Blue Orchids |
2017 |
| | blue orchids | transcript |
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office —Aesop
CHRIS HEDGES (C.H.)
Well, we’ve undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion, to quote John Ralston Saul. And what they have done is, shut out all the astute critics of corporate power.
RICCARDO PRIVITERA (R.P.)
The thing about politicians is that they're very much like prostitutes, but only more expensive. The politics is dictated by the whims of the arms industry. Politicians are nothing more than sales reps, my dear friend. They have as much power as a middle ranking executive at Lockheed Martin. At the end of the day, they do what they're told.
Title:
| blue orchids |
R.P.
If you want to stop for coffee, you tell me.
SOUND RECORDER
Okay, sound is rolling.
Title:
| 2013, March 18: BAD RAGAZ, Switzerland |
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Camera is rolling.
R.P.
I was in the Special Forces; I got away with murder, my friend. I mean…
ANDREW FEINSTEIN (A.F.)
Literally?
R.P.
Literally.
Title:
Voice: Andrea Polder
Ex-wife of Riccardo Privitera
ANDREA POLDER
After he got arrested I had no idea what is a lie and what is the truth. I just didn’t know any longer whom I was married to. Whoever he is. I just called all these people in from the Warsaw office, from England. I all had them at the table here in Vienna. And everybody had another story about Riccardo. You don’t know who he is.
Title:
a Johan Grimonprez film
C.H.
Hi. I’m sorry to make you all wait.
A.F.
Can I get you some water?
Title:
| 2013, March 26: Princeton, U.S. |
C.H.
Maybe more coffee… Do you want me to sit here?
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Please, yeah.
C.H.
I don’t care, what the New York Times thinks, I don’t care what anyone thinks, actually. I have complete freedom because of that.
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
I denounced the call to invade Iraq publicly. The Times issued me a formal written reprimand, which is what you get before you’re fired, under union rules, to stop speaking out against the war. I had been the Middle-East Bureau Chief; I’ve been in Iraq, 7 years in the Middle East.
I know that the bombing of southern Iraq was devastating to civilians. I was in the uprising in Basra and then I was taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guards, so I saw it. When I was in northern Iraq, I had a price on my head by Saddam Hussein. I had firefights in Central America where I had two bodyguards suppressing fire so I could get out. You know, especially having done it for 20 years, you know, it fucks you up.
COACH OF MARGARET THATCHER
Enough is enough. It’s a lowering, not a raising.
MARGARET THATCHER
Enough is enough.
COACH OF MARGARET THATCHER
No.
MARGARET THATCHER
Enough is enough.
COACH OF MARGARET THATCHER
That’s it.
Title:
MARGARET THATCHER
U.K. Prime Minister
1979 - 1990
MARGARET THATCHER
We are here because for the first time for many years British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power.
Title:
FALKLANDS WAR
1982
The government has now decided that a large task force will sail as soon as all preparations are complete. HMS Invincible will leave port on Monday.
R.P.
“Thank you Thatcher. You crazy cow…
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
… and all for what? Winning the next election? Some little island in the middle of nowhere. A turd in the middle of the water. And you, my dead comrade, I am sorry. I had to kill you. I didn't want to.
Title:
Personal Diary
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
You’re what? 18? 19? Lying there, your eyes asking me why. Your throat slit open by my ginza. You, Argentinian. I, South African. And we’re killing and dying for rocks full of sheep shit. And you wonder my brother, my comrade. I am sorry. Rules of war, I guess. You or I. Fuck you, Thatcher. Fuck you all. Why didn’t you come here and do this shit yourselves? Fuck you!” Written on a sleepless night, 15 November 1994.
Title:
FALKLANDS WAR
1982
JOURNALIST
Might there be a time when we talk to the Argentines again?
MARGARET THATCHER
No. Not on sovereignty. …
Title:
MARGARET THATCHER
U.K. Prime Minister
1979 - 1990
… One thing the Islanders have made perfectly clear, these islanders are British. They are the Queen’s loyal subjects.
R.P.
If they landed without getting slaughtered, it’s because we took out the Argentinian Command Control Center.
A.F.
‘We’ as in ‘the South African Special Forces’?
