Films by John Pilger
26:27An Unjustifiable Risk investigates the many risks of plutonium usage in nuclear power generation and the use of fast-breeder reactors argued for the UK in the 1970s. The film turns to Hiroshima, Japan to illustrate the powerful destructive capacities of plutonium, feeding-back the personal experiences of those effected by nuclear weapons into the debate against nuclear power and its consequences…
43:46Australian journalist, author and film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, the US military and its quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9-11 era and the false history that is presented in the guise of ‘objective’ journalism…
26:10John Pilger travels to Reno, Navada in the United States, to investigate the threats facing Pyramid Lake—a reservation of the Paiute people. With water diversion beginning in 1905 by Derby Dam and the lake’s very existence threatened, the Paiute sue the conservation department of government—the DOI—to curtail further damage. By the mid 1970s, the lake had lost 80 feet of depth, with extensive impacts to fish and other life of the lake. Further water diversion in the 1970s was driven by a racially-exclusive sportsman’s and leisure reserve used for white hunting and recreation near the town of Fallon…
1:34:00Set in Latin America and the US, War on Democracy explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. John Pilger examines the role of Washington in America’s manipulation of Latin America during the last 50 years leading up to the struggle by ordinary people to free themselves from poverty and racism…
51:13Cambodia — Year One investigates the effect of aid to Cambodia and the extent of the country’s so-called new found stability as in 1980. The film portrays Cambodia on a brink of famine and cultural annihilation, but in the process of recovery, also showing the continued support for the Khmer Rouge regime by China and the United Nations.
51:02Cambodia — The Betrayal is the fourth follow-up to John Pilger and David Munro’s series on Cambodia, the film Year Ten from 1989, which examined the hypocrisy of western geopolitics by looking at the way in which the United Nations pressured Cambodia to accept the Khmer Rouge regime as part of the United Nations peace plan.
In these three films, John Pilger and Alan Lowery return to Australia to celebrate the country’s bicentenary, interviewing an extraordinary range of Australians from diverse backgrounds, each of whose views are a long way from those of the treasured Aussie stereotypes…
51:20John Pilger travels to Cambodia to investigate how the United Nations has allowed the Khmer Rouge regime to grow stronger. Why has Pol Pot’s organisation grown stronger and more menacing since the arrival of the UN? Cambodia — Return To Year Zero looks behind the façade of the so-called ‘peace process’ and asks: Has the unthinkable for Cambodia at last been made acceptable for the rest of the world?
56:40In the 1960s and 70s, British governments conspiring with American officials, secretly tricked into leaving and then expelled, the entire population of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean as to make way for a major American military base. Indeed from Diego Garcia, American military planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq. Stealing A Nation documents the story of the islanders who were dumped in the slums of Mauritius and in the words of the British officials who left a ‘paper trail’ of what the International Criminal Court now describes as ‘a crime against humanity’…
52:01John Pilger once again travels to Cambodia to report on the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which brought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia; while neighbouring countries, including Australia and the United Nations shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied the country…
52:28In 1978, three years after the end of the Vietnam War, film-maker John Pilger travels back to Vietnam to find out what had happened under the new regime. Do You Remember Vietnam? recounts numerous personal stories: talks with a young tour guide at a war crimes museum who had been imprisoned in the infamous US tiger cages; a former North Vietnamese soldier into the underground base where he spent 20 years crawling through tunnels undetected; and views from the streets in Hanoi, where the largest single aerial bombardment in history took place.
31:19Since 1945, by deed and by example, the US has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, crushed some 30 liberation movements and supported tyrannies from Egypt to Guatemala. Bombing and war is as American as apple pie. Obama, having stacked his government with warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, the 45th president is merely upholding tradition…
25:52Street Of Joy looks at how product marketing methods and advertising techniques are applied to politics by specifically following the campaigns around the election of Jimmy Carter in the United States during 1976. In these times, the techniques of today are seen in their early years, especially the use of carefully crafted images for use on television…
51:54War By Other Means examines the policy of western banks making loans to so-called ‘third world’ countries, which are then unable to meet the crippling interest charges—debt used as a weapon. The film primarily analyses ‘Structural Adjustment Programs,’ which are proclaimed to enable countries to compete in the ‘global economy,’ but have the opposite effect of lowering wages which in turn further transfers the wealth from the poor to the rich.
51:29Cambodia — Year Ten Update examines the reactions of the British government and the United Nations to the international outcry over the situation in Cambodia.
28:40Guilty Until Proven Innocent reports on the issue of innocent people confined to prisons on remand in the UK, circa 1974. People are imprisoned without trial and are later released with either a small fine, a set of mandatory conditions, or leave completely innocent. It’s a strange set of circumstances in a country with such pretensions of a bill of rights and espoused ‘legal protections.’ Is bail a right or a privilege?
