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John Pilger's film on Iraq continues to hold relevance two years after its original release
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Two
years after its release, Paying the Price: Killing the Children
of Iraq continues to have legs as it makes its way around the
United States at showing after showing. The film, which examines the
devastating human toll of a decade of sanctions in Iraq, was most
recently screened by the student chapter of Physicians for Human
Rights at Stanford University. Paying the Price made its
debut on British television in 2000 and has since been featured at
the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, the Cinemayaat Arab Film
Festival as well as at universities including Harvard, Carnegie
Mellon and Cal Tech.
With
another war in Iraq looming on the horizon, Paying the Price
is once again making its relevance to the discourse on Iraq felt.
The film is produced, written and presented by award-winning
journalist John Pilger who follows former U.N. Assistant Secretary
General Dennis Halliday back to Iraq after Halliday’s resignation
from his post in 1998 in protest over the situation in Iraq. What
the two encounter is a country in crisis with some 4000 children
dying each month as a result of the U.S.-driven U.N. sanctions
regime. The film goes on to graphically chronicle the dire state of
humanitarian conditions including the collapse of healthcare, lack
of clean drinking water and scarcity of the most basic food stuffs.
The
film’s success has been due, in large part, to the fact that Iraq
has remained a topic of national and international interest for over
a decade; and contrary to popular media reports, many citizens of
America and the world at large wish to see the Iraq issue through
multiple lenses and filters. As such, people are drawn to Pliger’s
perspective on the ongoing crisis, which is decidedly
anti-establishment in its bias. But this is a bias that is rarely
given equal time in the public spotlight.
Of
equal importance in the film’s success is the production
company’s willingness to sell Paying the Price at discounted rates
to activist organizations. Currently at the movie’s website (http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pay.html),
Bullfrog Films is offering the film for $39 to such organizations.
John
Pilger is a highly respected journalist whose career spans over four
decades. He has worked with BBC television and radio and ABC
television and has written for a broad range of publications with
international reach. He has focused largely on bringing light to
stories that are otherwise glossed over or misrepresented. To that
end he has logged years of experience in as far flung places as
Vietnam, Iraq, Indonesia, Burma, East Timor and Palestine. His voice
brings balance to coverage of these countries and their regions and
puts humanistic value back in reporting.
Paying
the Price is well worth the $39 fee and anyone wishing to truly
understand the human ramifications of another war in Iraq should see
this film and read Pilger’s articles.
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