R.P.
The South African Special Forces did.
A.F.
Why were the British asking the apartheid government to do their dirty work?
R.P.
Because the British Empire was done on the blood of South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians. What do you think? The British couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.
We had to defend our country from all the enemies inside and outside South Africa. Our embassies were basically, you know, base camps. We had the most militarized embassies in the world.
From 1974 to ‘92, I went from Lieutenant to Captain to Major to Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel. All my campaigns strips; the emblem of the South African Special Forces; this is my rank of Colonel.
They formed us into one hell of a fighting machine… —This, gentlemen, is something you have to earn, you don’t buy—…with the help of the Israelis, who gave us a special forces course, which was one of the hardest things you can ever imagine, man. Nine weeks that make war look like a picnic.
We are basically expandable Rottweilers, okay? But we are Rottweilers.
Title:
12:09 Suspects Michael and James arrive at Dubai Airport.
R.P.
Our main task was not only to hunt ANC, but to attack also sympathizers, wherever they may be.
Title:
19 hours before the murder
R.P.
We were sent as far away as El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, England, France, Italy.
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
R.P.
We did operations within the United States and also within Russia.
Title:
15:20 Victim arrives in Dubai and is tracked by a member of a surveillance team.
C.H.
They don’t understand. The people who have the capacity to wield these weapons don’t understand. I think they thought we would be greeted as liberators; democracy would be implanted in Baghdad, …
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
… emanate outwards across the Middle East, and the oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. It's a non-reality-based belief system for those of us who spent as many years as I did in Iraq. But they believed it. Cheney, Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz, created the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
Augustine said that hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they don’t remain the way they are. How can you come out of Gaza and not be angry at what's being done to those people? How can you come out of, you know, the Sudan, or El Salvador, you know, dozens of other places I’ve been in and not be angry? I’ve seen the bodies of a lot of children, which I can’t forget.
R.P.
What career do you want to have if you have been a soldier for 20 years? Can you imagine me being a lawyer in England, with a wig? I was representing about 35 different companies, you know, selling every type of weapon system, with the exception of nuclear weapons.
There is no such a thing as legal arms, gentlemen. The legal arms trade is a myth. There is official and unofficial arms dealing. The unofficial arms dealing always has the knowledge of one or more governments… — Well I’m a smoker guys. I’m not a drinker, but I’m a smoker. — …You remember what happened to Colonel Spicer? Sandline… aha? On the one hand they signed an embargo, and on the other hand they want to sell weapons to the rebels, because there are, you know, mining interests. Ah, come on!… I mean, that’s one of the dangers that we have today, as independent contractors. Because you are being used as an asset of course. But let’s face it! The English played a very dual role in all that, didn’t they?
Title:
SANDLINE AFFAIR:
weapons sold to Sierra Leone
during arms embargo with
knowledge of UK government
R.P.
I mean, the story of Sandline is very simple: the British Government said to him: ‘Colonel, as you know her Majesty’s government has signed an embargo. However, it is in her Majesty’s interest that certain weapons are delivered.’ That's how it’s done. But that’s the beauty of politics, isn’t it?
Title:
12:30 Suspects Gail and Kevin arrive in Dubai
from Paris on flight AF 526.
TV ANCHOR
Minute by minute, captured on security cameras and released by the Emirates’ police, this is the lead-up to the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, one of the founding members of Hamas.
Title:
12:58 Michael and James check into a hotel in Dubai.
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
Title:
1:21 Suspect Gail Foliard checks-in to room 1102 in a hotel in Dubai.
C.H.
It’s a completely corporate government. You want to run for office, you need their money. 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, they write the legislation, they write the bills. The fact is that both of the major political parties are utterly captive to corporate money, and serve corporate interests to the detriment of the common good and the detriment of the average citizen.
R.P.
And corruption is not only, you know, the backhander. Corruption is: I signed a deal because I have to build a hundred Eurocopters in Frankfurt, and I need to open a company, and I’m going to give jobs to your people, and therefore your political party are going to back me up, because I’m going to give jobs to a hundred people or two hundred people, and they mean votes.
