Bards of old told the stories of war, of the heroics, of loss, of the lessons to remember for the generations to come. Today our “bards” are our soldiers; they are the keepers of wisdom for our culture today and to bring forward for future generations. It is from this point of departure that Bards of War begins.

The film is now in post production. Though I have some amazing people volunteering time supporting this project, it still remains an effort that rests on me to complete. I say this only to put things in context; things never go as quickly as I would like. They are, however, moving ahead towards a finished product that I feel will provide an experience that will be intense, memorable and real. As the film’s byline states, “There is nothing in the field manual about the human spirit.” And it is the human spirt of these men that has endured to bring that story into our lives.

There have been many questions about the content of the film, about release dates, purchase availability, and more. As with all productions, many things are still evolving. There will definitely be a mix of Canadian and American footage. The film is not scheduled for film festivals; I see these having little value for an end purpose of making the film available. Digital download will likely be the first means of purchase. DVD will follow. Theater showings are not a focus, but will be arranged as opportunity arises. The bottom line is that this film is going to be made available to the widest number of people possible, through means that make it easy to acquire, and to support a viewing experience that can be shared and personal at the same time. Bards of War is not a film I am making to be watched once and forget about. It is instead a story of personal narratives and shared experience that I hope people will return to over time.

In the coming weeks we will be updating our website. Look for a trailer and more content. We will announce all of this here on FB and Twitter. My hope is to have the film available by November. To that end, we will be making a push on a crowd source funding site such as Kickstarter or others, to allow us to fund a professional level of post-production finishing that this story deserves. Updates on this will follow. Once the film goes on sale, we will be portioning a percentage of each sale to Soldiers Angels Charity, to support causes for our soldiers and vets. It’s a small way for all of us working on Bards of War to say “thanks” and acknowledge that the war doesn’t simply end once you come home.

This journey has been long. I am confident it will be well rewarded in the end. Thank you again for your support. The story will be with all of us soon…

Regards,
Scott Kesterson

Where are you at this time?

Right now, I’m in Portland, Oregon in my office, at my small desk with two Mac laptop computers and a 30″ Apple editing monitor working on the movie.

Where did the name “Bards of War” come from?

Another word for Bard is “storyteller”.  In the days of ancient history when most people were not literate, it was the Bard who told the stories and preserved the histories.  Today’s soldiers are Bards in a modern sense in that they are our modern day storytellers who keep the histories alive.  It seemed to make sense to call the movie “Bards of War”.  It’s a movie about soldiers telling their stories from a very personal point of view – their own.

Can you tell us where you are in production right now?

At the moment, all of the combat zone footage is shot and cataloged plus four of the eight interviews have been completed.  We will be shooting the last of the interviews in late June.  Right now, I am working on the part of the movie about the events in Zabul.  Some pretty powerful material.

Will we get to see any trailers or samples of the footage?

Yes!  With over 180 hours of footage, there’s a lot of stuff to wade through in the editing process.  Things are coming together and we will be posting clips to the website soon.

180 hours is a lot of footage!  Will there be clips you post that are interesting but don’t quite fit into the movie?

There are a lot of interesting scenes in the library of footage that don’t fit into the movie.  You can be assured that some of that material will make it to the website.

There are other “war” movies that have been released this year.  What makes “Bards of War” different from the others?

(laughs)  For starters, Bards of War is not a Hollywood production.  There are no actors, there’s no formal ‘script’ in the traditional sense; nothing is staged.  The people in this movie are real.  They are real soldiers, real locals – nobody told them what to say or do.  Second, the entire movie was shot on small, handheld HD camcorders.  It’s completely unreal to think of packing a big 35mm film camera into a firefight and think you will get any usable footage.  Third, Hollywood productions tend to be too clean and too sterile.  That’s to be expected – it makes it a lot easier to tell the story. With the expense and liability that comes with actors, crew and locations a director has to be careful to control everything.  For me, in Afghanistan, I was the director and the crew.  What came out of that is a very dirty, gritty and chaotic ride through the war in Afghanistan.  The footage truly captures just how crazy things can get.

So, would it be fair to call this movie a Documentary because of all the realism?

No.  I wouldn’t  call Bards of War a Documentary.  While there is absolutely no fiction anywhere in this movie, there are places where the exact sequence of events have been changed  to make the story more compelling.  There are very specific rules and constraints that one must follow to use the word “Documentary”.  Coming from a photo-journalist background, I had originally thought of making Bards of War a documentary.  As the story came together and I talked it through with my team and we agred that imposing the constraints of documentary film would not help us tell this story properly.  If you had to put Bards of War in a category, I think the term “Independent Film” would be best.

When is the release date?

The schedule is for October of 2012.

Afghanistan has been called many things, from “ancient civilization” to “the grave yard of empires.” It is all of those and so much more. A place where time seems to take on a different form, where the laws of physics seem to have their own rules, and where the endless process of humanity and survival seem to be elevated to a level of time-honored tradition. At the center remains a singular question… what is the narrative of a people and culture deeply removed from the verisimilitude of what might otherwise be told as a story of mythology and lore.

At the core of all of Afghanistan is its people. Tribal by root and steeped with traditions long lost or forgotten in the modern world, there remains a common thread of valuing the bond that is made with the spoken word. What you promise you must deliver.

We are now close to eleven years into a war. I think it is fair to say that collectively as a society we are tired, even exhausted, from it all. The memories of the origins of this fight have been lost to the more immediate concerns of job, house, family, loss, want and concerns for an uncertain future. When you overlay the complexities of a foreign people, an antediluvian culture and religion, and the compounding frustrations of trying to protect our interests while elevating a foreign people’s existence, Afghanistan is that point of mental overload where we throw up our hands in despair and ask ourselves why we even bothered. Was it worth it? Was it worth the blood we shed, the emotional wounds or the financial cost? Should we have just leveled the place with a nuke and called it a day? Perhaps.

