KABOOM - THE MOVIE


The documentary KABOOM takes a look beneath the usual images of warplanes taking off and landing, and asks, what really happens when we drop bombs on countries we don't like?


Treatment


KABOOM is a documentary about the 100-year history of bombing.

KABOOM will be filmed in many of the countries where bombing has taken place -- including England, Germany, France, Spain, China, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq and the United States. It will combine the voices of historians, soldiers, commanders and civilians around the world.

Our wars start with bombs -- and we assume they will quickly end with bombs -- and yet we leave the subject of bombing itself unexamined. But the history of bombing is the history of modern war itself, linking the trenches of World War I to the IEDs of the Iraqi insurgency. Once touted as a "humane" way of shortening war and saving lives, it has done the opposite -- from World War II to the present day, wars are longer, more intractable and, critically, more destructive to civilians than ever before, thanks in large part to the bomber.

Today's remote warfare has produced remote images. In most documentaries, as in our news coverage, we see the planes take off, we see the bombs drop, and we see the fluffy little poofs they make on the ground. It's methodical and clean, but it's only a fraction of the story.

KABOOM will emphasize the human experience. We will ask air crews how the war experience felt to them; ground troops about how they experienced bombing; commanders how they made their decisions; historians how bombing changed the nature of warfare; and civilians from Guernica to Ground Zero how the bombing of their communities changed their lives.

We started this project with the question: What are the real effects of bombing, close-up? But our research has led us to a different question: Does bombing even work?

Many military scholars now believe that bombing doesn't win today's wars -- it may even lose them. In Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and now Iraq, a major power, armed with overwhelming technological superiority, has been ground to a brutal stalemate by a low-tech but clever enemy. Each of those countries' names has come to stand for frustration and failure.

Why does this happen? . . . And after it happens, why does it keep happening?

KABOOM is neither a pro-war nor an anti-war documentary. It is a film that seeks to deepen our understanding of war, and our responsibility as citizens of a warmaking country, through the prism of one little-discussed issue: the nature of bombing. It asks what we've been doing right and what we've been doing wrong when we wage war. It is a film that will transform hearts and minds.


Technical details


KABOOM is being privately financed. Production should be finished in mid-2007 and post-production should be finished in late 2007.

The film will be shot on high-definition video using the brand-new Panasonic AG-HVX200 camera.


Filmmakers


The makers of KABOOM include:

Joshua Tanzer, producer. Joshua is a journalist in New York who has worked for the New York Post, as well as newspapers in Oregon and New Jersey and BusinessWeek.com.

Nick Higgins, director of photography. Nick became a documentary and feature cinematographer after a career selling aircraft engines around the world. Most recently, he has worked on Robert Greenwald's "Iraq for Sale."

Philip Armand is the executive director of the New York Short-Short Film Festival, and an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes the documentary "The Art of Ambivalence" and the radio documentary series "Listen for Freedom."