John Pilger Film Retrospective
In preparation for appearance of the world-renowned journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker, John Pilger, at our campus next week, a sample of 3 of the over 60 films in the Pilger archive are offered for the REEL audience. Come see one or all!
When: Wednesday, October 29th – 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Where: Eagle Room at Town & Country Center – Northwest College
11:00 a.m. Welcome to Australia: The Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics (1999)
(50 min) With focus on sports and the Sydney Olympics, John Pilger and Alan Lowery take a look at Australia’s Aborigines who are still excluded, impoverished and mistreated, while their part in the brilliant history of Australia’s sports successes goes virtually unrecognized.
12:30 p.m. Inside Burma: Land of Fear (Updated 1999)
(52 min) John Pilger goes undercover in one of the world’s most isolated and extraordinary countries, Burma, which Amnesty International calls ‘a prison without bars’. They discover slave labour preparing for tourism and foreign investment. Historic interview with Aung San Suu Kyi.
1:30 p.m. South Africa: Apartheid Did Not Die (1998)
(90 min) John Pilger describes how despite the promise of social change and democracy in South Africa, economic apartheid that is a pattern in much of the world remains in South Africa - and how resistance has begun again in the country where apartheid was said to be in the past.
The Visitor (Film)
Showtime: October 22nd, 12:30 p.m. (100 minutes)
Award-winning, filmmaker Tom McCarthy (”The Station Agent” and “Sideways”) reaches into the lives of transnationals and some of the hot-button questions regarding immigration policies and the realities they create for the Middle Easterners living in New York city. Stunning character development backgrounds this poignant and often funny film as it discloses post-9/11 situation for Tarek, his mother and girlfriend. The story unfolds with what follows the chance encounter of a disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose empty life is transformed as he becomes engaged with strangers, their visa issues, humanity, and music.
SEE – Official film web site – http://www.thevisitorfilm.com/
Hacking Democracy (Film)
Showtime: October 15th, 12:30 p.m. (81 min.)
A nonpartisan, clear-eyed look at the secrecy, cronyism and incompetence of elections in present-day America as it captures a citizen’s movement intent on taking back elections – and DEMOCRACY ITSELF. Documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with ‘e-voting’ (electronic voting) systems that occurred during America’s 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in Volusia County, Florida. Nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.
“It is hard to imagine…a documentary…more important to the civic life of the nation.”
-Baltimore Sun
Presenter:
Selected/presented by professor Donna Rhea, Government Faculty at Northwest College
Recent media focus on this issue:
- New York Times article
- Democracy Now – Greg Palast on Vote Rigging and Suppression Ahead of
the 2008 Election