PBS debuted a fantastic documentary about the Iraq war, part of a wider series called Crossroads. Shot in 2005, the first part, called The Warriors, gives a close-up look into one squadron’s daily ground missions and strategies, utilizing wide close-up views and night-vision narrative.
But it was the second half, Operation Homecoming: Writing The Wartime Experience, which features something you don’t often see or know during a war. Several servicemen and women work-shopped their thoughts about time spent in Iraq and Afghanistan with noted authors, turning their words into intimately-conceived pieces of poetry, prose, and fiction.
The pieces provided the narrative to short segments produced with either video, photography or animation. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell’s animated “Men In Black” is fashioned in noir, replete with detective-style narration. And the iconic Anton Kratochvil, master documentarian photographer for the VII agency, supplies dramatic images for a piece called “Road Work,” the story of an Iraqi father who loses his son, written by Sergeant Jack Lewis.
Conflict stirs the deepest most intimate juices. War is making art, this time, while the guns are still firing.
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