By Allen Myers

SYDNEY -- Death of a Nation, John Pilger's new film on East Timor, was launched with showings at the Mandolin and Valhalla cinemas here on March 10. A party following the launch raised funds to support the East Timorese people's struggle.

Death of a Nation seems certain to become a classic of film journalism, in the tradition of Pilger's justly famous Cambodia: Year Zero. Into a mere 95 minutes, it packs a wealth of information, structured and ordered to be completely and easily comprehensible.

Much of the footage was filmed secretly in East Timor. It includes interviews with eyewitnesses to the second Dili massacre, victims of torture, resistance fighters.

Anyone at all familiar with John Pilger's other work will not be surprised to hear that his East Timor documentary pulls no punches. Much of the film focuses on the despicable role of several Western governments -- notably the US, Australian and British -- in backing the Suharto dictatorship's genocidal war against the East Timorese people.

In this area, Pilger has put together historical documents and current interviews in a way that thoroughly exposes the pretence and cover-ups with which successive Australian governments have tried to hide the reality of East Timor.

The grotesque efforts of Paul Keating and Gareth Evans to discredit this film are completely understandable. It leaves them naked.

No-one should miss Death of a Nation. In Sydney, it is now showing at the Valhalla and the Mandolin. In Melbourne, it opens on March 18 at the Carlton Movie House.
[See last week's Green Left Weekly for an interview with John Pilger about the film.]

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