'La Terre Parle Arab' (2007). Director Maryse Gargour. Arabic, French, English audio with English subtitles, 61 minutes. Winner of several European awards (ASBU, Prix France 3 Medirerranee, Prix Memoire du Medirerranee).
This excellent documentary on one of the most pressing issues of our time brings together rarely seen footage of Palestine before 1948 juxtaposed with historical research, eyewitness accounts, stunning choreography, moving testimonials, and historical documents.
We can state the fact that before the Zionist project began in Palestine it was more heavily populated than the United States of today. We can state that Palestine 20 years or even fifty years after the Zionist project was launched was still predominantly Arab. But it is one thing to state a fact and another to have seen it or lived it. The next best thing is to have a film that shows you a video of the era and pictures of the documents of the era. That is what this film does in a very professional, practical, and effective way.
... Letters in European languages exchanged between European Zionists and European imperialists are read followed by scenes of the impact of these blueprints of social engineering. Articles from newspapers of the late 19th century and early 20th century report on the progress (a poor choice of word in this context) of the colonisation project. We see through documents, including news reports and letters, that the word colonisation was used by the Zionist colonizers, when their writings and their speeches expressed the ideas of replacing the natives with the new population from Europe. We hear from Ahad Haam, Israel Zangwill, Yosef Weitz, Chaim Weitzmann, Theodor Herzl, and David Ben-Gurion.
Dispute in Valladolid is a TV movie released in 1992 and directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe, which is a fictionalized account of the real “Valladolid debate”.
The director was Jean-Danielle Veren, Jean-Pierre Marielle played Las Casas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant acted as Sepúlveda.
The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of an indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the conquest of the Americas, its justification for the conversion to Catholicism, and more specifically about the relations between the European settlers and the natives of the New World. It consisted of a number of opposing views about the way natives were to be integrated into Spanish society, their conversion to Catholicism, and their rights.
Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas, argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order despite their practice of human sacrifices and other such customs, deserving the same consideration as the colonizers. Opposing this view were theologian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that the human sacrifice of innocents, cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature" were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war.
Norway in the 10th century. Askur, son of the powerful Thorgeir marries Embla, daughter of one of the few remaining landowners in Norway, in a pagan ceremony. King Olav, a ruthless Christian, wants to remove all traces of non-Christian beliefs and captures the two of them during the ceremony. In order to free Embla, Askur must go to Iceland and convert the people there to Christianity.
Little Big Man is a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 novel Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. While broadly categorized as a western, or an epic, the film encompasses several literary/film genres, including comedy, drama and adventure. The film follows the life of a white man who was raised by members of the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century. The film is largely concerned with contrasting the lives of American pioneers and Native Americans throughout the progression of the boy's life. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey and Richard Mulligan.
Little Big Man is an early revisionist Western in its sympathetic depiction of Native Americans and its exposure of the villainous practices of United States Cavalry. The revision uses elements of satire and tragedy to examine prejudice and injustice. Little Big Man is an anti-establishment film of the period, indirectly protesting America's involvement in the Vietnam War by portraying the United States Armed Forces negatively.
The end of the film is flawed in my opinion. The Chief Dan George character does not finish the story as he should. There should be no nostalic silence from Jack Crabb at the end. It makes too much sense and the events it depicts are not sensical, but horror, emotion and violence. I believe the ending was adapted later in the production process. But you be the judge.
In 2014, Little Big Man was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Written and Directed by Peter Watkins for the BBC in a quasi-newsreel style and with nonprofessional actors. It first aired in the UK on December 15th 1964. It is a highly detailed and authentic reconstruction of the April 16, 1746 Battle of Culloden - the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Here, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, on Drummossie Moor near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. It was the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The documentary was unique at the time as it broke the “fourth wall” with historical participants commenting as if modern TV cameras were present.
With a shoe-string budget and a troop of amateur actors, Peter Watkins created a controversial and grim look at the decaying Scottish clan system and the British occupation of Scotland. During the duration of the film Mr. Watkins takes no side and scathingly shows how both sides of the battlefield are morally and socially corrupt. Prince Bonnie Charles Stuart (pretender to the throne) on the battle field against the superior forces of the House of Hannover. The Jacobites didn't really stand a chance against the World's greatest army. Stupidity and jealousy ruined any chance they had.
