Julian Assange: A Modern Day Hero? (2011)
Subtitled: Inside the World of WikiLeaks
Documentary on Julian Assange & WikiLeaks
Studio: Blow Whistle Blow Films MVD5144D [5/3/11]
Video: 16:9 color
Audio: PCM mono
Length: 180 minutes
Rating: ***
Australian journalist, publisher and Internet activist Julian Paul Assange is the founder, editor-in-chief and spokesman for the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The site invites sources all over the world to upload important reports, articles, videos, interviews and other material while keeping the uploader’s identity anonymous. Its intent is to provide information to people in various countries to make them aware of things going on in their country that they should know if it affects their lives. Some of this information is considered Top Secret in the country of origin and thus Assange has been felt by some to be the most dangerous man on earth at the moment – a title also bestowed on Daniel Ellsberg following his release of the Pentagon Papers. Assange has won three journalism awards for his work with WikiLeaks.
Due to the revelations found in much of the published material, many governments and organizations would like to silence Assange Thus he moves constantly, only being in one place for a few days, and traveling around the world making irregular public appearances lecturing about freedom of the press and censorship. One of his revelations was a shocking video of men in the street in Afghanistan – including two Reuters journalists carrying cameras (mistaken for guns) – being mowed down by a low-flying U.S. Army copter gunship. Another was the exposure on the site of the profiles of over 2000 celebrities, politicians, crime leaders and multinationals suspected of tax evasion – given to Assange by a whistleblowing Swiss banker.
In one of the videos of an Assange lecture he projects on a large screen the site‘s home page, showing the multitude of news stories and articles they have posted in one column and in another column the links to stories printed by various mainstream newspapers and publications across the globe. Some of the reports and information are immense, and he points out in his lecture that reading the entire thing often gives one an entirely different viewpoint on the contents than you receive from the spotty or slanted details reported in the press. But he has also had cooperation in publishing some of his material by top newspapers in the world.
Any questions I may have had about the efficacy of what Assange is doing were put at ease by this informative video. However, the documentary itself is definitely not ready for prime time. It is poorly organized, jumping around into portions of interviews with and lectures by Assange in various locations. Some are even Skype videos, which are extremely poor out-of-focus material. For example in the closing section with the large-screen display of his WikiLeaks site it is impossible to read any of the text on the screen, it is so blurred. Yes, he is a modern day hero and should have a professional feature documentary on his work distributed in theaters.
– John Sunier