JOURNALIST
Were you aware that your government was approving payments to a friend of President Bush’s as part of a British Aerospace's kickback system? Is that why you suspended a fraud inquiry?
TONY BLAIR
I don’t believe that the investigation would have led anywhere, except for the complete wreckage…
Title:
TONY BLAIR
U.K Prime Minister
1997 - 2007
… of a vital strategic relationship for our country, in terms of fighting terrorism, in terms of the Middle East, quite apart from the fact that we would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs.
C.H.
The personal narratives of candidates are irrelevant. They’re not… They’re the public face of power, in the same way that celebrities are the public face of products. And everything Obama has done illustrates that. I mean, the fact that we use drones to kill people in countries we are not even at war with. People who were children at the time of 9/11, it’s insane.
Title:
2009 - present
$67 BILLION U.S.—SAUDI ARMS DEAL
BIGGEST IN HISTORY
R.P.
The first thing Obama did was the same thing that Bush did. He’s just granted Lockheed Martin another unlimited amount of billions of dollars, for the F-35s. Now the F-35 is a load of crap…
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
…It is a plane which has no use what-so-bloody-ever. You might as well invest in Tampax, you’re doing the world a favor, because that plane is useless!
A.F.
But it only cost 1.5 trillion dollars?
R.P.
Yeah, but it’s a load of crap!
R.P.
American companies officially don’t pay bribes. They open all sorts of companies all over the world that do. You can be an executive at Lockheed Martin, but pay attention, you can be domiciled in the US, and resident in the Cayman Islands. So the executive will agree the bribe with the minister, and then it goes to a completely different company. But that company will pay that executive 3 or 4% on the value of the bribe.
Lockheed Martin, basically, gets in like an octopus and lifts its tentacles, you know, in all branches of the government, and then they hold them. And that’s how they operate. They make the mafia look like a bunch of schoolboys.
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
TV ANCHOR (arabic) / subtitles
Ivy and Chester arrive through Dubai Airport. Here we see them when they arrive at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel and we believe they’ve been assigned to link the whole group through a foreign telecommunication network. Here we see the wig and glasses.
Title:
15:25 Gail arrives at another hotel to disguise
herself and change her appearance.
C.H.
Unfettered, unregulated capitalism is a revolutionary force. It has no self-imposed limits…
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
… It will commodify everything. Human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity that it then exploits until exhaustion or collapse, and the arms manufacturers are good capitalists.
There’s no hope of ending war because there’s always a small cabal of people for whom war is really really good business. It doesn’t matter that we're losing the war in Afghanistan. Halliburton could care less. It’s good for them, good for profit.
R.P.
You know bombs have got a time limit. They’re like food. You know, munitions have got, you know, sell-by dates. You’ve got to get rid of it. In Iraq, the F16s and F18s were firing 6 million dollars within seconds, coming back, re-arming, and going up again.
C.H.
They’re only going to make money if you use them. I mean, let’s dump as many AK-47s as we can on Africa, Sierra Leone, and see what happens. I mean, Liberia, anywhere else. So, you know, it’s the security, or the ‘defense industry’ that perpetuates violence.
R.P.
You can make a weapon beautiful, depends on your secretary. Because they’re more distracted…
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
… looking at your secretary’s ass than thinking what the hell you’re talking about. And that is sometimes all the edge you need.
I had to use an escort agency called Blue Orchids, because of the special taste of the Chief of Staff of the army, who liked blondes with silicone tits. We had their Secretary of the embassy come and review the photos, and he said: ‘I want this one, I want this one, I want this one, and I want this one.’ I had the girls arrive one day before, and I said: ‘Girls, I know you have all been paid handsomely for this, but do me a favor. If you get any pillow talk that is relevant, please bring it across, because I could use it. And for each interesting information, I will give another 2,000 euros bonus.’ So with 60 grand I signed a contract worth three million. So, it wasn’t a bad deal.
There's only two things that count in business, my friend: money and sex. The rest, you can write as much as you like, is absolute garbage.
C.H.
I'll tell you the most effective way to curb war and that's stop selling arms.
R.P.
This is a Steyr 9mm. It’s ok, it’s not loaded, don’t worry. It’s a very beautiful weapon, it’s Austrian made. If you want to sell it on the market, you are looking probably at about 3,500 euros.