Peter Watkins also showed the aftermath of the battle and the devastating effects the battle had on the surrounding communities. He shot this film in his trademark faux-documentary style. Even with a small budget, Mr. Watkins still manages to create a very important film. One that he spent months on researching and planning. The film also reflects how the media treated combat as we have one the field reports from the attacking army and interviews with the soldiers and their views on the enemy.
Culloden Moor, known then as Drummossie Muir, was the site of the last pitched battle on the British mainland on 16 April 1746.
The Jacobites were pulling back into the Highlands, ending their siege of Stirling as they headed for Inverness. Despite their victory at Falkirk, Jacobite morale was declining. Hunger saw the men spreading out wide to find their own food, some of them breaking ranks for home.
Most of their artillery had been ditched since reinforcements from France were growing more unlikely.
Things were very different for the Duke of Cumberland, now leading the Hanovarian army. His army was being well supplied by sea as he followed Prince Charles up the east coast.
Lord George Murray advised his Prince that the Jacobites would be best dispersing into the hills to use guerrilla strikes, bringing the army back together in the summer. Charles chose however, to reject the tactics the Highlanders knew best and opted to meet the enemy again in an open area.
On the night of the 15th, a mismanaged strike was launched on Cumberland’s camp which achieved nothing, resulting only in sleepless, hungry Highlanders for the next day. When they met on the Moor near Culloden, the Jacobites numbered four and a half thousand to Cumberland’s nine thousand Hanovarians.
Restricted by flanking dykes, the Jacobites presented a narrow, dense front. For the first twenty minutes of the hour-long battle the Hanovarian cannons pummelled the crowded area. When the Jacobites advanced the men in the centre found themselves having to squeeze to the right to avoid soft ground. There were so many men in such a small area that muskets could not be used. Nevertheless they butchered on through the Hanovarian left only to meet another regiment behind.
The Jacobite left had not joined the attack, and with two-thirds of the men now in difficulties, Cumberland’s cavalry had little trouble sweeping in to end the battle by two’o’clock. Working at their leisure, they proceeded to slaughter every Jacobite they had until the following day and continued to kill in round-ups for weeks following.
The fatalities numbered three hundred Hanovarians and two thousand Jacobites.
This is the first comprehensive history of six great Indian nations, dramatically filmed on location at their native tribal lands across America, using reenactments, archival footage, maps and original music. The story of the Iroquois, Seminole, Shawnee, Navajo, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux nations unfolds in their struggle to protect their lands, cultures, and freedoms. "Stirring reenactments." - Booklist Magazine.
Over the past few years, Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world -- except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.
Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel's favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies.
Original version Narrated by Roger Waters / Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally.
The history of Kashmir is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of Central Asia, South Asia and East Asia. Historically, Kashmir referred to the Kashmir Valley.Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir (which consists of Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, and Ladakh), the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chinand the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later in the ninth century, Shaivism arose. Islamization in Kashmir took place during 13th to 15th century and led to the eventual decline of the Kashmir Shaivism in Kashmir. However, the achievements of the previous civilizations were not lost.
In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Shah Mir Dynasty. For the next five centuries, Muslim monarchs ruled Kashmir, including the Mughal Empire, who ruled from 1586 until 1751, and the Afghan Durrani Empire, which ruled from 1747 until 1819. That year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until 1947, when the former princely state became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China.
Kashmir the story is a documentary which gives an insight into the conflict-ridden region, showcasing facts as they are. The purely observational piece of storytelling is an honest attempt to showcase life in the valley.
"Power is power it is the one element of the human condition you cannot fake."
- Stalin, played by David Burke in Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983)
Sidney Reilly was born Zigmund Markovich Rozenblum (Rosenblum) on 24 March 1874 in Odessa. This is not for certain. By 1903 he was working for the British Secret Service in the ferment that was Europe before the First World War.
