True/False Films

Blood Trail
Dir. Richard Parry; 2008; 80 min.
Thursday, Feb. 26 / 9:30PM / Macklanburg
Saturday, Feb. 28 / 10:30AM / Blue Note

In person: director Richard Parry, producer Vaughan Smith and subject Robert King

The famed war photographer Robert King believes he was put on this earth as a messenger of human suffering. He serves as a wry, insightful guide to world's bleakest, bloodiest war zones, from Bosnia to Chechnya to Iraq. Richard Parry's brutally intimate film follows King's transition from naïve, 24-year-old aspiring war photographer — who dreamed of being the youngest photojournalist to win the Pulitzer Prize — to self-described "damaged goods," a scarred war veteran trying not to lose himself in booze and women and who can't begin to count the number of dead bodies he's stepped over. His stories are harrowing, his photos bleakly gorgeous, but it is King's eyes that reveal the deeper truths about war, violence and suffering. After all he's seen, King is a survivor, his energy and humor intact. And that itself is an indelible image. (BH)