A.F.
And why do you keep it in the house?
R.P.
Because I’m a soldier.
A.F.
And you can do that legally?
R.P.
Yes and no, but yeah, more or less, you can. As long as it’s in the house.
A.F.
All right.
R.P.
And you don’t shoot the cat of the neighbor…
Title:
5 hours before the murder.
Title:
15:25 The victim arrives at Al-Bustan followed by two members of the surveillance team.
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
Title:
15:30 The victim is followed to find out his room number.
He stays in room 230.
TV ANCHOR
After checking in, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was followed by two alleged killers dressed in tennis gear holding tennis rackets. They were checking the number of his room. Then, they booked a room directly across the corridor.
R.P.
I've got nothing against money, I don’t mind paying bribes to politicians. It’s part of the deal. You call it corruption. To me, it’s ridiculous, really. Now, you’ve got a procurement officer in some country like Ghana, who basically in a month will take a wage, which is about the equivalent of what you put in as gasoline of your car in England.
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
… And there we are discussing planes of 34 million dollars and helicopters of 17 million dollars, and tanks that costs, you know, 34 million dollars, and this government wants not only to buy these gadgets, but they want to buy them at an inflated price, because they’re all dreaming of getting their villa in the south of France.
Title:
LEVESON INQUIRY
May 2012
David Lawley WakElin
Excuse-me. This man should be arrested for war crimes. JP Morgan paid him off for the Iraq war. Three months after he invaded Iraq he held up the Iraq bank. He was then paid six million dollars every year, and still is,…
Title:
David Lawley WakElin
Filmmaker
…from JP Morgan six months after he left office. The man is a war criminal!
TONY BLAIR
Can I just say, actually, for the record, …
Title:
TONY BLAIR
U.K Prime Minister
1997 - 2007
… what he said about J.P. Morgan is completely and totally untrue. I never had a discussion with them.
C.H.
The problem is power. Power is the problem. Julien Benda in The Treason of Intellectuals said: ‘You can serve two sets of principles: privilege and power, or justice and truth.’ The more you make…
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
… compromises with those who serve privilege and power, the more you diminish the capacity for justice and truth. And I think that the rebel seeks to keep those who have power fearful.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Peace, that’s what we want. Freedom and peace.
MUNTAZAR AL-ZAIDI
This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!
C.H.
The rebel decides just to be a giant pain in the ass.
GEORGE W. BUSH
So what if the guy threw a shoe at me?
R.P.
If WikiLeaks had happened in 1968, we would have had a world upheaval. WikiLeaks happens today, tell me about it …
C.H.
Well, the Occupy Movement named names. It named systems, and no one else was doing it. It spoke a truth to the centers of power that terrified the centers of power, which is why they destroyed it; while, of course, serving corporate interests. It created a dialogue around issues that were real, rather than fake court gossip and trivia, with Fox News or NBC holding up their political puppets, chattering back and forth. So, yeah, it spoke for those people who were hurting. And there are a lot of people in this country hurting. It’s the psychosis of permanent war, and fear, where you can effectively seduce the masses into calling for their own enslavement.
Title:
18:32 The first execution team arrives at the hotel
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
Title:
1 hour before the murder.
R.P.
Once the Berlin wall collapsed and communism went down the drain, they were left with a big problem. Lockheed Martin, British Aerospace, …
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
… all the complex. What now? Who’s the enemy? How do we justify all these tanks, all these planes, all this bullshit. F35s, F22s… What better new enemy than a hypothetical invisible enemy called: the ‘War on Terror’?
C.H.
Thucydides wrote about it: ‘The tyranny finally Athens imposed on others, it imposed on itself,’ so all of the …
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
… harsh forms of control that an Empire uses on the fringe of Empire, as things disintegrate, migrate back to the heart of Empire. So, we have militarized police forces, we have 160 law enforcement forces that have applied for drone permits, we already have drones up over cities like Flint, Michigan. We have a security and surveillance state, warrantless wiretapping, eavesdropping, monitoring, we are the most watched, monitored, controlled, eavesdropped population in human history.
R.P.
