Native American Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – David Nicholas Wilkinson – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 114m
****

The Parthenon Marbles – were they stolen from Greece, and should they be sent back? – Opening Night Film (World Premiere) Central Scotland Documentary Festival in Stirling, Scotland on Thursday, October 30th; out in UK cinemas on Thursday, November 6th.

This starts with director Wilkinson, who previously made the excellent Getting Away With Murder(s) (2021), writing a letter to the Head of the British Museum asking him for an interview outlining the Museum’s position on the Parthenon Marbles. He never receives a reply.

The historical and legal background is helpfully unpacked by Alexander Herman, a historian and legal expert who has written and spoken widely on the Marbles controversy, and Mark Stephens, the UK’s foremost Art & Cultural Property lawyer.

The eponymous Marbles were Ancient Greek statues and artefacts removed from the Acropolis in Athens by Lord Elgin in the early part of the 19th Century and brought over to England to adorn his newly built stately home in Scotland. In 1816, following a Parliamentary debate on the matter, they were purchased from Elgin by the British Museum where they have resided ever since, on display to the public.… Read the rest

How to
Blow Up
a Pipeline

Collaborators – Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Garber – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 103m

****

An eco-terrorism thriller based on the manifesto by Andreas Malm – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 21st.

Credited as a film by its four main collaborators (its three writer-producers and its editor) rather than (as is the usual industry practice) merely its director Goldhaber (Cam, 2018), this is based on climate change activism apologist Andreas Malm’s non-fiction treatise which argues for the destruction of property e.g. fossil fuel industry infrastructure as part of the fight against the fossil fuel industry which is causing climate change. What the book doesn’t do is tell the reader the techniques and specifics that would enable them to actually blow up a pipeline.

Likewise, this movie doesn’t provide the viewer with the knowledge and technical wherewithal that would enable them to blow up pipelines after watching it. Like Malm, it offers moral justification(s) for the act. It shows a committed group of young people who have between them carried out extensive research into everything necessary for their planned act and reached a point of moral choice where they feel they have no other option than to carry out such an action.… Read the rest