RON JACOBS welcomes a timely history of the Anti Imperialist league of America, and the role that culture played in their politics
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John Pilger’s mastery of the documentary essay
ANGUS REID reflects on John Pilger's late films as a popular form of political cinema
STEVE ANDREW appreciates a passionate account of the Scottish Club during the ‘lost decade’
By telling the story of a lawless frontier town from the point of view of the Lakota, Chinese labourers, prostitutes and displaced prospectors, makes for a potted history of capital, suggests ALEX HALL
TONY BURKE speaks to Gambian kora player SUNTOU SUSSO
MARIA DUARTE recommends a British boxing biopic about the stormy relationship between Nazeem Hamed and his trainer Brendan Ingle
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
IN 2007 John Pilger, after four decades of producing reportage films for TV, created his first film for cinema, The War on Democracy, and began a series of feature films for cinema that built on his achievement as a journalist and political writer, and surpassed it.
To embrace the longer form allowed him to change his relationship to the viewing public, from one that reported information towards a radical critique of capitalism from within, focusing on the abuse of power, the elimination of human rights and the inevitable tendency towards war.
There are five great films in this late, mature burst of creativity, all of them free to watch on his website johnpilger.com, and they demonstrate the political usefulness of the documentary essay as a form, unlike journalism, that can project analysis into the future and remain relevant beyond the date of production.
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