Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12546 in VHS
• Released on: 1994-06-13
• Rating: Exempt
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 170 minutes

Synopsis
A docu-drama which explores the political life and ideas of the controversial author, linguistic scholar, and radical philosopher, Noam Chomsky.

Customer Reviews

Excellent insight into the world of the media
A great film that allows the audience to look at Chomsky's efforts to enlighten the 80% of the population that he claims has no real concept of the powers that lay behind the American media.
An insight to Chomsky's life and influence, you cannot help but admire him as a man and a great free thinker.
With excerpts from many of Chomsky's speeches this film allows the viewer into a world of his long standing efforts to seek truth and the right to express it. You will come away with a head that buzzes!

Manufacturing Dissent!
This film is possibly the most eye opening peice of film I've ever seen. I was always a little sceptical about Chomsky, his politics, his opinions, and his intentions. I was also growing increasingly tired of the way the left of politics was using him as a sort of "demi-god".

But this film put an end to those thoughts. Not in a "pro-chomsky propaganda" way, just in the clarity of the editing and film making. the film is beautifully gelled together making perfect sense of the reems and reems of chomsky material out there.

This film also cleared up that horrible, messy affair with that idiotic french "Intellectual".

The "Dutch Debate" has to be the funniest, most entertaining piece of film i've seen in years. And considering it involved Noam Chomsky, that's saying something!

But my favourate segment of this video is it's insight into East Timor. Iterviews with Timorese citizens, Timorese activists, active American/Canadian journalists, as well as Chomshy, make this segment very enlightning even to an avid follower of the situation.

As well as Media, Chomsky (et all) also go into good detail on other issues such as:

Jingoism,
Independant Media,
Corporatism,
International affairs, (Spanish Civil War, Israel etc.)
Anarchosydicalism,
Linguistics,
Vietnam Protests and Chomsky's beginnings as a Dissenter.

Amoung a lot of other things.

This film really has to be seen to be believed.

Fantastic!
A nice depthy look at the world of the media, and their huge influence on people's opinions and decisions. Chomsky goes rigorously though the New York times archives, and other newspapers, constructing what looks like a clear picture of how people's opinions are informed by TV and newspapers.

Even the editor of the Times looks lost for words when Chomsky demonsrates how every single occurance of US supported attrocities in East Timor were whitewashed by the mainstream media. Not one time, or ten times, but thousands of times, every time.

Although people like to shout 'conspiracy theory' at anything of this way of thinking, it is quite adeptly researched. As Chomsky remarks at one point in the film 'the mudslinger always wins.'

No, there isn't a room of people deciding what goes out across national media, just a set of unwritten rules which you don't get very far in your career without. Any common sense can tell you that a journalist who criticises US foreign policy powerfully, (rightly or wrongly) the way some do, won't be very popular. On the other hand, one who does the same to official enemies, will be duely rewarded.

There is no conspiracy, there is no paranoia, there is just what really happens, and how we can try to understand that in context of real power.

Look at it with an open mind, and see the way that you look at the world change.