Deep Dish Producers on Dandana TV
Release Date: 8/18/2008
Dandana TV is the first Arab-American entertainment channel. Dandana producer and host Zeina Yazbek invited Deep Dish producers Suzy Salamy and Simin Farkhondeh to join her on her weekly show "Talk It Out" to discuss Deep Dish TV's recent video series Nothing Is Safe-Israel's 2006 War on Lebanon and Caught Between Two Worlds a documentary by Simin Farkhondeh and Persheng Vaziri that explores the experience of Iranian immigrants in the United States. The program aired live on July 10, 2008.
On July 17, Deep Dish TV director Brian Drolet joined Zeina Yazbek to discuss the impact of the Iraq War on the women of Iraq. The program featured two Deep Dish films Standing with the Women of Iraq from the 2005 series Shocking and Awful-A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation and Iraqi Women Speak Out, produced with Code Pink (2006).
Interview with Suzy Salamy and Simin Farkhondeh
Interview with Brian Drolet
New Lebanon Series Airs on Free Speech TV
Release Date: 7/22/2008
Deep Dish TV's new series "Nothing is Safe - Israel's 2006 War on Lebanon" brings together 8 powerful documentaries by Lebanese and U.S. filmmakers and 11 short art videos made by Lebanese artists during and in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Program Descriptions
Broadcast times on Free Speech TV
The devastation caused by the Israeli bombing of homes, schools, roads and bridges in southern Lebanon is horrific. The extent of this destruction and the loss of life went largely unreported in the American media. Common perception in the U.S. is simply that the Middle East once again exploded into chaos and carnage. The U.S. media told a simple story: radical Islamic fundamentalists controlled by Iran and Syria provoked the Israeli bombing and invasion by kidnapping two of their soldiers. The U.S. then blocked an immediate ceasefire, prolonging the Israeli bombardment in order to arrange an overall settlement that would diminish the causes of conflict.
Like the story spun about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, this narration obscures the larger strategic reasons for the war and blocks examination of the U.S. agenda in the region, typically euphemized as "defending Israel" and "protecting American interests."
As in Iraq, every effort is made to sanitize our field of vision to the human costs of the mass homicide in Lebanon. Thousands of dead and maimed children cannot be reduced to numerical calculation. The destruction of much of Lebanon's infrastructure cannot be simply quantified. This series is based largely on interviews with ordinary Lebanese citizens, heart-wrenching stories of loss and determination against a backdrop of unimaginable destruction. In war it is not only the innocent civilians wo suffer the most, their voices are the first and most effectively silenced.
These programs let them speak.
We want to gratefully acknowledge ArteEAST which provided the videos by Lebanese artists we have included in programs 2-8 in a section we've titled ART IN A TIME OF WAR.
Our special thanks to the Caipirinha Foundation for substantial funding of this series.
Winter Soldier: IVAW Vets Denounce Occupations
Release Date: 3/19/2008
Hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans met in Washington DC March 13-16, 2008. They provide courageous eyewitness testimony to the horrific brutality and destruction that the Bush Administration, Congress and the corporate media have inflicted on those two countries and their people - and the damage inflicted on the bodies and minds of tens of thousands of men and women they have sent to invade and occuply those countries. Deep Dish TV helped to organize the live television and web coverage of the event, broadcast for 12 hours on both Friday and Saturday on Free Speech TV and webcast on all four days.
View Winter Soldier Videos at IVAW Website