"Kabul Transit" with Dr. David Edwards 

IICAS is pleased to announce a Middle East Studies lunch seminar with Dr. David Edwards and Gregory Whitmore, co-directors of Kabul Transit.  The seminar will be held from 12:00 - 2:00 PM in SSB 108 on Thursday, June 8, 2006 and the film will be screened during that time.  Space is limited and lunch will be provided so please RSVP to Melissa La Bouff at mlabouff@ucsd.edu by Sunday, June 4, 2006.  A brief synopsis and short biographies of the co-directors are included below. 

Kabul Transit is a sensual meditation on the meaning of security in a city pummeled by decades of war. An earnest Canadian peacekeeper reflects on the daunting task of rebuilding a country in the absence of a clear sense of direction. Female university students provide a sardonic perspective on Western efforts to save Afghanistan from Afghans.  A salesman tries to sell multi-million dollar fire equipment to a government that cannot afford uniforms for its policemen.  At the same time, kite runners, amulet makers and herbal doctors transmit an unlikely sense of hope and humor, insisting that though buildings, roads and bodies have been broken by war, the spirit of Kabul survives.

Kabul Transit is an official selection of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (2006) and the LA Film Festival (2006).

David Edwards is co-director and producer of Kabul Transit. He is the Carl W. Vogt Professor of Anthropology at Williams College and author of Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier and Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, both published by the University of California Press.