The War on Democracy | |
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Directed by | Christopher Martin John Pilger |
Written by | John Pilger |
Produced by | Wayne Young |
Production companies | Youngheart Entertainment Granada Productions |
Distributed by | Lions Gate |
Release date |
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Running time | 96 min. |
Language | English |
The War on Democracy is a 2007 documentary film directed by Christopher Martin and John Pilger, who also wrote the narration. [1] Focusing on the political situations in nations of Latin America, the film criticizes both the United States' intervention in foreign countries' domestic politics and its "War on Terrorism". The film was first released in the United Kingdom on 15 June 2007.
The film was produced over a two-year period. Carl Deal, chief archivist on the Michael Moore films Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, provided the archive footage used in the film. It is mastered in high-definition video.[ citation needed ]
The War on Democracy was screened at both the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the Galway Film Festival. The film was sold to distributors Lionsgate for distribution in the U.K. and Hopscotch distribution in Australia and New Zealand. [2] Pre-release screening took place at two Fopp locations on 12 June 2007, including one that was followed by a question and answer session with co-director John Pilger.[ citation needed ]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 77% of 13 critic reviews are positive. [3]
Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian that "[Pilger] recounts the shabby tale of how the postwar United States set about... [removing] inconvenient nationalisers in small countries" and criticsed his approach to Hugo Chavez saying "Maybe he thinks that questioning Chávez on this point would be playing into the hands of the smearmongers. Maybe. But he's in dereliction of his journalistic duty, just the same... But however posterity depicts [Chavez], the truth of Pilger's overall story is plain enough. [4]
Kat Brown in Empire gave the film four out of five stars writing that it is a "a brilliantly-researched and sometimes shocking insight into the democratic position of those countries whose dealings with America are more along the lines of slave than political poodle". [5]
Andrew Billen wrote in The Times : "By any standards his latest outing was an impressive polemic, but by any standards, too, Pilger's patsy questioning of President Chávez was a disgrace". [6]
James Walton in The Daily Telegraph thought that while "Pilger stressed that Venezuela's potential utopia is under threat", he "made exactly the same claims for Chavez that he was making for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua" in the 1980s. [7] In Pilger's account of US involvement in Latin America, Walton wrote, "while this was the most familiar section of the programme, it was also the most powerful and persuasive – because, once he was attacking his baddies, Pilger duly seemed on more solid ground. His recital, pretty polished by now, included chapter and verse on American involvement in torture, massacres and terrorism. He exposed (again) 'the epic lie' that this was done for the sake of democracy". [7]
The War on Democracy won the One World Media TV Documentary Award in 2008. [8]
The War on Democracy grossed $199,500 at the box office in Australia. [9]
John Richard Pilger was an Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker. From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York.
Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore is a 2007 documentary film. It puts forward that filmmaker Michael Moore has used misleading tactics, primarily using on-camera statements by interviewees with personal grievances against Moore as proof. The documentary attempts to expose what the creators say are Moore's misleading tactics and mimics Moore's style of small documentary makers seeking and badgering their target for an interview to receive answers to their charges. The film was made over the course of two years by Canadians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine after they viewed Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's controversial film that attacked the Bush administration and its policies. Melnyk and Caine have stated that when they first sought to make a film about Moore, they held great admiration for what he had done for the documentary genre and set out to make a biography of him. During the course of their research, they became disenchanted with Moore's tactics. The title is a parody of the book Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, and the film it inspired. In June 2007, Liberation Entertainment Inc. signed an exclusive deal with the filmmakers for all video and theatrical rights in the US & UK.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram air base.
Redacted is a 2007 American war film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It is a fictional dramatization, loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, when U.S. Army soldiers raped an Iraqi girl and murdered her along with her family. This film, which is a companion piece to an earlier film by De Palma, Casualties of War (1989), was shot in Jordan.
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The War You Don't See is a 2010 British documentary film written, produced and directed by John Pilger with Alan Lowery, which challenges the media for the role they played in the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine conflicts. The film, which went on nationwide general release on 13 December 2010, had its premiere at the Barbican and was aired through Britain's ITV1 on 14 December 2010 and later through Australia's SBS One on 10 April 2011.
TT3D: Closer to the Edge is a British documentary film by first time director Richard de Aragues. The film is narrated by Jared Leto and charts the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race that takes place on the Isle of Man every year. It follows the leading riders in the 2010 race, most notably Guy Martin and Ian Hutchinson.
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Strike a Pose is a Belgian-Dutch documentary film, which premiered in the Panorama section of the 2016 Berlinale. Directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan, the film profiles the dancers who performed with Madonna on her Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990.
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