The uses of film and news footage to shape our understanding of contemporary events is fascinating when viewed in the perspective of time and through the eyes of witnesses. Three films—a massacre in Vietnam, social and political struggle in Poland, and nuclear testing on Bikini Island—show events in startling new lights. Most striking is how the words used to put meaning on the pictures then are very different from the ones we would use to explain them now. Witnesses to the events themselves recall the official versions they were given and contrast them with what they now know. From three different sources, salutary and timely reminders on the need to ask the right questions and take expert and political briefing with the proverbial grain of salt.
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From UPF
Issued in time of the arrival of the first non-communist government in Poland, a series four programs alternating polish newsreels, never seen in the West, and witnesses… -
From UPF
In 1945, the detonation of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the Second World War. A year later, world attention focused in another…