49:30The 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney were universally recognised as an overwhelming success. The Australian heroine from start, when she carried the Olympic torch into the stadium, to finish, as she crossed the line to take 400m gold, was the indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman. Against the will of many of her still oppressed people, she came to represent the symbol, albeit shallow, of reconciliation between White Australia and Indigenous Australia. But the frenzy of flames and fireworks surrounding the Games blinded the rest of the world to the real history behind it all…
25:51Thalidomide: The Ninety-Eight We Forgot follows a four-year investigation on behalf of a group of children damaged at birth by the drug Thalidomide which was introduced in the late 1950s to treat morning sickness and to aid sleep. The drug caused birth deformities, such as phocomelia, with more than 10,000 children in 46 countries born with deformities. This film investigates why a group of people are excluded from compensation from the effects of Thalidomide by various legal proceedings—still relevant today in the context of how the legal system continues to protect corporations at the expense of life itself.
1:36:46The War You Don’t See traces the history of ‘embedded’ and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an ‘electronic battlefield’ in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?
15:41John Pilger talks about the various mainstream media commonalities of today—censorship by omission, information management, Public Relations and the ‘massaging of information’, as well as the clever distractions such as the election of Obama as a war monger in the land of slavery, alongside figures such as Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard as a false win for so-called ‘feminist ideals.’ Amongst the ongoing wars played by the United States, Britain and Australia, Media And War — Challenging The Consensus is a renewed call to unravel complex propaganda and cut through distractions.
49:54Heroes reports on the treatment of returning combat soldiers from Vietnam in the early 1980s. The film investigates the strange cultural absence of reverence or memory to soldiers returning home, and shows with first-hand accounts and interviews with returning soldiers, opines from the front line about America’s unpopular war.
52:12As the first complete report of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge and the devastating affects of US bombing in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, Year Zero — The Silent Death Of Cambodia is an important and historic document of the grim reign of Pol Pot and the world’s response of indifference and inaction…
52:11The Mexicans reports on the history of political repression and corruption in Mexico, a country dominated to this day by its close neighbour—the United States.
51:13Apartheid based on race is ‘outlawed now’, but the system always went far deeper than that. The cruelty and injustice were underwritten by an economic apartheid, which regarded people as no more than cheap expendable labour. It was backed by great business corporations in South Africa, Britain, the rest of Europe, and the United States and it was this apartheid based on money and profit that allowed a small minority to control most of the land, most of the industrial wealth, and most of the economic power. Today, the same system is called—without a trace of irony—the free market.
17:46John Pilger talks at a public forum in Sydney about the recent revelations of WikiLeaks and the importance of leaked information in exposing the lies and machinations of Public Relations in mainstream media and political rhetoric. Pilger demonstrates the parallels with the plight of Julian Assange and the treatment of David Hicks through the United States legal system, and also explains using recent leaked documents why state power sees investigative journalists and others as a major threat to the established order…
50:41In Australia takes a candid look at the highs and lows of Australian society, circa 1976. The film ties together the workings of media manipulation in its early days, along with the removal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General coup d’état—Kerr’s Cur—to demonstrate the common apathetic side of popular culture in the ‘lucky country.’ The film also touches on the subtlety of remnant class structures remaining from English heritage by revealing the workings of the ‘Occa’—a prudish stereotype of the common person portrayed and exploited by mainstream media, revealing views on immigration and racism in a country, ironically, colonised by immigrants.
1:15:04After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations (backed strongly by the US and UK) imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq that lasted for 10 years (1991-2001); the harsh restrictions on imports of everything, including access to key medicines, resulted in over a million deaths, more than half a million of which were women and children. That’s more deaths than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and the events of September 11 combined. The purpose was regime change, but it never came. The overwhelming majority of those killed were the poor, elderly, women and children. Empirically, sanctions overwhelmingly punish the poor, the destitute. While the sanctions were in place, the richest people in control of the resources (Saddam Hussein et al.) still had everything they wanted: food, cars, mansions, free access to medicines, etc…
52:30The Search For Truth In Wartime investigates the changing face of war reporting and the role of the media during wartime, in context with the Crimea through the two World Wars, to Vietnam and the Falklands. “What is the role of the media in wartime? Is it simply to record, or is it to explain? And from whose point of view—the military, the politicians or the victims?”
1:19:03When the United States devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons in 1945, the bombs dropped were code-named ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’ — as part of the new propaganda campaign to create acceptable images of war, propagating the illusion that the world should live securely with nuclear weapons, and that it is the only way to ‘enable peace’. By using reassuring and even soothing language, this new kind of propaganda spread all over the world…
1:50:06Utopia is both an epic portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture on the planet—indigenous Australia—and an investigation into a suppressed colonial past and rapacious present. One of the world’s best kept secrets is revealed against the great Australian ‘mining boom,’ showing how the country’s racially divided past and current-day media collusion play their parts in a system that is apartheid in all but name. The film examines the exploitation of the Aboriginal population, both as a people and of the land they have lived on for centuries, and how so many institutions have profited while people continue to suffer. The injustice stretches across countless generations and stories. Utopia reveals this universal story of power and resistance, driven by old imperatives, in a media age of saturation which is profoundly silent and complicit; a call to continue resistance.
