VALE JOHN PILGER: FIVE FILMS TO WATCH

Australian journalist and documentarian John Pilger has passed away, aged 84, in his London home. Born in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, Pilger would become the most important and influential factual filmmaker in his nation’s history. His camera and his pen captured, with acute insight, the geopolitical turmoil in many of the world's most dangerous zones of conflict, while also profoundly recording the human suffering left in the wake of wars.

From 1963 to 1986, Pilger was a reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and, finally, Chief Foreign Correspondent for U.K.’s Daily Mirror, a role that saw him on the ground as a war correspondent in such hotspots as Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Biafra and the Middle East. The experience would steel his resolve in the face of often shocking inhumanities to expose the brutality of dictatorships and regimes, a focus that led to his most important work as a fearless writer and director of often incendiary documentary works.

Here are five of his works that exemplify the integrity and power of his filmmaking…

VIETNAM: THE QUIET MUTINY (Writer, Presenter / Directed by Charles Denton; 1970) Pilger's first film, broadcast September 28 1970, on the British current affairs series World in Action, broke the story of insurrection by American drafted troops in Vietnam. In his classic history of war and journalism, The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley describes Pilger's revelations as among the most important reporting from Vietnam. The soldiers' revolt – including the killing of unpopular officers – marked the beginning of the end for the United States in Indo-China.

WATCH HERE: Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny from John Pilger on Vimeo.

YEAR ZERO: THE SILENT DEATH OF CAMBODIA (Writer, Presenter / Directed by David Munro; 1979) Pilger’s landmark documentary alerted the world to the horrors wrought by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. His spontaneous, vivid reporting of the power politics that caused such suffering is a model of anger suppressed. Originally broadcast on commercial television in Britain and Australia without advertising, Year Zero won many awards, including the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Best Documentary and the International Critics Prize at the Monte Carlo International Television Festival. Pilger won the 1980 United Nations Media Peace Prize for ‘having done so much to ease the suffering of the Cambodian people’. The British Film Institute lists Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia as one of the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century.

WATCH HERE: Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia from John Pilger on Vimeo.

DEATH OF A NATION: THE TIMOR CONSPIRACY (Writer, Presenter / Directed by David Munro; 1994) Pilger has said that the making of Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, about genocide in East Timor following the Indonesian dictatorship’s 1975 bloody invasion and occupation, as”the most challenging to my sense of self-preservation and the most inspirational”. With concealed Hi-8 video cameras, Pilger and director David Munro entered the country clandestinely, and were able to capture footage of mass graves and accounts of widespread slaughter of resistors to Suharto’s reign. Death of a Nation is journalism and history as topical today as it was 30 years ago; members of the UN Human Rights Commission credit the documentary with influencing their decision to send a special envoy  on extrajudicial executions to East Timor to investigate massacres such as the infamous Santa Cruz cemetery.

WATCH HERE: Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy from John Pilger on Vimeo.

BREAKING THE SILENCE: TRUTH AND LIES IN THE WAR ON TERROR (Writer, Presenter / Co-directed with Steve Connelly; 2003) Six months after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and two years after the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, Pilger’s documentary highlighted the hypocrisy and double standards of the American and British military misadventures, actions which led to the deaths of more than a million people. “What are the real aims of this war and who are the most threatening terrorists?”, he poses. Interviews with administration officials – described by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as ‘the crazies’ – are perhaps the highlight of a film made when 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq were raw. The film achieved something of a ‘cult’ status in America, thanks in part to McGovern, who took the film on a screening tour of campuses and small towns.

WATCH HERE: Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror from John Pilger on Vimeo.

THE COMING WAR ON CHINA (Writer / Director; 2019) His 60th documentary and arguably his most prescient, The Coming War on China was completed in the month Donald Trump was elected US President; the film investigates the manufacture of a ‘threat’ and the beckoning of a nuclear confrontation. When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. Seldom referred to in the Western media, 400 American bases now surround China, in an arc that extends from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. The Coming War on China was broadcast on ITV-UK and SBS Australia, as well as China, where a pirated version was shown to possibly its biggest audience.

WATCH HERE: The Coming War on China from John Pilger on Vimeo.

(SOURCE: https://johnpilger.com/, with thanks)

WOMEN DIRECTORS FLY OZ FLAG AT SUNDANCE 2021

The feature documentary Playing with Sharks, virtual reality project Prison X - Chapter 1: The Devil & The Sun and short film GNT will fly the Australian sector flag at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The iconic event has responded to the COVID pandemic by scheduling both online and theatrical sessions across the US from 28 January to 3 February.

