By Angela Peavey
The Saugatuck Center for the Arts’ Real to Reel Film Series kicks off this winter with a screening of “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone” by Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, and Michael Moore. The screening is Thursday, Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. Tickets are general admission: $5 for members and $7 for future-members. Additional information is at sc4a.org or call 269-857-2399.
The “LA Times” said “All Governments Lie is,” “a damning indictment of mainstream media. Featuring footage from the last six decades, “All Governments Lie” is a timely, convincing documentary that will cause audiences to question what they see and read. It’s remarkably nonpartisan, revealing that the title does indeed refer to every government and politician, even those that we admire and align our ideals with.”
Vancouver-based filmmaker and TV news veteran Fred Peabody explores the life and legacy of the maverick American journalist I.F. Stone, whose long one-man crusade against government deception lives on in the work of such contemporary filmmakers and journalists as Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, David Corn, and Matt Taibbi.
For decades, Stone took on the powers that be — from Red-baiting fearmonger Joe McCarthy to Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan — in the pages of the tiny publication “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” (and later in the “New York Review of Books” and “The Nation”), most of it typed, two-finger style, by Stone himself. Working without the “access” to those in power so prized by establishment journalists, Stone took on the system regardless of personal risk. In “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone,” Peabody pays tribute to Stone’s work and looks at those who carry on his legacy today.
Not surprisingly, those contemporary journalists most influenced by Stone have had to work outside the mainstream. Peabody introduces us to men and women who are keeping Stone’s legacy alive by relentlessly speaking truth to power, despite the obstacles placed in their way: Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras (who together founded “The Intercept” as a platform for the Snowden NSA leaks), Amy Goodman, David Corn, and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.
Don’t miss the film “Variety” calls an, “urgent and fascinating documentary.”
The Saugatuck Center for the Arts, located at 400 Culver Street, Saugatuck. For more information about the SCA and upcoming events, visit www.sc4a.org or call 269-857-2399.
