[7] Following up on IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS, Longley produced and filmed the feature documentary ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT in Afghanistan.
That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to his Afghanistan-set ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT.
As his 2006 Oscar-nominated IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS demonstrated, MacArthur Fellow Longley, who serves as his own cinematographer as well as directs, has an almost magical ability to envelope us in other realities.
He does it via the poetry of his imagery as well as a gift for focused illumination that creates empathetic portraits of people who are both ordinary and intensely involving.
He studied "film and Russian at Wesleyan University and the All-Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) at Moscow.