Playing with Sharks, a documentary about iconic Australian diver and filmmaker Valerie Taylor, will make its world premiere in the World Documentary Competition.

“To launch this film at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival is a dream come true,” enthused director Sally Aitken. “Valerie’s daredevil exploits and her astounding underwater archive are a potent mix for any director. That she is still diving and fighting for sharks at the age of 85 shows Valerie’s incredible passion and thirst for adventure remains undiminished. Her life-affirming journey as an unlikely conservationist proves what is possible with our interconnectedness to the natural world, if we allow it.”

PLAYING WITH SHARKS (Dir: Sally Aitken; Prod: Bettina Dalton) Synopsis: Valerie Taylor is a shark fanatic and an Australian icon. A marine maverick who forged her way as a fearless diver, cinematographer and conservationist. She filmed the real sharks for Jaws and famously wore a chain mail suit, using herself as shark bait, in experiments that changed scientific understanding of sharks forever.

Virtual reality animation Prison X – Chapter 1: The Devil & The Sun will make its world premiere in the New Frontier section which showcases emerging media storytelling, multimedia installations, performances, and films across fiction, nonfiction and hybrid projects. The project takes viewers on a mythological journey inside a Neo-Andean underworld, where The Jaguaress greets you at the gateway between theater and reality and casts you as Inti, a young man imprisoned after his first job as a drug mule..

“As a storyteller, Virtual Reality gave me the tools and technological capacity to push my imagination to a further degree,” said Quechua filmmaker Violeta Ayala. “But it takes a community to make a film, and I'm very proud that the team behind Prison X represents the Australia that we see on the streets.” The production utilised the talents of Bolivian-Australian, Ghanaian-Australian and Filipino-Australian creatives.

PRISON X – THE DEVIL & THE SUN (Writ/Dir: Violeta Ayala; Prods: Violeta Ayala, Dan Fallshaw, Roly Elias) Synopsis: A virtual reality project where heavy doors open up and suck you in as a world of magical realism swirls around you, where you have to hang onto your soul so the devil doesn't take it away.

Animated short film GNT (pictured, top), which won the Yoram Gross Animation prize at Sydney Film Festival 2020, follows one woman’s outrageous mission to conquer social media and upstage her friends. Creators Sara Hirner and Rosemary Vasquez-Brown said, “We put so much love into this chaotic four minutes, and feel especially humbled that it will be shown at Sundance. We hope it makes you giggle, or at the very least, question your choices on social media.”

GNT (Writ/Dirs: Sara Hirner, Rosemary Vasquez-Brown; Prods: Sara Hirner, Rosemary Vasquez-Brown) Synopsis: An animation that follows Glenn, a woman on an unwholesome mission to conquer her clique and social media at large.

“Congratulations to these teams, this selection is an incredible accomplishment,” said Screen Australia’s CEO Graeme Mason. “These projects each have a distinctive Australian voice and demonstrate the breadth and ingenuity of our industry on the world stage. It’s fantastic to have three projects representing Australia all helmed by female directors in this year’s program.” Screen Australia were principal production investors on Playing with Sharks and Prison X – Chapter 1: The Devil & The Sun, in association with Screen NSW. GNT was created as a graduation project out of University of Technology Sydney.

STARDUST MEMORIES: THE PETER FLYNN INTERVIEW

The digital revolution represents the biggest shift in the exhibition sector since the ‘multiplex boom' of the 1980s. Old-school projection booths, once the beating heart of the cinema-going experience, have all but vanished, replaced by sterile environments housing touch-screen monitors filled ‘encrypted files’. Dying of the Light is a stirring, melancholy account of American film exhibition up to this moment in time; a point in film history that threatens to reduce to museum pieces 1000s of spools of classic film storytelling and the grand machines that lit them up. In his moving, insightful film, director Peter Flynn, Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Boston’s Emerson College, profiles the projectionists who have forged generations of film-going memories and who are now faced with a ‘change or perish’ life choice. He spoke with SCREEN-SPACE about his loving tribute to the art and romance of movies…

SCREEN-SPACE: Where did your passion for the moving image and how it is presented and preserved originate?

FLYNN: I’ve always loved film.  My earliest memories are of the large-screen cinemas of Dublin City, where I grew up in the 70s and 80s—the Ambassador, the Savoy, and the Adelphi.  Back then it was not uncommon to spend two hours waiting outside in the rain for the doors to open and for the show to start. But it was worth it.  To enter those old theaters, with their ornate surroundings and lush carpeting, their balconies and curtained screens, was to enter another world.  Going to the cinema was something special back then, and it remained so throughout my childhood. The Dying of the Light digs deep into those memories, I suppose.  Try as I might to be balanced in the film, its by no means objective.

