OCEANSIDE — Oceanside International Film Festival’s invites Marines and the community to the Aug. 3 screening of its guest feature film “Patrol Base Jaker‚” a documentary about the US Marines (1/5th of which are from Camp Pendleton) on the practice of counter-insurgency in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
The film will be screened at the festival’s opening ceremony, at 2 p.m., Aug. 3 at Star Theatre, 402 N. Coast Highway. The film was one of Official Selections of last year’s Oceanside International Film Festival. Tickets are now on sale. Present during the screening of “Patrol Base Jaker” and for a Q&A session afterwards will be Carla Hogan, the mother of Lcpl Donald J. Hogan (featured in the film), who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for the action that took his life on Aug. 26., 2009 during 1/5’s deployment to Nawa, Afghanistan. Carla is the President of the San Clemente Marine Corps Support Group, and its Socks for Heroes Program, has sent over 20 tons of socks and supplies to Marine and Army Infantry Units in Afghanistan since May of 2011.
Made by a filmmaker David Scantling, “Patrol Base Jaker” also won Best Documentary Film at the GI Film Festival. The film documents the US Marines and their current counter-insurgency activities in Nawa, Afghanistan, in support of the overall International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission. The festival audience will witness up-close as Marines are engaged in a complex set of combat and stability operations tasks against the Taliban and in support of the Afghan Government. Training Afghan military and police, fighting Taliban insurgents, managing reconstruction projects, working with the local Afghan population, interfacing with other stakeholders in the region (i.e., Provincial Reconstruction Teams/PRTs, Non-Governmental Organizations/NGOs, the international media, etc.) are all part of the mix. According to the organizers of Oceanside International Film Festival, this film answers the question of “why” the U.S. troops are fighting on a foreign land, as it portrays the many positive outcomes of our military forces’ presence there.
