and my legs got pretty tight right before I ran. But I'll keep practicing and next time hopefully I'll be better. I'm aslo learning how to long jump which is really fun. Any kind of jumping I think is the funnest thing to do so hopefully I'll be able to do that in one of the meets.