Kori Cioca shares her shocking story in THE INVISIBLE WAR
THE INVISIBLE WAR (Kirby Dick, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, June 18, 8:45; Wednesday, June 20, 6:30
Series runs through June 28
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
invisiblewarmovie.com
Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is one of the bravest, most explosive investigative documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) busts open the military’s dirty little secret, revealing that episodes of horrific sexual abuse such as the Tailhook scandal are not an aberration but a prime example of a rape epidemic that seems to an accepted part of military culture. Dick speaks with many women and one man who share their incredible stories, describing in often graphic detail the sexual abuse they suffered, then faced further abuse when they reported what had happened. Their superiors, some of whom were the rapists themselves, either looked the other way, laughed off their allegations as no big deal, or threatened the victims’ careers. Dick includes remarkable Defense Department statistics — the government admits that approximately one out of every five female soldiers suffers sexual abuse and that there were nineteen thousand violent sex crimes in 2010 alone — even as such military officials as Dr. Kaye Whitley, Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, and Brigadier General Mary Kay Hertog make absurd claims that they are satisfied with the way they are handling the alarming trend. The central figure in the film is Kori Cioca, a former member of the Coast Guard whose face was broken when she was raped by a superior and now keeps getting denied necessary medical services from the VA. Such courageous women as USAF Airman 1st Class Jessica Hinves, former Marine Officer Ariana Klay, USN veteran Trina McDonald, USMC Lieutenant Elle Helmer, USN Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, and even Special Agent Myla Haider of the Army Criminal Investigation Command also open up about the physical and psychological damage the abuse has left on their lives and careers.
Lieutenant Elle Helmer visits the Vietnam War Memorial in shattering documentary
Inspired by Helen Benedict’s 2007 Salon.com article “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” Dick and producer Amy Ziering (The Memory Thief) have presented a searing indictment of an endemic military culture that has to come to an end, and fast. The Invisible War is screening June 18 and 20 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, both of which will be followed by a Q&A with Dick and Ziering, winners of the festival’s Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking. They will be joined on June 20 by Ariana Klay and her husband, Ben, along with moderator Meghan Rhoad. The festival runs through June 28 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, highlighting seventeen works divided into five categories: “Health, Development, and the Environment,” “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) and Migrants’ Rights,” “Personal Testimony and Witnessing,” “Reporting in Crises,” and “Women’s Rights,” with this year’s focus on how one individual or a small group of individuals can help make a difference.