Alex Gibney won the Oscar for best feature documentary last weekend for his harrowing, essential film Taxi to the Dark Side. He tells Democracy Now! what the win means to him.

PS - From the March 1 Toronto Star:

Gibney answers questions at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, following a screening at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 3, at Jackman Hall (Art Gallery of Ontario). The festival ends Wednesday. More details at humanrightsfilmfestival.ca and 416-968-3456. The film then goes on an extended run at the Carlton starting Friday, March 7.

Here's my Feb. 22 post on the film.

From a Feb. 26 interview on Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: So what does this mean for you, Alex Gibney? What does it mean when a documentary wins an Oscar in terms of how it will be seen by the rest of the country—well, and the world?

ALEX GIBNEY: Well, I think in the short term it means that more people are going to pay attention to the film, which is good, is really good, because this is a very tough subject, but I think that everybody I know who’s gone to see the film really appreciated, really understood how it told in human terms something about a very dark chapter in our history. So I think that the Oscar kind of gives it a good housekeeping seal of approval, if you want, lets everybody know it’s a good film, they should go and see it. And, you know, I’m told that Think Film is going to try to put it into some more theaters, and then HBO is going to see it in the fall. So it’s going to bring a lot of attention to this issue, as well.

Now, I’m also told that the film is being screened rather widely in Washington, D.C., particularly as Bush gets ready to veto a new bill that is trying to prevent any further enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA, particularly waterboarding. So that’s a bill that has been passed by both houses of Congress, and I believe Bush is threatening to veto it this week.

AMY GOODMAN: Yours was one of the few political comments the entire evening, your acceptance speech. Can you talk about your message?

ALEX GIBNEY: Well, I mean, the message was the—in a way, it was a personal message, because it talked about both the victim in this case, Dilawar, who had been tortured to death, but also my father, who played such a strong role in encouraging me to push forward with this film. And he was a Navy interrogator, and he believed in the fundamental rule of law and that he was upholding a certain value, certain military values that honored the rule of law and that those had been transgressed. And I’ve talked to a lot of other military who feel exactly the same way, that in this case a civilian administration had tinkered with fundamental values in ways that were deeply upsetting and were causing havoc throughout the military. So that was the message.

The message—and yet, the message also contained, you know, I felt, a certain amount of hope. I sense that despite this dark side to which our national taxi has traveled, that we are turning things around and slowly beginning to exert, you know, the strength of our democracy. Let’s hope so.

AMY GOODMAN: You ended by saying, “Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light.”

ALEX GIBNEY: That’s right. That was—I mean, you know, I’m referring to the dark side from the—that’s mentioned in the film, but, you know, that I’m hopeful that we can have higher aspirations, that we’re not lured by this sense of weakness, retribution and revenge that seems to have been—seems to have overtaken our civilian leadership.  

This Feb. 29 Los Angeles Times story talks about the difficulties Gibney faced in getting the film made:

The film is not easy to watch. And as a result, it hasn't been easy to sell in Hollywood.

After a small industry screening in the fall, one A-list actor told Gibney that he needed to talk about why it is sometimes necessary to hold prisoners in such conditions. "He said, 'You need to show the other side of torture.' "

Another producer told Gibney that the documentary was too "unrelenting." Studio heads were also standoffish. "It wasn't the sort of film they felt they could show their friends," he said.

Eventually the film was distributed by a consortium of U.S. and foreign production companies, including THINKFilm from the U.S. The movie rolled out in a limited number of theaters in December and, as expected, had a small box-office return. Gibney, however, found support from a loyal ally: fellow documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

Moore told Gibney that he believed "Taxi to the Dark Side" would beat his "Sicko" for the Oscar. He was right.

With the Oscar in hand, Gibney has been able to re-release the film and to persuade HBO to air it in September, which will mark the first time a television audience has had to confront the reality of torture with this sort of clarity.