This is the new war; this is the new enemy, the war on terror. And what does it justify? Nothing, except a whittling down of your civil liberties in every single country in the world.
TV ANCHOR
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, DynCorp International, Computer Sciences Corporation and AeroVironment. All told, Eric, about 70 companies are interested in this one billion dollar contract. They all may be worth a look from investors.
MICHAEL LEWIS
As we look at 3, 5, 7, 10 years from now, this market remains very much a growth market.
C.H.
It’s the disease of permanent war that destroyed the Middle East. Not Islamic fundamentalism. It empowered all of those who profit from permanent war, politically, economically and militarily. It destroyed Israel, destroyed Lebanon, destroyed Syria, destroyed Egypt.
After the first Gulf War we just occupied the Middle East, in sort of raw terms it’s what we’ve done. We implanted military bases all over the Middle East. Proxy wars. We’re in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, you know, Doha. I mean, we’re all over the place. When governments do not bend to our will, then we destroy them. We’ve created the mess.
If you were Iran, what would you do? I mean, Israel has what, 3 to 400 nuclear weapons? They’re the ones who started the damn arms race in the Middle East anyway. They didn’t sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation-Treaty, they built this program in secret. India and Pakistan then went on to do the same thing. And Iran, which did sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation-Treaty, looked around and realized they’ve gotten screwed. And they realized that if Saddam Hussein had had a bomb, he wouldn’t have been invaded.
R.P.
South Africa is like one of those very beautiful women everybody wants. The government decided that in order to boost our defensive capability, we were going to need nuclear weapons. And of course, you know, we had an embargo. We used the best resources that we had, in human intelligence, and the money we had, and we actually… by 1986, we were a nuclear power. Thanks to Israel, in many respects so, I mean, yes, the Mossad helped, of course. Well, my friend, I don’t carry this for sport (shows David Star hanging around his neck).
Title:
20:24 The victim returns to the hotel.
Title:
Murder of MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH
Dubai Police Security video
January 19, 2010
Title:
20:27 Kevin and Gail monitor the hall as the execution team acts.
Title:
The murder has taken place.
Title:
20:46 The execution team leaves the hotel
R.P.
I feel threats of walking out of my house one day and blowing up in my car, but that’s part of the game I chose to play a long time ago.
A.F.
And in whose interest would that be?
R.P.
Take a number! This is not the movies, people don’t call you and say: ‘I’m going to kill you.’ No, they just do it. What do you think, that we in South Africa used to call the ANC and say we’re going to blow you away?
Title:
19:30 Peter leaves the country through Dubai Airport.
C.H.
I knew the leaders of Hamas. Two of them were assassinated by the Israelis, …
Title:
CHRIS HEDGES
Former New York Times
War Correspondent
… Dr. Al-Rantissi and then Nizar Rayyan. And in Nizar Rayyan’s case, they killed him in his house, with all of his kids. Just killed them all. That’s an act of terrorism, by the, you know, by the Geneva Convention or laws of war or anything else.
Once you start a war, you open a kind of Pandora’s box. You don’t control it, it controls you. The use of that kind of violence has unforeseen consequences that no one can predict. And it propels you in directions you never thought you’d go. That’s what war does.
R.P.
We are too late. We’re always too late. We dismount our vehicles with our guns pointed at the house. My sergeant with the big 20 calibre inside the jeep. The front of the big white house is full of holes, broken glass, bloody footprints, … Title: Personal Diary RICCARDO PRIVITERA …maybe a six, ten men raiding party. We call out, no answer. Silence. We enter slowly. The body on the dining room table, her arms spread wide, fixed by bayonets, her legs fixed by ropes at each leg of the table, pinned down by another bayonet at the center of her back, an obscene doggy style position, in an unimaginable horror. She didn’t die… right away. They raped her while she was dying. The table positioned in a way that she could see her little daughter killed and raped. You bloody Europeans, you dare call us racists, what do you know? Tomorrow, our newspapers won’t even report this. Ours will just report another SWAPO raid on an isolated farm on the border. On the mantle piece by the piano there is a photo: smiling man, happy woman, a little boy, a little girl, and a Labrador. While us, we just pick up the pieces, and some of us pray, to get there in time, next time.”