According to reports of the Okhrana, the tsarist political police, whose archives are preserved at the Hoover Institute, the young Rosenblum was arrested in 1892 for political activities and for being a courier for a revolutionary group known as the Friends of Enlightenment. Evidence indicates that the arrival of Rosenblum in London in December 1895 was from France, and was prompted by his unscrupulous acquisition of a large sum of money in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, a residential suburb of Paris, necessitating a hasty flight. According to this account, Rosenblum and Yan Voitek, a Polish accomplice, had waylaid two Italian anarchists on 25 December 1895 and robbed them of a substantial amount of revolutionary funds. One anarchist's throat was cut; the other, Constant Della Cassa, died from knife wounds in Fontainebleau Hospital three days later.
Regardless of whether the peripatetic Rosenblum arrived in Britain via Brazil or France, he resided at the Albert Mansions, an apartment block in Rosetta Street, Waterloo, London, in early 1896. Now comfortably settled in Britain, Rosenblum created the Ozone Preparations Company, which peddled patent medicines. Because of his knowledge of languages, he had become a paid informant for the émigré intelligence network of William Melville, superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch, whom official sources identify as later overseeing a Special Section of the British Secret Service Bureau founded in 1909.
In 1897 Rosenblum began a torrid affair with Margaret Thomas (née Callaghan), the youthful wife of Reverend Hugh Thomas, shortly before the latter's death. Rosenblum first met Thomas in London via his Ozone Preparations Company. Thomas had a kidney inflammation and was intrigued by the miracle cures peddled by Rosenblum. Thomas introduced Rosenblum to his young wife at his manor house, and over the next six months, they began having an affair. On 4 March 1898, Thomas altered his will and appointed Margaret as an executrix. A week after the new will was made, Thomas and his nurse arrived at Newhaven Harbour Station. On 12 March 1898, Thomas was found dead in his hotel room.[44] A mysterious Dr. T. W. Andrew, whose physical description matched that of Rosenblum, appeared to certify Thomas's death as generic influenza and after signing the relevant documents proclaimed that there was no need for an inquest.
Records indicate that there was no one by the name of Dr. T. W. Andrew in Great Britain circa 1897.Margaret insisted that her husband's body be ready for burial 36 hours after his death. She inherited roughly £800,000. The Metropolitan Police did not investigate Dr. T. W. Andrew, nor did they investigate the nurse whom Margaret had hired, who was previously linked to the arsenic poisoning of a former employer. Four months later, on 22 August 1898, Rosenblum married Margaret Thomas at the Holborn Registry Office in London. The two witnesses at the ceremony were Charles Richard Cross, a government official, and Joseph Bell, an Admiralty clerk. Both would eventually marry daughters of Henry Freeman Pannett, an associate of William Melville. The marriage not only brought the wealth which Rosenblum desired but provided a pretext to discard his identity of Sigmund Rosenblum; with Melville's assistance, he crafted a new identity: "Sidney George Reilly." This new identity was key to achieving his desire to return to the Russian Empire and voyage to the Far East. It must be noted that Reilly "obtained his new identity and nationality without taking any legal steps to change his name and without making an official application for British citizenship, all of which suggests some type of official intervention" on his behalf.
It is from here the 1983 Thames Television series takes up the life of Reilly, Rosemblum.
In June 1899, the newly endowed Sidney Reilly and his wife Margaret traveled to Emperor Nicholas II's Russian Empire using Reilly's (forged) British passport—a travel document and a cover identity both purportedly created by William Melville. While in St. Petersburg, he was approached by Japanese General Akashi Motojiro (1864-1919) to work for the Japanese Secret Intelligence Services. A keen judge of character, Motojiro believed the most reliable spies were those who were motivated by profit instead of by feelings of sympathy towards Japan and, accordingly, he believed Reilly to be such a person. As tensions between Russia and Japan were escalating towards war, Motojiro had at his disposal a budget of one million yen provided by the Japanese Ministry of War to obtain information on the movements of Russian troops and naval developments. Motojiro instructed Reilly to offer financial aid to Russian revolutionaries in exchange for information about the Russian Intelligence Services and, more importantly, to determine the strength of the Russian armed forces particularly in the Far East. Accepting Motojiro's recruitment overtures, Reilly now became simultaneously an agent for both the British War Office and the Japanese Empire. While his wife Margaret remained in St. Petersburg, Reilly allegedly reconnoitered the Caucasus for its oil deposits and compiled a resource prospectus as part of "The Great Game." He reported his findings to the British Government which paid him for the assignment.
