Kabul Transit
credits:
Directors: David Edwards, Maliha Zulfacar, Gregory WhitmoreProducers: David Edwards, Maliha Zulfacar, Gregory Whitmore
USA 2006 | 84 mins | DigiBeta | English, Duri, Pashto, Russian, French w/E.S.
IN PERSON (at select screenings): David Edwards
KABUL TRANSIT presents a look at a city steeped in infamy. To some, Kabul was a cosmopolitan and progressive city; to others, it represented everything they did not have and could not imagine possible. Today, it is a city emerging from two decades of war, filled with a generation that has seen nothing but destruction.
Rather than taking a sensationalist outsider’s perspective, this masterful documentary by first-time filmmakers David Edwards, Dr. Maliha Zulfacar, and Gregory Whitmore offers panoramic views of the city, as if filmed by an everyman on the streets of Kabul. The camera is in a constant state of quiet motion, swooping past money exchangers, government officials, U.N. Peace Keepers, and kite runners. There are no inserted queries on terrorism, diatribes about the burqa, or elongated shots of starving children within such organic motion; rather, the seemingly invisible filmmakers allow the residents, landscape and traditions of Kabul to illustrate the current state of the city and its people. Throughout the film, the camera serves less as a microscope and more as an eye, mimicking the sight of anyone and everyone on the streets of this legendary capitol city.
For the Los Angeles Film Festival, KABUL TRANSIT is “an engrossing, wry and ultimately haunting vision of war-torn Kabul and its diverse residents.” As Film Society of Lincoln Center wrote, the film is “a mosaic of images and experiences that convey the sorrow, black humor, irony, and surprising hope that can exist in the most untenable of situations.”
—Ali Latifi