Written in one of my many long nights, June 15, 1999.
And you don’t forget this. It haunts you for the rest of your life. What haunts you the most is the animal, they make you become an animal, because if you see something like this, you really become an animal.
C.H.
Well, the only people who understand war, are the people who go to war. And that’s what creates the existential crisis for combat veterans when they come back. Because they see the lies, the lies that have been disseminated through every institution in society: the church, schools, government, entertainment, the press. Any attempt to challenge that myth is almost impossible. It is so powerful. Because when you shatter the myth, and when you understand especially what techno-war, industrial war is about — which is really about murder, about slaughter — people would be so repulsed, it would be very hard to wage war. And so the images of war are very carefully controlled, and countered by images that play to that mythic narrative. And I think part of the despair for those of us who come back from war is that we can’t communicate. And I think people don’t want to hear, because it forces them to ask questions about themselves, as a nation and as individuals, that are deeply uncomfortable. It takes very little to turn us into beasts. I’ve seen it. Very little.
We’ll define acts of murder and terror as legitimate forms of self-defense, or collateral damage, so that we’re not at all conscious of the terror we commit, which of course isolates us in the eyes of the rest of the world. I mean, in terms of moral terms, what’s the difference between an IED and a drone? There isn’t one. Or, you know, a suicide bombing and a cruise missile attack on a small village in Afghanistan. Much of the trauma that veterans face when they come back from places like Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam is not so much what they witnessed or what they endured, but what they did. PTSD is about being numb. You can’t feel. You don’t sleep. I mean, at night you revisit trauma, and so it tends, at least in my own case, to come in waves, so by the second, third day I haven’t slept, and you collapse into bed at 9 o’clock, and then you’re waking up, you know, two hours later, covered in sweat, your heart is racing, sometimes you can remember why, sometimes you can't. But what… the effect is that, pretty soon, the simplest tasks become herculean: shaving, showering and dressing. And you can’t feel anything, even for the people you love the most. And the physical exhaustion means that, in the morning, you just sit there and wait for the light to come in through the shades. And it’s like you’re in the bottom of a big black pit, and you just got to crawl your way up to the top.
Dostoyevsky said: ‘Hell is the inability to love, and that’s what kills people.’ I fully get why people blow their brains out, I get it. It’s really hell. And I don’t use love like agape love. I’m not using love like that, I’m not using love as a kind of Hallmark schmaltzy, you know, ‘we all got to love each other’. I’m saying that it’s only … the only way you're healed from those experiences is by reestablishing a connection with that kind of power, with another human being. And if you can’t do that, you don’t survive. And I have friends who couldn’t do it, and they’re not here anymore. It’s, you know, the power of love to transcend time.
Title:
22:30 Kevin and Gail leave the country.
A.F.
Johan?
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ (J.G.)
Yes.
A.F.
Okay, so.
J.G.
Yes, here we go.
Title:
Voice:
Andrew Feinstein
Arms Industry Expert
2014, February 24
I finally managed to speak with her today, the ex-wife. Andrea Polder, is her name. So I said to her, I’m phoning because I’ve been interviewing Riccardo and he has just disappeared. And I just want to try and verify a few things with you. She laughed hysterically and said, but don’t you know?
He’s dead. So I said, what do you mean? So she said, his brother Valerio posted a blog to announce his death. But first of all, Valerio has never existed. That was Riccardo I am sure, writing it. And I know he’s not dead. Because my lawyers checked it out. That’s what she said.
Title:
| 2014, May 20: CARREGUEIRA PRISON Portugal |
R.P.
I was convicted in absence to a sentence of seven years and two months for the crimes of serious fraud, co-conspiracy of embezzlement in the falsifying of Polish documents, and the one crime of false declarations to the inquiry magistrate. Now, this is where it gets interesting …
Title:
RICCARDO PRIVITERA
Arms and equipment dealer
Talisman Europe Ltd.
… Look at this shit. All right? Use your brains. They used a guy with the same name as me, who was born on the same date, but not the same year. You understand? I mean, I’m 56, this guy is 55. It’s not me!
