hometown baghdad

By Cameron Reed

Wednesday April 18, 2007

Hometown Baghdad is a documentary web-series that follows the day-to-day lives of a few young Iraqi friends living in center of the world’s shit storm. It walks the line between Degrassi-like topics of sex and music to the everyday reality of having to talk your kid brother through seeing a man dying on the street with his brains exposed. How fluidly life seems to slip between these two worlds for the subjects is the most difficult thing to grasp. At times it feels like an after-school special, like when the subjects respond nervously to the camera about having ‘premarital sex.’ But as soon as the conversation becomes a little too normal, the sound of a swooping helicopter overhead snaps you back to realising that they are in fucking warzone. The subject responds with stoic humour, almost nonchalantly, “American Choppers, make such a noise.”