51:06Inside Burma — The Land Of Fear exposes the history and brutality of one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Nearly the size of Texas, with a population of more than 40 million, Burma has rich natural resources. Yet Burma is also a secret country. Isolated for the past 40 years, since a brutal military dictatorship seized power in Rangoon, Burma has been relegated to one of the world’s poorest countries, with the assault on its people all but forgotten by the rest of the world. Award winning film-makers John Pilger and David Munro go undercover to expose how the former British colony is ruled by a harsh, bloody and uncompromising military regime…
54:54Renowned independent journalist John Pilger speaks about complicity and compliance, censorship and citizen journalism as well as issues such as the holocaust in Iraq and Kevin Rudd’s shrewd political apology to the Indigenous peoples of Australia as Prime Minister. “These days, a one-dimensional political culture ensures that few writers write, or speak out, as they did in the last century. They are talented, yet safe. In the media, the more people watch, the less people know. Beneath the smokescreen of objectivity and impartiality, media establishments too often ventriloquise the official line, falling silent at the sight of unpleasant truths.”
27:00To Know Us Is To Love Us covers the public reaction to a Vietnamese refugee camp constructed outside Fort Smith in Arkansas, 1975—not long after the end of the Vietnam war. The film documents the stories of the refugees coming to the United States, along with the reactions of American troops, the public and citizens who take in Vietnamese refugees to assimilate them into American life.
51:32The Daily Mirror used to be a peoples’ paper that respected its readers and earned trust and affection. But that changed out of all recognition when the British public were told that the new information technology, heralded by The Sun’s move to Wapping, would bring a greater variety of newspapers and a more diverse media. Instead, what happened was rapid moves toward contracted press controlled by ever fewer proprietors. John Pilger describes the downfall of his old paper and the all-pervasive influence of Rupert Murdoch…
1:52:35The Coming War on China is a warning that nuclear war is not only imaginable, but a ‘contingency,’ says the Pentagon. The greatest build-up of NATO military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia, and some 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. But these happenings are of course not reported as United States antagonism. Instead, there is a familiar drumbeat of war, the kind of the old “yellow peril,” a restoration of the psychology of fear that embedded public consciousness for most of the 20th century. The aim of this film is to break the silence, and as the centenaries of the First World War presently remind us, horrific conflict can begin all too easily. By recounting the secret and forgotten history of the rapacious actions of great power against China throughout the decades, such as the destruction of the Marshall Islands and the Opium wars, The Coming War on China is also a report of an inspiring popular resistance to nuclear weapons, military bases and warmongering of the United States, of which little is known in the West.
51:29Denied a sense of nationalism since the second World War, Japanese society slowly re-established itself as a ‘corporate’ society in the eyes of the west, with hi-tech industry and mass manufacturing. Japan, Behind The Mask reports on the contrast between this popular image and the stereotypes of Japanese culture, revealing the reality of the lives of ordinary people who do not fit the image; the extraordinary part played by women; and the subtle, yet forceful way the Japanese establishment is today reclaiming its nationalism…
50:02John Pilger and David Munro look behind political rhetoric to discover the hidden world of international arms dealing…
26:42After the 1973 Paris Agreement and military ceasefire, more than 70,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in Vietnam. Vietnam — Still America’s War investigates how the Vietnamese populace still have to contend with mines and other legacies of the war, even after the ceasefire, and after the war…
26:51A Faraway Country is an examination of the Czech underground movement known as the Charter 77—an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, part of the Communist Soviet bloc. The film shows interviews with members of Charter 77, and others, describing first-hand the totalitarian communist regime, and their response to it.
1:45:22Britain’s National Health Service, the NHS, was the world’s first universal public health service, created out of the ideal that healthcare should be available to everyone, regardless of wealth. Designed to give millions of people “freedom from fear” following the Second World War, the NHS today is under threat of being sold-off and converted to a free-market model, inspired by the private health insurance system in the United States, which results in the deaths of an estimated 45,000 people every year. President Trump says the NHS is “on the table” in any future trade deal with America. Filmed in Britain and the United States, this timely documentary reveals what may be the last battle to preserve the most fundamental human right: health. Veteran filmmaker John Pilger takes us through a history of threats to Britain’s National Health Service, from its founding in 1948, through a push for privatisation during the 1980s, to challenges by the new politics of today and the drive for corporate take-over.