Taxi to the Dark Side

From the director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney's TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush Administration. By probing the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. This disturbing and often brutal film is the most incisive examination to date of the Bush Administration's willingness, in its prosecution of the "war on terror," to undermine the essence of the rule of law. The film asks and answers a key question: what happens when a few men expand the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded.

Incorporating rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and interviews with former government officials such as John Yoo, Alberto Mora and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, interrogators, prison guards, New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall (who wrote the first stories about the homicides in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan) and the families of tortured prisoners, the film dissects the progression of the Administration's policy on torture from the secret role of key administration figures, such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others to the soldiers in the field.

A Reel Progress Screening
December 11, 2007 7:00pm – 9:30pm

The Landmark
10850 West Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Doors open at 6:30 pm. The screening will start at 7:00 pm sharp.

SPACE IS EXTREMELY LIMITED.
RSVP Required. RSVP's are for single tickets only. First come, first served.
Please let us know in advance if you have accessibility-related needs so that we can be sure to accommodate you.
THERE IS COMPLIMENTARY PARKING AT THE LANDMARK.

Please join us for a provocative panel discussion and Q&A session immediately following the film.

Featured Panelists:
Alex Gibney, Write/Director/Producer, TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief, Truthdig

Moderated by:
Anna Soellner, Vice President for Communications and Deputy Director, California Office, Center for American Progress

Alex Gibney, president of Jigsaw Productions, was the writer, director, producer and narrator of Taxi to the Dark Side,which made its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won for Best Documentary. Gibney received his first Academy Award nomination for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which he wrote, produced and directed. He is currently in post-production for another documentary feature, Gonzo: the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and just recently finished writing and producing The Human Behavior Experiments for the Sundance Channel as well as recently signed with CBS-Paramount Television to co-write and direct a TV series on white-collar crime. Gibney served as Executive Producer on Charles Ferguson's documentary No End In Sight, a documentary about the occupation in Iraq, which received a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. His producing credits include, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, a film about the jazz legend's collaboration with musical talents such as Santana, Sting and John Mayer, Lightning in a Bottle a film directed by Antoine Fuqua and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, which premiered in 2004 at the Berlin Film Festival and was released by Sony Pictures Classics, and consulting producer on Who Killed the Electric Car. Gibney also served as executive producer on Love Comes Lately, a feature film directed by Jan Schutte, as well as many other projects.

Biographies:
Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Defense Information. Prior to joining the Center, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From July 1998 to October 2002, he was Council Vice President, Director of Studies, and holder of the Maurice Greenberg Chair. Prior to joining the Council, Mr. Korb served as Director of the Center for Public Policy Education and Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and Vice President of Corporate Operations at the Raytheon Company. Dr. Korb served as Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics) from 1981 through 1985. In that position, he administered about 70 percent of the Defense budget. For his service in that position, he was awarded the Department of Defense's medal for Distinguished Public Service. Mr. Korb served on active duty for four years as Naval Flight Officer, and retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of Captain.

Robert Scheer is the Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig. He has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He conducted the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter confessed to the lust in his heart and he went on to do many interviews for the Los Angeles Times with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and many other prominent political and cultural figures.

Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on diverse topics such as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993 he launched a nationally syndicated column based at the Los Angeles Times, where he was named a contributing editor. That column ran weekly for the next 12 years and is now based at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Scheer can be heard on the political radio program "Left, Right and Center" on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, Calif. He has written seven books, including Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power; With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals; with his son Christopher and Lakshmi Chaudhry, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq. Most recently, he wrote Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.

Scheer was raised in the Bronx, where he attended public schools and graduated from City College of New York. He studied as a Maxwell fellow at Syracuse University and was a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley, where he did graduate work in economics. Scheer is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow. He has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford.

Anna Soellner is Vice President for Communications and Deputy Director of the Center for American Progress's newly launched California office. Previously, she was the Director for Outreach and Special Events for CAP in Washington, D.C. Soellner also oversees the culture work of the Center, including the popular Reel Progress screening series, which explores the nexus between message films and the issues they cover. This program has established CAP as a leader in showcasing important feature and documentary film in Washington, D.C. and other major cities. Through this program Soellner and CAP have worked with the Sundance Film Institute, the American Film Institute, and a number of studios and independent filmmakers. She also served in the office of Martin Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, where she was a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar. In that capacity, Soellner served as foreign media liaison and assisted in developing party relations with foreign governments and NGOs to promote democracy and rule of law in Hong Kong. Previously, Soellner served in the Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Clinton administration, where she focused on banking, finance, and enforcement policy. She has also worked for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

For more on the Center's Reel Progress film series, please see: http://www.reelprogress.org