DOCUMENTARIES/THE PEOPLE SPEAK

Be warned. Your society is under threat. But do not despair. British filmmakers may save the world.

Headlines everywhere are increasingly warning that a war is being waged on democracy, with democratic governments themselves leading the charge. Fortunately for those favouring freedom over tyranny, British filmmakers are wielding their cameras against the onslaught and doing a fine job of it.

Filmmaker Chris Atkins has taken up the cudgel at home to battle New Labour’s erosion of civil rights with his hugely entertaining film Taking Liberties, based on his own book, while documentary veteran John Pilger has turned his eye on Latin America to produce The War on Democracy, a trademark piece of gravitas highlighting the United States’ consistent disregard for democracy in the region whenever it happened to produce what it sees as ‘the wrong result’.

Atkins confidently adopts an in-your-face stance and triumphantly shows the frequent gap between promise and reality, as well as routinely lampooning the powerful. Indeed, the contributions of many of his suspect subjects make Boris Johnson’s familiar buffoonery look like a shining example of tact and sophistication, so that the latter rather ironically provides a voice of reason throughout much of this film. Honestly, he does.

However, Atkins avoids any over the top confrontations, preferring most often to step back silently behind the camera and let his subjects do just that little bit more of the talking until they hang themselves. Liberty, after all, is surely best defended without attacking others.

That is, unless you are the U.S. Government. As Pilger’s The War on Democracy startlingly reveals, it has ridden roughshod time and time again over the principles of the country's founding ideals. Pilger takes as his starting point America’s illegal overthrow of Jacabo Arbenz in 1954 and goes on to explore Washington’s complicity in a variety of coups and attempted coups against democratically elected governments including the current Administration’s leading role in a 2002 attempt to oust Hugo Chavez, a man who has won 11 elections in 10 years!

Many of these events are already well documented but Pilger’s absorbing and emotive film gives them new life by siting them in a broader than usual context and by skilfully connecting them, at a pivotal moment in the centuries long Latin American attempts to escape colonialism .

Both films should be to your liking if you are one of those who would prefer not to wake up tomorrow in a police state.

Filed July 8, 2007 by Christiaan Harden, freelance journalist.