Like so many things with war, clarity is left for historians and time. Afghanistan knows that all too well. It has lived through countless empires mostly unchanged. As we interact with its people we see ourselves as we were over a thousand years ago. For most that provides a point of introspection as well as a question of how or why a people would choose to remain in a world the West has long since left in the review mirror of progress. That reality is rooted in its religion, void of reformation and steeped in the mystic power of a god and pages of text that most have not and cannot read.

There is always some piece of romanticism that surfaces, asking the questions about a simpler life and connections to the land… that reflection of ourselves, the challenges of modernity and our twenty-first century pace of life; it is a voice of genetic memory more than reality. Few would ever seek to live in dirt huts alongside with the goat, or cow or chickens that will eventually be part of a future meal. Or to live with fears of roaming bands of thugs that use a holly book as a cover for murdering your fellow tribal members that choose to deviate from the norm of repression of ideas and thought. Romanticism in Afghanistan is for the decadent and foolish of heart.

Afghanistan is a place of endless cycles of endless cycles. Change is slow, and too often based on looking back before moving forward. Accountability is about looking up to god and praying for the strength to get through the day. A land with hidden codes of conduct that take lifetimes to learn and lifetimes to forgive if violated. To seek an understanding of Afghanistan is a study in chaos and Zen awakening wrapped into a Sushi roll and served served on rice. It is a search into the extremes of our own art and convention where realities are blended with our own spaces of instability and insanity. Unless we are to accept the role of a “god” and provide as one would, Afghanistan will not change. Ironically, that is what we were in the beginning: the great power that delivered a people from oppression with offerings of hope and change. What we didn’t realize is that we had were expected to pay the bill for the dinner at the end of the evening.

Returning to the movie “Brazil,” a fictitious television interview offers a dark piece of wisdom:
“How do you account for the fact that the bombing campaign has been going on for thirteen years.”
“Beginngers luck.”

An Army sergeant and father of three from Rhode Island who gave his life to save an Afghan child from being run over by a 16-ton armored fighting vehicle is being flown back to the U.S. and will be buried Monday.
Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, died in Afghanistan last week after he dashed into the path of an armored fighting vehicle to scoop up the little girl, who had darted back into the roadway to pick up shell casings, according to the Army. Weichel, a Rhode Island National Guardsman, was riding in the convoy in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan when he jumped out to save the girl, who was unhurt.

Read more: www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/29/army-sergeant-who-gave-life-to-save-afghani-child-being-flown-home-for-burial/#ixzz1qYhFu01G

May God Bless SGT Weichel in heaven and I hope there is a special place up there for him. I also hope his family is comforted by the honor and selfless service that SGT Weichel demonstrated.

However it is especially painful to lose “brothers in arms” like we have this last 7-10 days. Those who have been lost at the hands of our trusted “friends” and partners in Afghanistan. Each case is downright murder and is unforgivable and painful to deal with.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the friends, family members and comrades of those US servicemembers killed at the hands of our Afghan partners who we are there to train, mentor and empower.

May we one day meet them on Fiddler’s Green

Latta was the crew commander of a group of six Canadians who happened by chance to be at NATO headquarters when the insurgents launched an audacious surprise attack on the alliance’s heavily fortified main compound and the U.S. Embassy from a partially built 14-floor office tower. Eleven Afghan civilians including children, and five policemen died during what became a 20-hour firefight.

Until Postmedia News asked about it, there had been no public acknowledgment of Canada’s part in the ferocious battle, which garnered global attention at the time. The counter-attack eventually involved Afghan attack helicopters and ended after a ground assault by Afghan forces.

Canada’s current training mission has been much less dangerous than the combat mission in Kandahar which ended last summer. However, Master Cpl. Byron Greff of Lacombe, Alta., died late last October when the armoured bus he was in was hit by a suicide bomber driving a vehicle. A member of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, he was the 158th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

There is been very limited proof of the Canadian’s service but thanks to stories like this and to film-makers like Scott Kesterson, who has won an Emmy of this footage of the Canadian Army in combat, the world can start to hear the stories coming from Afghanistan about the great things that the Canadian Army has done in the War on Terror.

On the morning of the big firefight in Kabul, Chief Warrant Officer Gord Cavanagh had gone to the headquarters with Latta and others to pick up maps. Cavanagh, a Patricia like Latta, described a sometimes chaotic scene in which 17 rocket-propelled grenades fired by the Taliban fell within 50 metres of the Canadian position.

“It started with two large explosions so we secured our vehicles, kitted up and advised the Canadian command post of the situation,” said the 47-year-old regimental sergeant major, who had been involved in more than 400 ‘TICS’ (troops in contact) while serving previously in Kandahar. “We then heard three or four more explosions and saw an American soldier firing from a Hesco (sand and metal defence barrier) so we moved to provide suppressing fire when we saw fire from the building, which was about 400 metres away.

“They engaged us and there was some back and forth for three or four hours. There were long lulls after that, but it lasted all night in the rain, so we stayed in position and held the line, getting re-supplied with ammo from other Canadians. There ended up being about 27 of us where we were, Canadians, Americans, French and some Special Forces.”

Do yourself a favor and check out the whole story at www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Canadian+soldier+praised+bravery+during+Taliban+attack/6177855/story.html

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

FROM BAD TO ABYSMAL

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

Read the entire entry from LTC Daniel Davis at armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

Check it out at ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/19/of_alexander_gods_and_bathrooms_why_the_afghans_can_t_get_their_shit_together