This morning Iraq’s presidency council voted to delay parliamentary elections until March 7th of 2010.  The decision came after a meeting at President Jalal Talabani’s residency late Tuesday which included Talabani and two vice presidents, Adel Abdul Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashimi, along with Faraj al-Haidari, head of the IHEC.  Although the elections were previously slated to take place on March 6th, Chief of Staff Naseer al-Ani stated that the one day delay was not politically motivated.  The announcement comes after 5 near simultaneous bomb blasts killed 110 people and injured hundreds more yesterday in Baghdad.  

Because the U.S. post war reconstruction plan in Iraq has been grossly mishandled and has proven to be largely ineffectual, Iraqi artists and filmmakers have decided to take cultural reconstruction efforts into their own hands. Recently in Baghdad, Iraqi filmmakers unveiled the city’s first traveling film festival, showcased at sites where explosions have ruined cultural landmarks have killed hundreds of Iraqi citizens.

“From these places that have been attacked by terrorists we want to send a message that in Iraq cinema, culture and civilization are still alive,” states Husam al-Sharam, one of the organizers of Baghdad’s first traveling cinema festival, in a recent article by the BBC.

According to the BBC article, all of the films shown have been filmed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and all of them deal with the current reality of living and surviving in Baghdad.

The resurgence of Iraqi film, which has a rich and fruitful history, is a particularly important aspect of the devastated city’s cultural reconstruction. During the 2003 Iraq war, the majority of the country’s cultural heritage landmarks, including museums, libraries and archaeological sites were destroyed in raids by US allied forces. Although only three films have been made in Iraq since 2003, they each play an important role in rebuilding the country’s rich history and unifying the Iraqi public.