Archive for March, 2007
A Channel 4 documentary last night asserted that Prince Charles is “unfit to rule” and could push Britain into a constitutional crisis.
The documentary (”Charles, the Meddling Prince”) reveals the findings of a six-month investigation into the Prince’s affairs, suggesting that his public comments have often been connected to secret lobbying and “meddling” in government affairs.
The Dispatches documentary also claimed that the Prince has used “questionable” financial arrangements to run the Duchy of Cornwall, the landed estate that provides him with an annual income of more than £14 million.
Naturally, the Prince has denied the film’s claims, and issued a lengthy rebuttal on his website. He seems furious and will surely go to court.
Last week, Channel 4 aired a documentary - ”The Great Global Warming Swindle” - which aims to discredit environmentalists and climate change scientists, alleging that they are part of a corrupt, self-centered political movement, whose only goal is to keep research funds flowing. Said environmentalists and scientists are now furious, and the film’s allegations are being debated worldwide.
In the film, “climate change denier” scientists, interviewed by director Martin Durkin of WagTV, argue that global warming is not caused by increased carbon dioxide in the air, but rather by the sun’s fairly inconsistent and unpredictable activity. Plus, we are told that vulcanoes, dying vegetation and oceans release much more CO2 into the atmosphere than industrialisation, so the alarm-raising conclusions of the environmental movement are misleading. The film’s argument that the use of apocalypic messages is a key ingredient of successful civil society campaigns is supported by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, who says he left the organisation over a similar dramatisation incident.
Buy the film from Amazon.co.uk
Continue reading ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’
To the astonishment of the documentary festival organisers behind IDFA, the Dutch government has cut off funding for the Jan Vrijman Fund, a key source for documentary filmmakers in non-EU and developing countries. IDFA founded the Jan Vrijman Fund in 1998 to encourage the documentary climate in developing countries by supporting local documentary projects, filmmakers and festivals.
Over the past years, hundreds of projects and films were supported and many were screened at IDFA, Berlin, Locarno and Sundance, and on TV networks across the globe. The fund has also been the backbone of an international documentary network, bringing together filmmakers from developing countries and the rest of the world.
IDFA is shocked at the prospect of losing two-thirds of its budget, but other funders - such as Foundation DOEN and the Hivos-NDCO Culture Fund - continue to be on board, and have increased their contribution for 2007. Owing to this support, the fund can remain operational for the time being and the first selection round in February can go ahead as planned. Meanwhile, the fund actively looks for new partners, and will decide in April whether the second selection round can take place in June.
Read more on the Fund’s homepage.
The UK’s largest international documentary film festival kicked off today, with screenings in Oxford, Milton Keynes and London. The OXDOX festival showcases over 120 fresh documentaries and Q&A sessions with over 70 directors.
In April, the festival will move to the Barbican in London, before embarking on an international tour to Paris, New York, Sydney and China. Among the films are UK premieres, Oscar-winning productions, as well as the first-ever simultaneous round-the-world screening of the environmental film, “The Planet”. Festival themes include the environment, human rights, China, the mafia, art, music politics and urban existence.
Also a major highlight has been a topical strand of premiere films focusing on women and Islam, including stories from Pakistan, Malaysia, Oman, Indonesia, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Palestine, Turkey and Yemen.
The standoff between Israel and Egypt continues over a controversial Israeli documentary film, which was screened two weeks ago on Israel’s Channel 1. The film “The Spirit of Shaked” alleges that the reconnaissance unit Shaked - whose leader at the time is now a member of the Israeli government - killed Egyptian prisoners of war at the end of the 1967 six day war.
However, the film’s director Ran Edelman said that this was not the intention and admitted inaccuracies in his film. He told the Jerusalem Post that he edited still pictures of an unrelated incident into the frames in question, showing enemy combatants in surrender and an Israeli soldier with a gun standing over dead bodies. But the prisoners and dead were taken and killed in unrelated battles elsewhere in the Sinai.
Continue reading ‘Israeli war documentary causes uproar in Egypt’
Canadian filmmaker Giselle Portenier hopes her documentary about the dramatic scale of violence against women in Guatemala will attract international attention, and force the government to act. “Killer’s Paradise” was made as a co-production between the Canadian National Film Board and the BBC, and premieres tonight in Canada.
The documentary has been described as a gripping look at both the epidemic of violence and murder, and the refusal by the goverment to investigate the crimes. The film tells a litany of tragic stories - the opening scene shows the aftermath of a young mother’s murder as she walked down the street with her young children, who wonder, as she lies dead on the road, why “Mommy has fallen asleep on the pavement.”
Since 2001, more than 2,000 women and girls have been murdered in Guatemala, but very few of the killers have been convicted.
Continue reading ‘New documentary on Guatemala murders’
A German documentary on globalisation, “Losers and Winners” by Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken, has won the main award at the 9th One World international human rights documentary film festival in Prague. The documentary follows 400 Chinese workers as they pull down a coke factory in Germany’s Ruhr Valley and ship the parts for re-assembly in China.
The Best Director award went to the “Cemetery Club” from Israel, a film about elderly people, directed by Tali Shemesh. The jury also awarded a special mention to a Danish documentary on human courage, “Enemies of Happiness” by Eva Mulvad. Meanwhile, Russian film-maker Svetlana Gannushkina was presented with the Homo Homini award for an outstanding achievement in human rights.
This year’s festival, which has offered some 120 documentaries from 40 countries, has attracted a record high number of 35,000 viewers. For more info, visit the One World website, or see our previous item on One World.
