GRANTHAM, Pa. (Sept. 4, 2007) — Messiah College will host a showing of the Oscar-nominated film “Iraq in Fragments” on Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. in Parmer Cinema, located in Boyer Hall academic building on the college’s Grantham campus. The film, hailed as a poetic and poignant documentary of a war-torn country, offers audiences a three-part look at events in Iraq from the perspective of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Its stunning cinematography and masterful composition garnered it Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Editing awards in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival documentary competition, as well as its Academy Award nomination for the Best Documentary Feature in 2007.  The film is free and open to the public.

“Iraq in Fragments” is showing in connection with the photography exhibit, “Unembedded: Four Photojournalists on the War in Iraq,” on display in Messiah College’s Aughinbaugh Art Gallery in the Climenhaga Fine Arts Center on the college’s Grantham campus from Sept. 14–Oct. 21. Internationally renowned photographers Kael Alford, Thorne Anderso, Rita Leistner and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad detail, through their work, aspects of the war in Iraq often underrepresented in mainstream media. The exhibit is free and open to the public and may be viewed during regular gallery hours: Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Fridays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

About “Iraq in Fragments”

“[The film] gives background to larger trends in Iraqi society,” American director James Longley explains. And it does so through three separate, unscripted stories: a young, fatherless Sunni boy apprenticed to a harsh Baghdad garage owner; the rallies for regional elections of Sadr followers in two Shiite cities; and a Kurdish family of farmers eager to welcome the U.S. presence, which brings them freedoms they had previously been denied. These stories together form a powerful insider’s view of the ethnic and religious tensions that exist in present-day Iraq, bearing witness to the more than two years of filming that Longley spent in Iraq in order to create the aura of realism that his film evokes.

About Messiah College

Messiah College, a private Christian college of the liberal and applied arts and sciences, enrolls more than 2,800 undergraduate students in 60 majors. Established in 1909, the primary campus is located in Grantham, Pa., near the state capital of Harrisburg. A satellite campus affiliated with Temple University is located in Philadelphia.