Riverside Theatres in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) present THE POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY – BREAKING THE SILENCE, a film festival curated by Emmy and BAFTA award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and author, John Pilger.
Pilger is renowned for his independent investigative journalism giving a ‘voice to the voiceless’. He has chosen 26 landmark documentaries from the past 70 years for the festival – films that made significant impact on audiences and shaping the way we understand and respond to global issues such as war, civil rights and propaganda.
The program features a rare retrospective of some of Pilger’s ground-breaking work including his very first documentary The Quiet Mutiny (1970), an expose on American troop insurrections in Vietnam; The War You Don’t See (2010), a look at the role and responsibilities of media reporting on war; and Utopia (2013), an epic portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture and an investigation into a suppressed colonial past and rapacious present.
Additional program highlights include Harvest of Shame (1960), demonstrating a form of slavery existed in the United State in the mid-20th Century; Hearts and Minds (1974), questioning the US invasion of Indo-China; Half Life (1986), a look at the human consequences of the United States’ hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands; That Sugar Film (2014), one man’s journey to discover the bitter truth about sugar; and Journey into Hell (2015), a searing report of those who traffic the fleeing Rohingya to Thailand.
The Festival will also feature introductions with special guest speakers including Mark Davis, Damon Gameau, Curtis Levy, Robert Love and Alec Morgan. Pilger will open the Festival with a keynote address on the importance of critical thinking and documentary filmmaking.
Pilger said, “Documentaries that go against the received wisdom are becoming an endangered species, at a time when we need them perhaps more than ever. With the current information onslaught, the critical differences between fact and fiction are blurred. Documentary films are a powerful way to make sense of these competing voices and ideas.”
The Power of the Documentary: Breaking the Silence runs in conjunction with the MCA’s major summer exhibition David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948–2018, as part of the Sydney International Art Series.
THE POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY – BREAKING THE SILENCE is from 28th Nov to 9th Dec presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) and Riverside Theatres. Tickets are now available here and you can see the full program here.