More on Reilly's life can be found here, or by watching the TV series, the first episode of which is above.
Reilly was no doubt a thug, a liar, an egotist and opportunist. But he always dressed well and was polite to the ladies.
This is first systematic account of frontier violence in Queensland, Australia. Following in the tracks of the pastoralists as they moved into 'new' lands across the colony in the 19th Century, Dr Timothy Bottoms identifies massacres, poisonings and other incidents, including many that no-one has documented before.
Rüschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large bounty tax revenue for the Zambians. Zambia has the 3rd largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80% are unemployed. Based on original research into public documents, the film describes the tax system employed by multinational companies in Africa.
Director Christoffer Guldbrandsen
Producer Henrik Veileborg
Produced by Guldbrandsen Film
Teaching of the Sundance and why we dance, the history, the outlawing, the youth,men, women and elders points of view. It does not show the ceremony but the preparations involved and work involved to make it happen. We were offered to film it but declined out of respect for the dancers and our people. You can teach people about the ceremonies without showing the ceremony. The only real way to learn is to go, watch, listen and help. It aired 10 years ago in March 0f 2003.
Told from the perspective of contemporary Lakota people, the film explores the life of Crazy Horse (Tasunke Witko). Viewers see the natural world of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana that Crazy Horse knew. His spiritual nature is discussed, as are his unique qualities as a leader. The final portion of the film examines his role at the Battle of Little Bighorn, his resistance against reservation life, and his violent death at Fort Robinson in 1877. Lakota people share what Crazy Horse means in their world today. The film features original music created for this story. Sharing their insights are Lakota historians Jace DeCory, Donovin Sprague, Wilmer Mesteth and Whitney Recountre.
A portrait of two different voices whose demands for black equality gave rise to gains in American civil rights.
A half-century after their deaths, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X remain two of the world's most revered political activists. They were both respected leaders of the American Civil Rights movement, struggling for racial equality and freedom. But at the start of the 1960s, the media were constructing a conflict that stirred the civil rights debate: Malcolm X versus Reverend Martin Luther King.
While King advocated non-violent direct action and passive resistance to achieve equal civil rights, Malcolm X was the spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI), the black Muslim movement which violently rejected white America and its Christian values, and preached the supremacy of blacks over whites.
He promoted a segregationist approach that sought to instil in blacks a pride in their African heritage, whereas Martin Luther King believed that self-respect would come through integration.
"King was working to take down signs that prevented black people from riding buses where they wanted to, and to ride in trains, public transportation, preventing them from voting, and all of those things that black people were prevented from doing in the south. In the north, blacks always could vote, but as Malcolm said 'You may have the vote but you ain't no voting for nothing because they've already decided that you are not going to have any power'," explains historian James H. Cone.
King once told the press that "the method of non-violent resistance is one of the most potent, if not the most potent weapons available to oppressed people and their struggle for freedom."
However, for Malcolm, turning the other cheek was a weak strategy that was unacceptable.
"Malcolm comes from a black nationalist tradition that does not believe that you can get your freedom, your self-respect, your dignity by simply letting somebody beat up on you, and you do not try to defend yourself. That's why Malcolm emphasised self-defence. But King emphasised non-violence because if blacks had responded, tried to defend themselves, that would have brought the police department down on those demonstrators and whites would have loved to have the chance to kill black people indiscriminately. So King and Malcolm had that tension," says Cone.
Malcolm X regularly criticised King, accusing him of bowing to whites and subjugating blacks to the very culture that had historically denigrated and abused them.
"The white man pays Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidises Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the negroes to be defenceless. That's what you mean by non-violent: be defenceless. Be defenceless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken a people into captivity. That's just the American white man," Malcolm X said.
In Washington, King continued his political work with a group of senators sympathetic to his ideas. He opened historic collaborations with the white community - joining the debate on the civil rights draft bill initiated by President John F Kennedy - that culminated in the March on Washington in 1963 and the signing of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964.
