Wearing Orange at the Oscars

Wearing Orange at the Oscars

 Alex Gibney, Director of Taxi to the Dark Side, said, when receiving his award:

“Wow. Thank you very much, Academy. Here’s to all doc filmmakers. And,
truth is, I think my dear wife Anne was kind of hoping I’d make a
romantic comedy, but honestly, after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib,
extraordinary rendition that simply wasn’t possible. This is dedicated
to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi
driver,
and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this
film because of his fury about
what was being done to the rule of
law.
Let’s hope we can turn this
country around, move away from
the dark side and back to the
light.
Thank you very much.”

 Taxi to the Dark Side won Best Documentary.  Showing on screens nationwide now.

 [pictured: Directors Alex Gibney and Eva Orner] 

Paul Haggis, who won as Oscar in 2006 for Crash, wore an orange ribbon, and explained why:

“The orange ribbons were worn in protest against state sanctioned
torture. I wish we had been wearing them to make a statement about
torture in Tibet or Burma or in Chinese labor camps.  But the ribbons
are the color of the jumpsuits at Guantanamo Bay, and at our secret
detention camps, where prisoners are kept indefinitely, in violation of
our constitution, and tortured. This is something that our government
has  long condemned as the heinous behavior of dictators, but something
that unbelievably we now condone. .  Every American of any political
party should be loudly condemning this grossly un-American activity,
but is barely even mentioned anymore.  The orange wrist bands some of
us wore said simply “Torture + Silence = Complicity”.  I received mine
from The World Can’t Wait campaign.”

More on Orange at the Oscars

Link to WCW-Store ribbons

The Styling of Activism: Ribbons, Rubber Bracelets Must Match the Dress

Did you notice the orange ribbon pinned to Julie Christie’s dress and
Paul Haggis’s lapel at the Oscars? It was a lovely little accessory to
show their support for the closing of the Guantánamo Bay prison because
of the U.S. government’s controversial interrogation tactics there. The
orange represents the jumpsuits worn by the prisoners and is also the
color of a rubber bracelet worn by Haggis that reads
“torture+silence=complicity” included in the Oscar swag bag.
Organizations like the ACLU, which sponsors the Close Guantanamo
campaign, ask stars to don these stamps of activism well in advance so
that they have enough time to consult with their stylists.