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Wearing Orange at the Oscars

 Alex Gibney, Director of Taxi to the Dark Side, said, when receiving his award:

"Wow. Thank you very much, Academy. Here's to all doc filmmakers. And, truth is, I think my dear wife Anne was kind of hoping I'd make a romantic comedy, but honestly, after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition that simply wasn't possible. This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let's hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light. Thank you very much."

 Taxi to the Dark Side won Best Documentary.  Showing on screens nationwide now.

 [pictured: Directors Alex Gibney and Eva Orner] 

Paul Haggis, who won as Oscar in 2006 for Crash, wore an orange ribbon, and explained why:

"The orange ribbons were worn in protest against state sanctioned torture. I wish we had been wearing them to make a statement about torture in Tibet or Burma or in Chinese labor camps.  But the ribbons are the color of the jumpsuits at Guantanamo Bay, and at our secret detention camps, where prisoners are kept indefinitely, in violation of our constitution, and tortured. This is something that our government has  long condemned as the heinous behavior of dictators, but something that unbelievably we now condone. .  Every American of any political party should be loudly condemning this grossly un-American activity, but is barely even mentioned anymore.  The orange wrist bands some of us wore said simply "Torture + Silence = Complicity".  I received mine from The World Can't Wait campaign."

Link to WCW-Store ribbons

The Styling of Activism: Ribbons, Rubber Bracelets Must Match the Dress

Did you notice the orange ribbon pinned to Julie Christie's dress and Paul Haggis's lapel at the Oscars? It was a lovely little accessory to show their support for the closing of the Guantánamo Bay prison because of the U.S. government's controversial interrogation tactics there. The orange represents the jumpsuits worn by the prisoners and is also the color of a rubber bracelet worn by Haggis that reads "torture+silence=complicity" included in the Oscar swag bag. Organizations like the ACLU, which sponsors the Close Guantanamo campaign, ask stars to don these stamps of activism well in advance so that they have enough time to consult with their stylists.

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