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'THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY' IS RELEASED ON DVD IN BRITAIN,
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Following ITV's showing of 'The War on Democracy' last August, more than 10,000 viewers contacted this website to ask about DVD distribution of the film. 'The War on Democracy' was released on DVD in Britain, the US and Australia in January and February 2008. Distribution throughout the US has been agreed with Bullfrog Films, which has carried many of Pilger's collected films. Lionsgate and Hopscotch will market the DVD following their successful cinema distribution of the film. For more information, contact: video@bullfrogfilms.com (US); info@lionsgatefilms.co.uk (UK); and info@hopscotch.com (Australia) WATCH THE TRAILER
Read Pilger's Guardian article about 'The War on Democracy'.
'The War on Democracy' is John Pilger's first major film for the cinema - in a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries. Set in Latin America and the US, it explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.
"The film tells a universal story," says Pilger, "analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror". View all Pilger DVDs |
| | 'INSIDE BURMA' RELEASED ON DVD IN AUSTRALIA |
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A new John Pilger DVD, 'Inside Burma: Land of Fear', is to be released in Australia in February 2008. The film, first shown in 1996 and updated in 1998, exposes the history and brutality of one of the world's most repressive regimes. The film includes an interview with Aung San Suu Kyi.
Read John Pilger's latest article on Burma, published in the New Statesman in October 2007. In the same month, Pilger also paid tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi at a London meeting organised by PEN and the Writers' Network of Burma.
All Burma articles by John Pilger. |
| | A CHANGE IS GONNA COME |
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'The War on Democracy' features the music of the great Chilean balladeer Victor Jara and the legendary American soul singer Sam Cooke (pictured right).
John Pilger describes Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come' as "one of the finest, most lyrical pieces of black music ever written and performed. I was in the southern United States when it was released. It was the time of the civil-rights movement, and Cooke's song spoke to and for all people struggling to be free. The same is true of the ballads of the Jara, whose songs celebrated the popular democracy of Salvador Allende before Pinochet and the CIA extinguished it." www.samcooke.com |
| | THE RISING OF LATIN AMERICA - THE GENESIS OF 'THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY' |
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| "Modern fictional cinema rarely seems to break political silences. The very fine Motorcycle Diaries was a generation too late. In this country, where Hollywood sets the liberal boundaries, the work of Ken Loach and a few others is an honourable exception. However, the cinema is changing as if by default. The documentary has returned to the big screen and is being embraced by the public." John Pilger writes in the Guardian as his acclaimed film 'The War On Democracy' hits UK cinemas. |
| | THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT - PILGER AT THE SOCIALISM 2007 CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO |
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John Pilger addressed the Socialism 2007 conference in Chicago on 16 June. He spoke about what Edward Bernays called the "invisible government which is the true ruling power" - the media - and how propaganda so often disguises itself as journalism.
Read transcript | Watch video |
| | NEW COLLECTION OF PILGER FILMS OUT ON DVD |
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John Pilger DVDs are now available to buy in the UK.
Released on DVD for the first time and personally chosen by John Pilger, the Documentaries That Changed The World & In The Name Of Justice box sets bring together 24 of Pilger's most hard-hitting and inspirational films.
You can also buy John's Australian and American DVDs. More |
| | 'FREEDOM NEXT TIME' UPDATED & OUT IN PAPERBACK |
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A fully updated paperback edition of John Pilger's latest book, Freedom Next Time, is published by Black Swan. For details contact Stina Smemo on ssmemo@transworld-publishers.co.uk
When Nelson Mandela stepped out of prison in 1990, the elation in South Africa and around the world was palpable. But true freedom for his people remains a distant dream. John Pilger describes how people battling to free themselves often glimpse freedom, only to see it taken away.
In South Africa, India, Palestine, Afghanistan and the forgotten Chagos islands, Pilger's vivid eyewitness reporting and tenacious interviews with the powerful blow away the secrets and lies of our rulers and turn a searchlight on to events consigned to shadows by an unrecognised, yet virulent censorship.
Click here to read the Guardian's review of this 'outstanding' book and John Pilger's impressions of the Hay Festival, where he launched 'Freedom Next Time'. |
| | VICTORY FOR THE CHAGOS ISLANDERS |
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The Appeal Court in London has upheld the previous High Court declaration that the expulsion of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean by the British government was "repugnant, illegal and irrational". The Chagos Islanders are now free to return to their homeland. They were expelled during the 1960s and 1970s in order to hand this British colony to the Americans for a military base.
Stealing a Nation, the Pilger film broadcast on ITV in 2004, first exposed the scandal. Out of Eden, an edited extract from John Pilger's new book Freedom Next Time, was published in the Guardian earlier this year.
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| | JOURNALISM AS A WEAPON OF WAR |
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In April 2006, John Pilger addressed the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, New York, in company with Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk and Charles Glass.
He argued that censorship by journalism is rife in Britain and the US - and it means the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries.
Read the complete or the abridged version of the address, which featured on the front cover of the New Statesman (right). |
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| DESTROYING THE BEST OF BRITAIN |
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In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the New Labour government is destroying one of the the venerable features of "communal decency" in Britain - the local post office. Economies need to be made, though not in the pursuit of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
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| LATIN AMERICA: THE HIDDEN WAR ON DEMOCRACY |
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John Pilger argues that an unreported war is being waged by the United States, and Britain, to restore power to the privileged classes at the expense of the majority. |
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| THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID HAS BEGUN AGAIN IN SOUTH AFRICA |
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John Pilger describes how economic apartheid has become a model for much of the world and resistance to it has begun again in the country where apartheid was said to be in the past. |
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| HONOURING THE 'UNBREAKABLE PROMISE' |
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Almost fourteen years after South Africa's first democratic elections and the fall of racial apartheid, John Pilger describes, in an address at Rhodes University, the dream and reality of the new South Africa and the responsibility of its new elite. |
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| A TRIBUTE TO PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS |
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In his column for the New Statesman, John Pilger pays tribute to his friend, the great photo-journalist Philip Jones Griffiths, who has died. "No photographer," he writes, "produced such finely subversive work, knowing that truth in war is always subversive." |
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| THE QUIET RENDITION OF MOUDUD AHMED |
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In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger describes the extraordinary life of Moudud Ahmed, who in 1971 led him into liberated East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. Now a political prisoner of the military dictatorship in Dhaka, Moudud Ahmed is seriously ill in a country which, says his wife Hasna, "is itself a prison". |
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| AUSTRALIA'S HIDDEN EMPIRE |
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John Pilger reports from his homeland on Australia's hidden empire - a 'sphere of influence' that stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to East Timor and Afghanistan. The arrival of a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, offers important continuity. |
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| CATCHING THE LAST TRAM HOME |
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John Pilger catches a ghostly tram to returns to where he grew up in Australia, the scene of his first encounter with the brutal, though enjoyable world of newspapers. |
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| BRINGING DOWN THE NEW BERLIN WALLS |
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John Pilger describes how the Palestinian breakout of Gaza offers inspiration for people struggling to bring down the new Berlin Walls all over the world. |
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| SUHARTO, THE MODEL KILLER, AND HIS FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES |
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In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger says the death of General Suharto, the former dictator of Indonesia, is an opportunity to review the role of this "model" for high crimes in the modern era - from Indonesia, to Chile, to Vietnam - and the powerful friends who ensured he would never suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein. |
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