The situation stands with the damage and destruction that ransacked the most famous library in Iraq during and after the war in March/April 2003.  Looters as well as arsonist set it ablaze and almost destroyed the National Library and Archives along with the Library of the Ministry.  The library was a remarkable building filled with numerous ottoman historical documents.  It was said to have had over twelve million documents.  The building housed handwritten documents and photographs of the 1980-88 Iran/Iraq war and had one of the largest array Arabic newspapers back from the 1900s.  Although it is said that many documents were lost there that many important historical documents were safely taken and store before and after the war.  Saad Iskander, a researcher within the restoration of the libraries, states, “sixty percent of the state records and documents were burned or damaged by water.  About twenty-five percent of the books that were lost were rare and the most valuable.”  There is research being done to see if there are remaining records and documents in Britain that might cross with the records lost in the fire of the libraries.  The National Library reopened at the end of June 2004.  The library is still under reconstruction by the looters/arsonists as well as redeveloping their suppressed culture led by their dictator.  Iskander also states there is a priority to remove the same books that they have twenty copies of written by Saddaam Hussein and narrow it down to one copy.  The Library has no money to buy books because they have used all their expenses to restore the historical building.  To preserve the books is difficult because there is a certain temperature and light needed to maintain the historical books still left.  Just recently air conditioning was put in the building, yet it is still hard for the library to keep the documents from decaying and parasites from destroying them.  There have been numerous non-profit groups that have begun to help restore the library.  The American Library Association has begun to work with members of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force to help assist to restore the National Library Archives.  The American Library Association received a twenty thousand dollar grant to provide children’s literature to the public libraries as well as the National Library.  The Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Harvard Universal Library System are working together to help modernize and find more librarians for the Iraq libraries including the National Library.  The National Endowment has awarded the group with one hundred thousand dollars for the two-year project.

                    Bibliography

“Iraq Manuscript Collections, Archives & Libraries                             

     Situation Report.” 8 June 2003.  

     http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/docs/nat.html

“ALA joins international library community in assisting     

Iraq National Library.” 23 April 2003. 

http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleasesbucket/pressreleases2003/alajoinsinternational.htm

“Recovering Looted and Lost Iraqi Treasures.”  15 September

2004.

            The film starts out in every clip with the emphasis on something such as the small boy.  The child is often seen in the center of the moving picture, which creates a proportion that balances the picture well.  There are several instances in the film of groups of people that create a movement with their dancing, which also creates unity.  The emphasis of color is used many times in the film either in the beginning where the color and lighting are really dark and it gradually gets brighter and more colorful or where a scene is completely black and white. There is an instance in a part of the film where atmospheric perspective is used when the boy is in the valley full of flowers.  There is usage of pattern throughout the film with the dancers and then also in a tunnel at the end of the movie, which also creates movement.  Implied line is also used within the dancers. Also with the dancers they were placed in the foreground, middle ground, and background also known as relative scale.  One manipulation used in the film is color, which helps you to lead what is going to happen next, such as the part with the small boy and the bright pink orchid. The orchid catches your attention in between all the dark around it that you know the orchid is going to play a defining role.  Another manipulation used to better understand is emphasis.  The film creates an emphasis on the main characters by starting out each clip with them directly in the center.  Another manipulation used is pattern and movement.  Often in each clip there was a pattern created by the movement of the characters.  The dancers were moving together at the same time with each other, which help to flow, and made your eyes follow them.

Linda Bernal

Art Appreciation

09/22/04

            The movie Ringu, directed by Hideo Nakata, takes off in a different direction than other horror movies. The characters speaking Japanese develop a sense of darkness. There are plenty of corpses, but they lack the blood and gore when death occurs.  In the movie every death shown displays a terror of expression and the corpses are always displayed upside down with their eyes open. The movie seems to lack a sense of balance and rhythm, yet is simple in form and displays its message across clear without visual effects to help it, as the American version has done.