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31
WEDNESDAY
If Disarm contains nothing so visually striking as Kandahar’s image of prosthetic legs being parachuted into Afghanistan, the 67-minute documentary does include a fact that’s even more telling: Afghanistan’s prosthetics-making operation, its European supervisor notes, is probably the biggest in the world. By other accounts, it may even rival opium as the country’s largest industry. But Afghanistan is only one among more than 80 countries currently infested with landmines. Producer Mary Wareham and cinematographer Brian Liu, who co-directed this made-in-D.C. film, visit several of those countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, and Burma—the last of which yields gruesome footage of a man whose leg has just been mangled by a mine. In a sense, however, the real action is in Washington, where Brendan Canty’s ironically easygoing score lopes while the Bush administration—seconding Clinton’s—announces that the United States will not join the majority of nations and ratify the 1997 worldwide anti-mine treaty. The film screens at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $9.25. (301) 495-6700. (Mark Jenkins)