There’s a guy who was a corporal called Riccardo Privitera, who’s got a conviction in Italy from 1990. Excuse-me. I was not even in Italy in 1990. It’s not me. I told them this at the trial. This gentleman has got nothing to do with me. Nothing! Come on, man, this Riccardo Privitera was arrested, right? He must have photographs. He must have fingerprints. Where are they? This Italian guy, I don’t know him!
I lost 17 kilos, man!
A.F.
17 kilos!
R.P.
I’m telling you, Andrew, I’m looking you straight in the eyes, that everything I told you is true, I haven’t lied to you at all… — Here look. Look at this (shows his loose pants). You know, this is not the Hilton. — … When I read this bullshit about this other guy, I found this out in court. I said: ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? It’s not me!’
ANDREA POLDER (A.P.)
Isn’t it a lovely day?
Title:
Andrea Polder
Ex-wife of Riccardo Privitera
A.P.
From one moment to the next I just didn’t know any longer who I was married to, if I was married, whoever he is. After he got arrested, I had no idea what is a lie and what is the truth. I just called all these people in from the Warsaw office, from England. I all had them at the table here in Vienna. And everybody had another story about Riccardo. You don’t know who he is. I mean, I just don’t know any longer what to think about this man, you know? I really don’t.
R.P.
You won’t find any record in South Africa regarding people like me. People like me were taken out of the loop. But we are not going to discuss this here (point to the ceiling).
A.F.
... because, we can’t match any Special Forces insignia. We couldn’t verify any of the ribbons, any of the medals…
R.P.
I’m not surprised. Yeah but, you know, those are verifiable anyway, but you just have to… have a look at…
A.F.
No, but that’s what we did. And we could find anything that linked them to South African Special Forces, to…
R.P.
But that’s pretty strange because some of the ribbons, they are basically from South Africa.
A.P.
I got to know this one Riccardo. I mean, this South African one, I don’t know when that one was generated. But he definitely lives his South African personality. But I don’t know how many others exist.
Title:
In verifying his story, we uncovered that Riccardo Privitera, like many arms dealers, fabricated much, if not all, of his military experience. He certainly never served in the South African security forces.
That he was a military equipment dealer, operating from Warsaw amongst other places, is beyond doubt.
He is currently serving 7 years in jail for a corrupt and fraudulent deal for military equipment between Poland and Portugal.
CREDITS:
exclusive interview with
Chris Hedges
courtesy of Shadow World Productions LLC
director of photography
NICOLE MACKINLAY HAHN
sound recording
SARAH DHANENS
exclusive interview with
Riccardo privitera
courtesy of Shadow World Productions LLC
director of photography
ALEX SZOMBATH
sound recording
TORSTEN GODDON
edited by
DIETER DIEPENDAELE
original score
KARSTEN FUNDAL
assistant director
SARAH DHANENS
additional editing
PEDRO COLLANTES DE TERAN BAYONAS
SABINE GROENEWEGEN
DAAN MILIUS
additional camera
KAREL DE COCK
archival sources:
AHSAN64
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BLOOMBERG
CBS
CHANNEL 4
HISTORIC ENGLAND ARCHIVE - FOX PHOTOS
JULIO ALONSO
PBS
POLISZ
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES STATE SECURITY
US DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
additional music:
Charnier
written and performed by DON ELLIS
published by Twentieth Century Fox (1971)
Barry’s Theme
written by Barry White
performed by Barry White & the love unlimited orchestra
published by 20th Century records (1973)
Un Amore Grande
written and performed by PEPPINO GAGLIARDI
published by RCA (1980)
directed by
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ
produced by
ZAP-O-MATIK
acknowledgements & thanks
JULIO ALONSO
HERMAN CROUX / Marx Van Ranst Vermeersch & Partners
SEAN KELLY GALLERY
GALLERIE KAMEL MENNOUR
EMMY OOST
LUEA RITTER
Except where fair-use is applicable, we’ve made the effort to trace the ownership of the copyrighted material included in the film. It was not possible to find all the copyrights holders. All interested parties are requested to contact: info@zapomatik.com. This film is conceived as an artistic project for the non-commercial museum circuit.
This film was produced by zap-o-matik which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2017 Johan Grimonprez