Documentary: "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds" On PBS Rescheduled This Sunday

The PBS Independent Lens broadcast of "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds", postponed following the
events of Sept. 11, has been rescheduled for broadcast this SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14 at
11:30 p.m. on WNET Channel 13 in New York. Check your local PBS listings for
program times in other areas of the US

(following excerpted from PBS press release)

Kevin McKiernan's career as a photojournalist has taken him to some of the world's most
troubled regions, from Nicaragua to West Africa to the Gaza Strip; his work, nominated for
a Pulitrzer Prize, has been published by Time, Newsweek and the New York Times. But in
the early 1990s, while covering the Gulf War, McKiernan discovered a story that the
American press wouldn't touch. Using U.S.-made weapons, the Turkish military was
perpetrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds. In the process, 3,500 villages
were destroyed and nearly two million Kurdish civilians lost their homes. In the end, the
Turkish-Kurdish War resulted in the deaths of 40,000 people, more than the conflicts of the
West Bank and Northern Ireland combined. McKiernan's film - nine years in the making -
delves deeply into the U.S. complicity in this human rights disaster, indicting the mainstream
news outlets which, by staying quiet, played a role in perpetuating the violence.

The film provides the perspective of Turkish, U.S. and European officials, as well as human
rights representatives, and it includes exclusive footage shot behind the lines of Kurdish
guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. As officials in Ankara insist that the Kurdish uprising is
grounded in terrorism, McKiernan eventually secures a one-of-a-kind interview with rebel
leader Abdullah Ocalan, not long before U.S. intelligence sets the stage for his capture by
Turkish commandos. Subsequently Ocalan was sentenced to death in Turkey where he now
awaits execution in a specially constructed prison on an island near Istanbul.

Shot in part by three-time Academy Award winner Haskell Wexler, "Good Kurds, Bad
Kurds" travels from Santa Barbara, CA, home to a small Kurdish refugee community, to
Washington, D.C., where a Kurdish activist struggles to gain the attention of lawmakers and
the media to fight his deportation from the United States, and to Turkey, where the anti-Kurd
campaign continues.

"Good Kurds, Bad Kurds" has won numerous prizes, including an Audience Award at the
Denver International Film Festival and "Best Documentary" honors at the Atlanta, Rhode
Island, Columbus, Sidewalk Pictures and Sedona International Film Festivals. The film was
awarded also a CINE Golden Eagle (Washington, D.C.) as well as the prestigious Human
Rights Prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.