A World At War
Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing |
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De Stand van de Zon
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| ‘De Stand van de Zon’ gives us a very close portrait of everyday life of an ordinary Indonesian family in Jakarta: Rumidja, her sons Bakti and Dwi and her friend Ibu Sum. Not rich, not poor. This family has to deal with the paucity of food in order to satisfy their daily needs. In the city of Jakarta there is a crisis. Because of the crisis the students and population force President Suharto to step down. The battle between the yellow party Golkar and the red party PDI of Megawati reaches its peak during the hilarious election ceremony in the Kampong. Bakti feels excluded because he is not a Muslim like the rest of his family. His mother Rumidja is a Christian as she married a Christian man. She would like to keep her son Christian. This film shows us in a very visual and involved manner how, in spite of many difficulties, people can survive in Indonesia. |
Downwind: Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Age of Virtual War
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| ‘Downwind’ draws a line from Hiroshima through the Nevada nuclear test site to the sands of Iraq and Kuwait, where thousands of soldiers and civilians were exposed to toxic, irradiating dust particles by the use of depleted uranium tank penetrators. Used extensively in the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, and in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, these DU weapons effectively destroy heavy armor and fortified bunkers, yet they release very fine uranium oxide particles, which may be inhaled or ingested. Though the long-term effects are highly contested, there is little indication that the U.S. military informed soldiers or civilians about the possible adverse health and environmental effects. Blending broad issues of history and memory with the near ubiquitous control of war imagery by the military, ‘Downwind’ raises questions about the true human cost when the desire for total victory outweighs the moral obligations of humanitarian intervention. |
Fi Shabaket El Ankaboot
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| This film, shot in 2003 in the Palestinian Territories, forms part of Al-Haq’s campaign against collective punishments, the penalizing of a group as a whole with no regard for individual responsibility. Such punishments and other measures of intimidation have been utilized by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for decades. Through the film, Al-Haq provides an overview of these punitive measures against the Palestinian civilian population. While the film mainly addresses the accounts of two women, it also highlights the impact that measures of collective punishment have had on the whole civilian population. This documentary seeks to capture and relay some of the disastrous implications that the continuous construction of the Separation Wall and the further expropriation of land for its construction. |
Holiday Camp
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| In a bold and arresting visual style, ‘Holiday Camp’ connects the issues of indigenous dispossession, genocide and the incarceration of refugees. Exploring implications of the mandatory detention system and the construction of national borders, ‘Holiday Camp’ challenges Australians to consider dimensions of policy, humanity and freedom. |
In Whose Interest?
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| ‘In Whose Interest?’ is a fast moving and powerful 27-minute documentary in response to 9/11. San Francisco and London-based filmmaker David Kaplowitz leads us on an eye-opening historical journey through the past 50 years of United States intervention, questioning the motives and examining the effects of US foreign policy over that time span. Revealing a pattern of intervention, the film focuses on Guatemala, Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador, and Palestine/Israel. Archive footage, photographs, recently declassified documents, and media tidbits are dynamically interwoven with personal eyewitness accounts and commentary from academics, such as Noam Chomsky, religious leaders and politicians. ‘In Whose Interest?’ is informative and disturbingly honest, yet upbeat, with twists of irony and humor. |
Jang Aur Aman
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| Filmed over three tumultuous years in India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA, ‘War and Peace’ is a documentary journey of peace activism in the face of global militarism and war. Triggered by macabre scenes of jubilation that greeted nuclear testing in the Indian sub-continent, the film is dramatically framed by the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. Fifty years after his death, memories of Gandhi seem like a mirage that never was, created by our thirst for peace and our very distance from its realisation. |
Jeremy Hardy vs The Israeli Army
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| Overcome by curiosity and a love of justice, British comedian Jeremy Hardy travels to Palestine to try his hand at ending the occupation. What he does not know is that he will bear testimony to a horrific yet seminal moment in the struggle of the Palestine people. ‘Jeremy Hardy vs. The Israeli Army’ is the unlikely journey of an unlikely witness from onlooker to human shield. From the stand-off at Yasser Arafat’s compound to the siege of the Church of the Nativity, ‘Jeremy Hardy vs. The Israeli Army’ captures the birth of a new kind of political engagement. Jeremy is struck by the commitment of people who pack their bags for Palestine to stand in the way of guns and tanks. He never expected the scale of the phenomenon that came to be known as the International Solidarity Movement. |
