The New York Times reports: At midlife, in a soft job, and nagged by questions that no one was answering, Carol Dysinger boarded a plane from New York to Dubai and then caught a connecting flight into Kabul. It was May 2005. She was a film professor at New York University and wanted to know about Afghanistan.
The answers, and new questions, emerge in her documentary, “Camp Victory, Afghanistan,” which she made over five years of listening, watching and asking. It is being shown at Lincoln Center on Sunday and Thursday as part of the Humans Rights Watch Film Festival.
“I was really raised to think that if something needs to be done, and you can do it, it’s your job,” Ms. Dysinger, 54, said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m single, with no children; I’m a tenured professor with an arts institution — if I don’t do it, who will?’ ”
The patience of Ms. Dysinger — she went to Afghanistan five times, slept on cots, couches and shipping containers — meant that life in her story was defined not by spurts of high-decibel drama, but in the reality of long-term muddling. The film crackles with the emotional energy and intelligence of its subjects, primarily an Afghan general who had been at war for more than half his life and a colonel from the New Jersey National Guard who was serving as an adviser to the Afghan National Army.
The OPC is co-sponsoring screenings of “Camp Victory” this month during the Human Rights Watch Film Festial. One screening left on Thursday, June 17 at 4 p.m.
The OPC is also co-sponsoring three screenings of the documentary “Restrepo.” Learn more about these movies and how to purchase tickets >>