LOS ANGELES: When the United States went to war against Iraq, Jehane Noujaim went out to make a documentary about something many Americans regarded as no less a public enemy - Al Jazeera television.
With US patriotism at fever pitch and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld branding the Arabic network "Osama Bin Laden's mouthpiece", Noujaim never expected her documentary film "Control Room" to get a US theatrical release.
"I thought, oh my goodness, nobody's going to see this film. Maybe they'll show it in Canada," Noujaim, an Egyptian-American, said on the eve of its US release in New York last week. The film opens in Los Angeles next month and then nationally.
There are plenty of surprises in "Control Room", Noujaim's fly-on-the wall portrait of how Jazeera covered the Iraq war for its estimated 40 million Arabic-speaking viewers.
First and foremost, at least for Americans, are the graphic images of dead and maimed Iraqi civilians - the "collateral damage" of the US-led bombing campaign - that Jazeera beamed around the world but which were rarely seen in US homes.
Qatar-based Jazeera, aiming to be the voice of a free Arab world in a largely authoritarian region, is vilified as much in some Arab countries as it is in the United States.
And despite the angry rhetoric coming from Washington, one Jazeera journalist said his crew were recently treated "like kings" by US officials on the grouround in Iraq.
Noujaim, 30, is a US citizen who was born in Washington D.C. but raised in Cairo and Kuwait. She graduated from Harvard University, worked for MTV's documentary division and has made several previous documentaries including "Startup.com".
She knew little about journalism before embarking on "Control Room" but a lot about the controversy that has surrounded Jazeera since it started broadcasting from Qatar in 1996.
"In the United States, there was so much criticism of Jazeera, and in the Arab world they were criticized because they had raised so many stories about corruption in various (Arab) governments and they had been kicked out of so many places," Noujaim said.
"I knew Jazeera was very popular, playing in coffee shops all over Cairo, getting people to talk about issues that had never been spoken about before - the role of religion, the veil, women's role in society - which were previously taboo.
"I was curious to see the people at Jazeera who were taking basically hell from the entire world," she said. "Control Room" was filmed both at Jazeera's Qatar headquarters and at the nearby US Central Command from the eve of the war until President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003, declaration that major combat was over.
It shows Jazeera journalists - men and women from various countries, some in Western jeans and shirts, others in traditional Arabic headdress and robes - wrestling with deadlines, satellite uplinks, journalistic integrity and their personal beliefs in much the same way as any other news organization.
"After seeing the film, (I hope) Americans realize that Jazeera is not what some say about it, but that it is really a professional channel trying to do a job that is very difficult in that part of the world," said Jazeera producer Samir Khader, a former Jordanian TV journalist who features in the film.
Khader said Jazeera's mission is to become "the voice of the free Arab world with a Western mentality, trying to educate the Arab population on something called free speech, freedom, democracy and accountability".
Khader has seen significant differences between the abuse directed at Jazeera from Washington and the treatment of its journalists now working in Iraq.
"Control Room" was picked up for US distribution after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is being released in cinemas as US perceptions of the war are shifting in the light of daily insurgent attacks on US troops and the outcry over Iraqi prisoner abuse. -Reuters
