The Genesis of 'The War On Democracy'
By John Pilger
In the
1960s, when I
first went to
Latin America, I
travelled up the
cone of the
continent from
Chile across the
Altiplano to
Peru, mostly in
rickety buses
and
single-carriage
trains. It was
an experience my
memory stored
for life,
especially the
spectacle of the
movement of
people.
13/06/08
"ICH" -- - -They
moved through
the dust of a
snow-capped
wilderness,
along roads that
were ribbons of
red mud, and
they lived in
shanties that
defied gravity.
"We are
invisible," said
one man; another
used the term
abandonados; an
indigenous woman
in Bolivia
unforgettably
described her
poverty as a
commodity for
the rich.
When I later saw
Sebastiao
Salgado's
photographs of
Latin America's
working people,
I recognised the
people at the
roadside, the
gold miners and
the coffee
workers and the
silhouettes
framed in
crosses in the
cemeteries.
Perhaps the idea
for a cinema
film began then,
or when I
reported Ronald
Reagan's
murderous
assault on
Central America;
or when I first
read the words
of Victor Jara's
ballads and
heard Sam
Cooke's anthem A
Change Is Gonna
Come.
"The
War On Democracy"
is my first film
for cinema. It
follows more
than 55
documentary
films for
television,
which began with
The Quiet
Mutiny, set in
Vietnam. Most of
my films have
told stories of
people's
struggles
against
rapacious power
and of attempts
to subvert and
control our
historical
memory. It is
this control,
this organised
forgetting, that
has always
intrigued me
both as a
film-maker and a
journalist.
Described by
Harold Pinter as
a great silence
unbroken by the
incessant din of
the media age,
it assures the
powerful in the
west that the
struggle of
whole societies
against their
crimes is merely
"superficially
recorded, let
alone
documented, let
alone
acknowledged...
It never
happened. Even
while it was
happening it
never happened.
It didn't
matter. It was
of no interest".
This was true of
Nicaragua in the
early 1980s,
when a popular
revolution began
to turn back
poverty and
bring literacy
and hope to a
country long
dismissed as a
banana republic.
In the United
States, the
Sandinista
government was
successfully
portrayed as
communist and a
threat, and
crushed. After
all, Richard
Nixon had said
of all of Latin
America: "No one
gives a shit
about the
place." The War
On Democracy is
meant as an
antidote to
this.
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, in the
US and all over.
They were still
clapping Michael
Moore's
Fahrenheit 9/11
two months after
it opened in
this country.
Why? The answer
is
uncomplicated.
It was a
powerful film
that helped
people make
sense of news
that no longer
made sense. It
did not present
the usual phoney
"balance" as a
pretence for
presenting an
establishment
consensus. It
was not riddled
with the cliches,
platitudes and
power
assumptions that
permeate
"current
affairs". It was
realist cinema,
as important as
The Grapes of
Wrath was in the
1930s, and
people devoured
it.
The War On
Democracy is not
the same. It
comes out of a
British
commercial
television
tradition that
is too often
passed over: the
pioneering of
bold factual
journalism that
treated other
societies not as
post-imperial
curios, as
useful or
expendable to
"us", but
extraordinary
and important in
their own terms.
Granada's World
in Action, where
I began, was a
prime example.
It would report
and film in ways
that the BBC
would not dare.
These days, with
misnamed
"reality"
programmes
consuming much
of television
like a plague of
cane toads,
cinema has been
handed a timely
opportunity.
Such are the
dangers imposed
on us all today
by a rampant,
neo-fascist
superpower, and
so urgent is our
need for
uncontaminated
information that
people are
prepared to buy
a cinema ticket
to get it.
The War On
Democracy
examines the
false democracy
that comes with
western
corporations and
financial
institutions and
a war waged,
materially and
as propaganda,
against popular
democracy. It is
the story of the
people I first
saw 40 years
ago; but they
are no longer
invisible; they
are a mighty
political
movement,
reclaiming noble
concepts
distorted by
corporatism and
they are
defending the
most basic human
rights in a war
being waged
against all of
us.
Cinema and
television
production are
closely related,
of course, but
the differences,
I have learned,
are critical.
Cinema allows a
panorama to
unfold, giving a
sense of place
that only the
big screen
captures. In The
War On
Democracy, the
camera sweeps
across the Andes
in Bolivia to
the highest and
poorest city on
earth, El Alto,
then follows
Juan Delfin, a
priest and a
taxi driver,
into a cemetery
where children
are buried. That
Bolivia has been
asset-stripped
by multinational
companies, aided
by a corrupt
elite, is an
epic story
described by
this one man and
this spectacle.
That the people
of Bolivia have
stood up,
expelled the
foreign
consortium that
took their water
resources, even
the water that
fell from the
sky, is
understood as
the camera pans
across a giant
mural that Juan
Delfin painted.
This is cinema,
a moving mural
of ordinary
lives and
triumphs.
Chris Martin and
I (we made the
film as a
partnership)
used two crews
and two very
different
cinematographers,
Preston Clothier
and Rupert
Binsley. They
shot in
high-definition
stock, which
then had to be
converted to
35mm film - one
of cinema's
wonderful
anachronisms.
The film was
backed by the
impresario
Michael Watt, a
supporter of
anti-poverty
projects all
over the world,
who had told
producer Wayne
Young that he
wanted to put my
TV work in the
cinema. Granada
provided
additional
support, and ITV
will broadcast
the film later
in the year. The
extra funding
also allowed me
to persuade the
late Sam Cooke's
New York agents
to license A
Change Is Gonna
Come, 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
Chilean Victor
Jara, whose
songs celebrated
the popular
democracy of
Salvador Allende
before Pinochet
and the CIA
extinguished it.
We filmed in the
National Stadium
in Santiago,
Chile, where
Jara was taken
along with
thousands of
other political
prisoners. By
all accounts, he
was a source of
strength for his
comrades,
singing for them
until soldiers
beat him to the
ground and
smashed his
hands. He wrote
his last song
there and it was
smuggled out on
scraps of paper.
These are the
words:
What horror the
face of fascism
creates
They carry out their plans with
knife-like precision ...
For them, blood equals medals ...
How hard it is to sing
When I must sing of horror ...
In which silence and screams
Are the end of my song.
After two days of torture, they killed him. The War On Democracy is about such courage and a warning to us all that "for them" nothing has changed, that "blood equals medals".
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
