Portrait of an Army Cemetery: An Interview With the Directors of HBO's "Section 60"

By Katie Halper, AlterNet. Posted October 15, 2008.

Most Americans have never heard of Section 60, let alone visited it. But thanks to filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matt O'Neill, you can now get a glimpse of the area in Arlington National Cemetery where the men and women who have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are buried. "Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery" is the third of a trilogy of collaborations between the filmmakers and HBO that captures the costs of the current wars. "Section 60," in fact, picks up where "Baghdad ER" left off. The tragic death from shrapnel wounds of 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Robert T. Mininger comes at the unforgettable end of "Baghdad ER." Their latest documentary opens with a mother visiting the grave of her son "Bobby." Unlike like the action-packed "Baghdad ER" or the stylized "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq," "Section 60" offers an almost unmediated view into the lives of the men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, who, week after week, day after day, find solace, community and a place to grieve and visit their lost loved ones in Section 60.

The Emmy-award winning directors are based in New York out of DCTV. They were recently in Washington, D.C., to attend a special TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) screening of their film at the Navy Memorial. I caught up with Alpert and O'Neill over the phone as they got ready for the screening and talked to me about why "Section 60" matters now, how making this film affected them in a way no other documentary has, and what it's like feeling "trapped in Section 60."

"Section 60" aired on HBO on Monday. For more information on when you can watch it, go here.

Katie Halper: Why should Americans care about Section 60 and your film?

Matt O'Neill: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the background noise in this presidential election. No one is paying attention right now in the mainstream media to the costs that the military and their families are paying day in and day out, whether it's the 5,000 lives lost or the hundreds of thousands who have spent years away from their friends and families. That's why we're proud to be working with HBO and Sheila Nevins to make this film. They've consistently brought attention to these issues when the rest of the media is ignoring them. And it's an important time right now in the context of the presidential elections. Americans need to be paying attention to the two wars that we're fighting overseas right now and the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are serving the county over there. No matter what you think politically, it's essential that when you walk into the voting booth on Nov. 4, you remember that the person you're voting for, whether it's a congressional or the presidential election, will be deciding whether or not to send men and women to fight wars. We want the film to be watched by tens of millions of people, because that's the type of attention we want to bring to Section 60. And we told the families, "Let us into your world because we want people to pay attention to it." We think Section 60 deserves it.

KH: Your war-related recent films were very different. "Baghdad ER" was more dynamic and action-packed. And "Alive Day Memories" was much more stylized. How did this compare to those two experiences?

MO: The reality in "Baghdad ER" is very different than the reality in "Section 60." In "Baghdad," we tried to show what it's like being in an emergency room in a war zone, with tons of action. It's terrifying … riveting, it reminds you of the costs of the war in a visceral way. "Section 60" had a totally different energy. We're trying to help the rest of the country enter the world that these families live in every day. The greatest praise that we received thus far was at a screening for a number of the families. Paula Zillinger is one of the mothers in this film; she's in the first real scene in the film, and she goes to visit her son's grave. Her son Bobby died in the end of "Baghdad ER." At the screening, she got up and faced the audience and said, "Welcome to our world." I hope it brings an audience into the reality that these families are living.

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Katie Halper is a co-founder of Laughing Liberally, one of the national directors of Living Liberally and artistic director and comedy curator at The Tank. Katie blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, Working Life, Culture Kitchen and the political comedy site 23/6. Katie is working on a documentary about Camp Kinderland, the "Summer Camp with a Conscience."

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