LBJ
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| ‘LBJ’ is a satire and a historical synthesis of the violence in the United States of America since early times in history through the murders of Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy. |
Not in My Name
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| ‘Not in My Name’ explores the beginnings of George Bush’s “war on terrorism”. People across the world deplored the attack on America on September 11th, 2001, but have American right wingers used it as a pretext for unleashing a dangerous war of terror of their own? The film tells the story of how America came to attack Afghanistan and explores the history of US and UK involvement in the region. It also explains the background of Osama bin Laden, and the important part the US played in his career. Contributions from Tony Benn, John Pilger, Paul Foot, Jon Snow, Salma Yaqoob, Tariq Ali, George Galloway and Bianca Jagger. Launched in 2002, the video has been shown by independent cinemas and at public meetings across the UK and in the US. |
Not in My Name II – The Human Shields
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| In January 2003 around 25 people got in three London double-decker buses and set out for Iraq. Their aim was to stop a war. ‘Not in My Name II – The Human Shields’ follows their journey across Europe, Turkey and Syria to Baghdad. They receive huge support along the way and they inspire hundreds of other people to become human shields. En route there are problems with the press and disputes over the leadership. After their 3,000 mile drive they enter Iraq and discover the disturbing realities of a country suffering from the effects of sanctions, killer diseases and the depleted uranium weapons used in the first Gulf War. There are disputes between some shields and the Iraqi regime. Some go home, but around 140 stay. They describe the impact of the US-led bombing and invasion. The film asks what difference did the human shields make? Did they save lives? Did they affect how the war was conducted? |
On the Buses
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| With the UK government actively supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq, three busloads set off on the 22nd of March, 2002 for an anti-war demonstration at an English airbase used by the US jets during bombing raids. But the protesters never made it: they were stopped, searched for two hours and then hijacked by the police. One hundred and twenty people on three buses were escorted back to London, down a major motorway cleared for the purpose, amidst claims that the protesters – rather than the bombers – might ‘breach the peace’ if they excercised their right to freedom of movement and expression. This film shows some of the suppression of dissent in the UK while ‘democracy and human rights’ remain as far away as ever in Iraq and other targets of US/UK military adventures. |
Papa 2
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| ‘Papa 2′ was a notorious interrogation centre that was run by the Indian Armed Forces untill 1996. Officially nearly 4,000 people – unofficially, over 8,000 – have disappeared from the Kashmir Valley over the past 15 years. The film has interviews with the affected people and also members of the Association of Parents of Disappeared People. |
Skrivene Rane
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| ‘Hidden Wounds’ is TV documentary film on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Serbia – also known as a Vietnamese Syndrome. This film follows three people who suffered traumas in the war and are still facing psychological problems. |
The Fourth World War
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| Shot on the front lines of struggles on five continents where the mainstream media cannot go, ‘The Fourth World War’ is an untold human story of the current global conflict.
While our airwaves are crowded with talk of a new world war, narrated by generals and filmed from the noses of bombs, the human story of this global conflict remains untold. ‘The Fourth World War’ weaves together the images and voices of the war on the ground in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, ‘The North’ from Seattle to Genova, and the ‘War on Terror’ in New York and Iraq. It reveals a terrifying system of global violence in which we are all caught and more importantly it introduces us to the men and women with whom we share this planet – men and women who will stop this war. |
The Killing Zone
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| ‘The Killing Zone’ is an urban thriller set in contemporary New York City. It is the story of Malcolm Ojewku, played by Isaach de Bankole, a Nigerian psychiatrist who witnesses the murder of his adoptive father, by a homeless twelve-year-old boy. The death evokes haunting flashbacks of Malcolm’s own past as a child soldier during the Biafra War in Nigeria. Malcolm is compelled to search for the killer and resolve his inner turmoil, even at the expense of destroying his own family.
As the film unfolds, we discover the story of Malcolm’s violent past and how Dr. Michael Stevens (Atong), played by Peter Francis James, an idealistic African-American missionary, who would become his adoptive father, and remove him from Nigeria’s inter-ethnic violence. Atong, sensing the different and compassionate Malcolm, entangled in his violent surroundings, helps him to leave the country and achieve the successes of an accomplished psychiatrist in America. |