Australia’s most renowned ex-pat journalist John Pilger is back in the country, ready to confront ‘official Australian silences’ and try an prick the collective conscience of an apathetic nation along the way.
Earlier this year, Pilger released Utopia, his fourth film about the treatment of Aboriginal Australia.
The documentary, which received rave reviews in Europe but a muted reaction in Australia, opened in the United States last week, to strong reviews from First Nations academics.
Utopia focuses on the struggle of Aboriginal people, and looks at the enduring silence in Australia about a host of historical atrocities, including the use of a concentration camp in WA as a tourist resort, and the determination of media to remain silent about its own abuses of Aboriginal people.
And it’s these uncomfortable truths that Pilger will seek to shed even more light on in the coming weeks.
Pilger will speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, at the Sydney Opera House on August 31. The presentation will be in conversation with Liz Ann Macgregor, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Pilger plans to discuss the devotion in Australian public life to 'a status quo of unmentionables'.
You can get details and tickets from here.
Pilger will also head to Adelaide University on September 11 to deliver the Edward Said Lecture, in memory of the great Palestinian educator, writer and visionary.
Pilger’s subject is 'The Last Taboo: Gaza and the threat of world war'.
Details and tickets can be found here.
* DECLARATION: Chris Graham, the owner and editor of New Matilda, worked as an Associate Producer on Utopia.
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