The Oath
To complement Forensic Architecture and Laura Poitras' exhibition presented at the Musée d'art contemporain (Contagion de la terreur), and the 14th Max and Iris Stern International Symposium (March 12 and 13), we are offering this program of films devoted to the documentary work of Laura Poitras, Oscar winner in 2015. Her intensely current cinema is particularly concerned with new contemporary methods of global surveillance.
Filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, The Oath tells the story of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Prison and the first man to face the controversial military commissions.
We enter the story in a taxicab in Yemen. Here we meet Abu Jandal, the film’s central protagonist, as he transports passengers through the chaotic streets of Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a. Salim Hamdan is the film’s “ghost” protagonist. His seven-year captivity at Guantanamo is narrated through his prison letters. Following the story of these two men, THE OATH takes the viewer on a journey that leads to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Guantanamo Bay Prison, FBI interrogations, and the U.S. Supreme Court. (Praxis Films)
Laura Poitras
After a childhood in Massachusetts and studying gourmet cuisine, Laura Poitras abandoned her first vocation to settle in California and enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she notably took classes with experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr. She then left for New York and began to make politically engaged documentaries. My Country, My Country, which deals with the American occupation in Iraq, earned her in 2006 to be placed on the watch list of the United States Department of Homeland Security. She also works as a freelance journalist and in 2012 created a press freedom foundation with journalist Glenn Greenwald. It was with the latter that she subsequently collected the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden on the global surveillance of the National Security Agency. Poitras draws from it his most famous film, Citizenfour, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2014.
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