SCREEN-SPACE: As a lover of film culture and academic dedicated to film history, how did the research period and the trips to hollow, dilapidated halls in small towns impact you?

FLYNN (pictured, right): The image of the ruined abandoned movie theatre/projection booth became a sort of visual metaphor in the film, I suppose; a way to underscore the loss and ruination of the practice of film-handing and projection.  It was also the right place to start—with this palpable sense of loss, of better days gone by. The idea of the projection booth as an archeological site fascinated me from the start.  So many had the feeling of being tomb-like—relics of an older order, filled with the possessions of the dearly departed.  It was not uncommon as late as three or four years ago to enter a projection booth and find traces of the very early stages of film’s history. Fire shutters dating back to the nitrate days which lasted up until the 1950s; old 1,000 foot reels, which would have held silent films of the 1920s; notes written on the walls from one projectionist to another; old magazines tucked away in corners. Projectionists spent so much of their lives in those little rooms.  How could they retire without leaving something of themselves behind? So the film was inherently sad, or inherently reverential in a way.  But I’m also Irish and I entered into this with the idea that the film would be a wake—mixing the sad and the solemn with a spirit of tribute and celebration, with humor and energy.  I hope balance comes across.

SCREEN-SPACE: The film walks a fine line between eulogising a dying/dead aspect of the industry and celebrating its impact. Was it a struggle not to succumb to the sombre, sad loss of film projection?

FLYNN: Yes, it’s a very fine line.  And I did struggle at times to temper my own nostalgia for, or romanticization of “the good old days.”  But as a documentary maker you have to listen to your interviewees.  And not all waxed lyrical on the old days.  Nor were all critical of the new digital technologies—some “old-timers” embraced the future.  The final lines in the film, spoken by one of the older projectionists (ironically to one of the younger ones), ask that we look ahead to the future, not the past. And I thought that was a very important note to end on—a corrective to the romantic view that so many of us can easily fall into. (Pictured, above; David Kornfeld, projectionist at the Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts).

SCREEN-SPACE: How much did your film's tone waver in post-production?

FLYNN: Post-production is where you (hopefully) find the right balance. You go out with your camera, you follow your gut, you engage emotionally and instinctually—in other words “on the fly”—with the world you are capturing and then you come back and you have to edit intellectually.  You have to moderate all the voices you find, give each its proper weight in the film, and hopefully find the right balance in the end. 

SCREEN-SPACE: Did you notice defining personality traits that were common across the projectionists you interviewed? What drove these men and women to commit to a life inside a small, dark room?

FLYNN: There is certainly a love and devotion to cinema uniting these people, but there’s a lot more besides.  There’s a commitment they all share to a quality of performance that is lacking today—to the idea of doing a job to the best of your ability, whether you’re acknowledged for that or not; and also to a notion of showmanship, which is likewise missing today.  The projection booth is a place of arrested development in many ways.  Its easy to hold onto older practices, older standards, when you’re isolated from the rest of the world as you are in the booth. As such, many projectionists may be seen to be out of step with contemporary culture, or normal social conventions—a hazard of spending too much time alone in a darkened room, I suppose—but, without exception, the people I interviewed for this film were wonderful; very warm and welcoming, open and generous.  Many have become good friends. (Pictured, above; projectionist Dave Leamon at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

SCREEN-SPACE: You address the recent release of The Hateful Eight, noting that it was ultimately a box office disappointment. But the initial 70mm 'roadshow' screenings were sell-outs. Does this indicate that large-scale film projection may still have a place as a 'prestige ticket' event?

FLYNN: The success or failure of The Hateful Eight in relation to the future of 70mm has yet to be determined. It’s a case of “wait and see.” My guess is that 70mm will pop up periodically in specialty theaters (but) not on the grander multiplex scale that the Weinstein Company and Tarantino had hoped for.  For me, the great visual surprise of the holiday season was not The Hateful Eight in 70mm, but Star Wars in 4K Digital 3D.  It was the best digital presentation I have ever seen.  That seems to be the future of large-format, large-screen presentations.  That does not imply that there is no room for 70mm presentations.  In fact, the arrival of digital does not, or rather should not, imply the complete eradication of film presentations.  There’s room for both—maybe less room for film than we’d like, but room for both nonetheless.  Theaters like the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts, prove conclusively that there’s still a place for analog film in commercial exhibition.  And that more than anything makes me feel there’s a future, albeit a limited one, for 70mm.

Dying of The Light is a First Run Features release currently in US specialty venues; other territories to follow.