Anyone interested in Australia should watch this. The then Prime Minister Paul Keating taking live on air questions in 1993 about the so-called Mabo Decision (Mabo v Queensland (No 2)) that was made by the High Court in 1992. Keating fields questions on the John Laws radio show. He responds with intelligence and patience, while attempting to explain what had actually happened.
The Mabo decision should be considered historic as a legal decision on an international level as;
"The High Court held that the doctrine of terra nullius, which imported all laws of England to a new land, did not apply in circumstances where there were already inhabitants present - even if those inhabitants had been regarded at the time as "uncivilized". Consequently, the Court held that the rules of reception of English law that applied were not those applicable where the land was barren and unhabited, but rather the rules that applied where an existing people were settled."
Mabo was eventually curtailed by the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 introduced by the John Howard led Liberal Government. Since then there have been large Native Title claims granted but even they often contain lease hold clauses that allow for continued economic exploitation by non-Native, and more lately non-Australian, interests (e.g. the current Adani Mining Carmichael Coal venture is being made possible by the extinguishing of Native Title) . Furthermore, Native Title can be extinguished by state governments in Australia if claims are considered to be contrary to 'the national interest'. What is more 'in the national interest' than the people themselves, the majority of whom have long supported the recognition of Indigenous dispossession.
Mabo really was a missed opportunity. The results of the ultimate failure to work with the High Court decision (i.e. finally confirmed by the Native Title Amendment Act of 1998) and all the ideas and history it represented are still developing as potential impacts and consequences. Just the current Adani Mining Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project is one example of how unsustainable economic interests are being imposed on people (i.e. THE national interest) via the Native Title Amendment Act 1998. It has been 25 years this new year of 2017 since Mabo 2 and it remains in the interest of all Australians to implement the original High Court decision and overturn the 1998 Act, organise a national tribunal that represents the relevant actors and formulate a new Act that will bring about both sustainable development within Native Title Lands and the recognition of Indigenous Dispossession.
For 200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting for their land, their life, their families and their right to be free: ''Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you.''
When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.
But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?
It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one's neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we're not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements.
Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don't concern us, and that we don't care about? Wasting our time and money and intruding in our homes.
I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.
Recently there have been a few faltering steps to correct this situation, but too faltering and too few, so I, as a member in this profession, do not feel that I can as a citizen of the United States accept an award here tonight. I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.
I would have been here tonight to speak to you directly, but I felt that perhaps I could be of better use if I went to Wounded Knee to help forestall in whatever way I can the establishment of a peace which would be dishonorable as long as the rivers shall run and the grass shall grow.
I would hope that those who are listening would not look upon this as a rude intrusion, but as an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory.
Thank you for your kindness and your courtesy to Miss Littlefeather. Thank you and good night.
This statement was written by Marlon Brando for delivery at the Academy Awards ceremony where Mr. Brando refused an Oscar. The speaker, who read only a part of it, was Shasheen Littlefeather.
Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) of the Oglala Lakota Sioux
The story of an early 20th century expedition to find the 'missing link' with the Indigenous people of Australia.
In 1910, a scientist called Erik Mjöberg led the first Swedish expedition to Australia. An entomologist by trade, Mjöberg’s brief was to document the native wildlife, but his underlying motivation was to explore the idea that Aborigines were the missing link between ape and man. Landing in Derby, Western Australia, he bought supplies, hired a bullock team and set off into the Kimberley with his increasingly fractious team, battling heat and flies until they got their first glimpse of “one of the oldest races in the world - the Australian negroes”.
Describing the Aborigines as “ugly”, “Neanderthal-like” and possessed of an “animalistic cunning”, Mjöberg set about plundering and desecrating their grave sites and smuggling the remains back home—actions that were to have lasting consequences for all concerned.
Shot in remote regions of the Kimberley in Australia and in Stockholm and Varberg Sweden, Dark Science uses diary sources, stunning black and white footage from the expedition and excerpts from Mjöberg’s novel Wings of Poison to provide a shocking glimpse into the mind of early 20th century Western man.
The remains Mjöberg took from the Kimberley were returned to Australia in 2004 by the Swedish Government, the first repatriation of human remains by a major European Museum.
