Athens, Ga. – James Longley, director of the acclaimed film Iraq in Fragments, will discuss his work and the film on Thursday, April 19 at the University of Georgia.
Longley will lecture in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Drewry Room at 12:30 p.m. Iraq in Fragments will be shown at Cine’ Theater in downtown Athens (corner of Hancock and Hull streets), from April 12-19, at 5 p.m., 7:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Interested individuals are encouraged to see the film before attending the lecture.
In 2002, Longley traveled to Iraq to begin pre-production work on his second documentary feature, Iraq in Fragments, which was completed in Jan. 2006 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded prizes for Best Documentary Directing, Best Documentary Editing and Best Documentary Cinematography-the first time in Sundance history a documentary has received three jury awards.
Iraq in Fragments went on to win the Nestor Almendros Award at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, the Nesnadny + Schwartz Documentary Film Competition at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI International Critics Award at Thessaloniki and the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
Longley was born in Oregon in 1972. He studied film and Russian at the University of Rochester and Wesleyan University in the United States and the All-Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. His student documentary, Portrait of Boy with Dog, about a boy in a Moscow orphanage, was awarded the Student Academy Award in 1994 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
After working as a film projectionist in Washington, an English teacher in Siberia, a newspaper copy editor in Moscow, and a web designer in New York City, Longley traveled to Palestine in 2001 to make his first feature documentary, Gaza Strip. The film, which takes an intimate look at the lives and views of ordinary Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza, screened to critical acclaim in film festivals and U.S. theaters. Longley’s short film, Sari’s Mother, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival.
For more information on Iraq in Fragments, please visit www.iraqinfragments.com.
Established in 1915, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication offers seven undergraduate majors including advertising, broadcast news, magazines, newspapers, public relations, publication management and telecommunication arts. The college offers two graduate degrees, and is home to the Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism and the Peabody Awards, internationally recognized as one of the most prestigious prizes for excellence in electronic media. For more information, visit www.grady.uga.edu.
