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Utopia
John Pilger's portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture is also an investigation into a suppressed colonial past, and rapacious present.
Director: John Pilger and Alan Lowery
Overview
Utopia is John Pilger's feature documentary, made for the cinema and ITV. Drawing on his long association with the first people of Australia, his homeland, it is both an epic portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture and an investigation into a suppressed colonial past and rapacious present. One of the world's best-kept secrets is revealed against a background of the greatest boom in mineral wealth. Has the 'lucky country' inherited South African apartheid? Utopia tells a universal story of power and resistance in the media age driven by old imperatives and presented as liberalism.
This film about the treatment of Australia’s First Nations by past and modern governments, and their agencies, was screened to great acclaim on TV and in cinemas across Australia in 2013. At its outdoor premiere, thousands of Indigenous people stood to applaud and held candles in the air. Writer and presenter John Pilger was one of the few voices telling the truth of their lives to a wide domestic and international audience.
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