The story of the far right government of Queensland, Australia from 1968-1989. Nineteen years of conservative rule, made possible by a electoral gerrymander, corrupt police, corrupt politicians and a system of intimidation and violence that permeated all dimensions of society. My parents were politically active against the government in Queensland in the 1970s, as a result our phone was tapped and we were harassed by police and government officials.
This video presentation is a documentary-based analysis of the role of the media in the political strategy of former Queensland Premier, Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen.
The video documentary was submitted as part of a thesis for a Master of Arts degree at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in July 1997.
The documentary was compiled by Debra Beattie, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Sources include:
The Sunshine System (1986) Quentin Dempster and Ross Wilson (50 minutes)
The Moonlight State (May 1987) ABC Four Corners, Chris Masters (reporter), Andrew Olle (presenter) and Peter Manning (executive producer) (59' 59")
The Battle For Bowen Hills (1975) Peter Gray and Garry Lane (Crowsfoot Films) (21 minutes)
Earth First (1987) Gaia Films Jeni Kendall (director/producer) and John Seed (producer) (54 minutes)
If You Don't Fight, You Lose (1978) Leslie Mannison, Joseph Monsour and Ian Curr (24 minutes)
The Whole World Is Watching (1982) Amanda King and Peter Gray (25 minutes)
Friends And Enemies(1987) Tom Zubrycki, Jotz Productions (88 minutes)
Portrait Of A Premier (1978) Brian Benson
State Of Shock (1989) David Bradbury
Joh's Jury (1993) ABC Television, Ken Cameron (98 minutes)
Bruce Dickson footage (1977)
Laurie Anderson's "The Dream Before" is sung by Christine Johnson, recorded at one of the early performances of Women In Voice at the Sitting Duck (cafe and performance venue) in Brisbane in the early 1980s.
Lyrics: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress.
Inspired by Walter Benjamin
Lyrics by Laurie Anderson
Performed by Christine Johnson
The Battle of Algiers (Italian: La battaglia di Algeri; Arabic: معركة الجزائر, romanized: Maʿrakat al-Jazāʾir) is a 1966 Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. It is based on action undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962) against the French government in North Africa, the most prominent being the eponymous Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle. The film's score was composed by Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone. It is often associated with Italian neorealist cinema.
The film concentrates mainly on revolutionary fighter Ali La Pointe during the years between 1954 and 1957, when guerrilla fighters of the FLN went into Algiers. Their actions were met by French paratroopers attempting to regain territory. The highly dramatic film is about the organization of a guerrilla movement and the illegal methods, such as torture, used by the French to stop it. Algeria succeeded in gaining independence from the French, which Pontecorvo addresses in the film's epilogue.
The film was met with international acclaim, and it is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. It won the Golden Lion at the 27th Venice Film Festival among other awards and nominations. It also was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A subject of sociopolitical controversy in France, the film was not screened in the country for five years. Insurgent groups and state authorities have considered it to be an important commentary on urban guerrilla warfare. In Sight and Sound's 2022 poll of the greatest films of all time, it ranked 45th on the critics' list and 22nd with directors.
In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
I met John Akomfrah once. I was leaving a screening of "7 Songs for Malcolm X" early at the Museum of Visual Culture in Umeå Sweden in 2007 (parental duties called). He was sitting in the foyer while the film was screening. I approached him and thanked him for his work, (Handsworth Songs is a work of genius), and he said he was now working on a biopic of Fela Kuti. As far as I know he has not finished it. I hope he does one day.
The Stuart Hall Project is a 2013 British film written and directed by John Akomfrah centred on cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who is regarded as one of the founding figures of the New Left and a key architect of Cultural Studies in Britain. The film uses a montage of documentary footage together with Hall's own words and thoughts to produce what Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called "an absorbing account", awarding it four stars and stating that it has "an idealism and high seriousness that people might not immediately associate with the subject Hall pioneered".
Sight and Sound magazine's Ashley Clark described it as "a strongly personal work" that "unfolds simultaneously as a tribute to a heroic figure, a study of the emergence of the New Left and its attendant political ideas, and a summation, in thematic and technical terms, of the key characteristics of Akomfrah’s body of work thus far (intertextuality, archival manipulation, a focus on postcolonial and diasporic discourse in Britain)."
