‘Invisible War’ documentary details sexual violence in military
February 6, 2014
“The Invisible War,” an Academy Award-nominated documentary bringing attention to sexual violence in the military, will be shown in the GUC Performance Center Feb. 6.
The event is free and will be presented by the Leading Edge Institute, the George Lindsey Film Festival, the Women’s Center and the Infinity Project.
UNA students Elizabeth Kee and Brooke Hanvey are the UNA representatives for the Leading Edge Institute, Kee said.
“Leading Edge Institute is an institute for college women,” Kee said. “It’s women in the state of Alabama who are strong prominent women and want to stay in Alabama and help Alabama become a better state.”
As part of this program, Kee and Hanvey were supposed to come up with a project, Kee said.
“We decided to create a film series which we are entitling ‘Citing Cinema,’” she said. “It is going to show annually, and it will show a film that addresses some topic that we think needs to be addressed.”
The sponsors for Leading Edge Institute, Lynne Rieff, professor of history and political science and Emily Kelley, coordinator for women’s studies, saw the film and suggested the idea to Hanvey and Kee for the project, Hanvey said.
“We were pretty excited about it, so we watched it (and) saw that sexual assault in the military is actually an epidemic,” Hanvey said. “We decided that it was important that we get the word out about it.”
The film is entitled “The Invisible War” because sexual violence in the military is kept hidden, Kelley said.
“It is squelched,” Kelley said. “It’s kept below the surface. That’s one of the things that comes out very much in the film, that very often the person to whom these people have to report their rapes are sometimes their rapists or are very good friends with their rapists”
Before the screening, there will be a 20-minute lecture by Terri Nelson, who is an expert in the field, Kelley said.
“She will do a pre-show talk and then there will be the screening, which takes about an hour, and then there will be a post-screening panel discussion,” she said.
Terri Nelson and Cynthia Burkhead, assistant professor of English, will both be on the panel, Kelley said.
The Women’s Center tried to get someone from Redstone Arsenal to be on the panel,
however, this request was denied, Kelley said.
“We were told that all the branches of the armed services have been issued a hands-off order when it comes to the film,” she said. “They told us they cannot send us anybody. They have been told to leave it alone.”
Olivia Brady, president of the Infinity Project, believes sexual assault is an important issue everyone should be aware of and that rape is never the victim’s fault, she said.
“The Infinity Project is basically an organization that is starting on campus with the hopes of moving outward into the community,” Brady said. “Our goal is to change social attitude and opinion toward sexual violence, especially the victims of sexual violence, because right now there is a lot of victim-blaming. Rape is something that is up to us to eliminate, not the victims to avoid.”
Brady also believes that everyone should see this film, she said.
“These women, and even these men, are giving their lives up to protect us and yet they’re going and being abused and sexually assaulted,” she said. “It makes them not want to do what they were so excited to do in the first place and that was to protect our country.”
Audience members should be aware this is a disturbing film with somewhat graphic descriptions of rape, Kelley said.