For those of you who like me are crying salty tears about missing what sounds like it was a stupendous conference at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island over the weekend, here are a couple of first-person reports from the same blogger about what the conference was like to attend. It really sounds fantastic. I still wish I'd been able to go. (Sigh.) (The conference was on first person narratives coming back from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, featuring many of the authors who wrote them, as well as interested others.)
First person report about the events of the first day; first person report about the events of the second day. (Referencing those blog posts here does not imply an endorsement of the rest of the blog's contents -- I'm particularly interested in, as I hope you would be, the impressions from going to that conference itself.)
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If you've never seen "The War Tapes," by Deborah Scranton, one of the featured speakers at the conference, now might be a good time to try to find it on DVD. Scranton is a filmmaker who put video cameras in the hands of various New Hampshire National Guard members, as the war in Iraq was beginning, and asked them to record what they saw, with the permission of their superiors. What came back was some interesting footage, which she put together into a documentary that covers how three "regular guys" go to Iraq and get changed by the experience. I saw the film at one of its first screenings on Cape Cod last year, met one of the featured participants, Sgt. Steve Pink, and really was impressed. Apparently Scranton was a live wire at the conference, and one of it's most interesting participants. (Here's a link to Scranton's blog, which includes a link to buying the DVD.) (The movie has since gone on to win a number of awards, including "Best Documentary," Tribeca Film Festival, and "Best International Documentary," BritDoc Festival.)
