Film reviews

My review of Hat Vickers’ documentary film ‘The Battle for Deptford’, now available for free on YouTube, which focuses on community activism and the long struggle to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden and Reginald House, a block of structurally sound council flats, from destruction for a housing project in Deptford, in south east London.

Linking to the video of a recent Q&A, featuring Mohamedou Ould Slahi, John Goetz and myself, following a screening of Goetz’s powerful documentary film, “Guantánamo Diary Revisited,” made available by its distributors in the US and Canada, Cinema Libre Studio. In the film, Goetz assists Slahi in tracking down some of those involved in his torture, the intention being to invite them to tea, and to let them know that he has forgiven everyone responsible for his torture.

Publicising the new documentary film, ‘The Battle for Deptford’, directed by Hat Vickers, about the struggle to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden and Reginald House from destruction for an inappropriate housing development, which culminated in a two-month occupation of the garden that I was involved in, followed by its violent eviction by bailiffs hired by Lewisham Council.

Promoting the online screening, next week, of “Guantánamo Diary Revisited”, John Goetz’s new documentary about Mohamedou Ould Slahi, which is very generously being made available as a fundraiser to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo by the US and Canadian distributor, Cinema Libre Studio, with a Q&A session following, featuring Mohamedou, John and myself.

My review of 2021, in which I assess the last 12 months regarding Covid, corrupt governments, and, overshadowing it all, the climate crisis, the gravest existential threat in our lifetimes. With reference to Adam McKay’s ‘Don’t Look Up’, this New Year’s post is, I hope, something of a call to action.

Publicizing the new documentary film by Alex Gibney about Abu Zubaydah, for whom the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was developed. He spent four and a half years in CIA torture prisons, and has been held at Guantánamo for over 15 years without charge or trial, with no sign of when, if ever, he might be released.

My review of “The Mauritanian,” the film based on the best-selling memoir “Guantánamo Diary” by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who, based on nothing more than suspicion, was subjected to a horrendous torture program at Guantánamo in 2003, and, despite the case against him collapsing, wasn’t released until 2016.

Promoting the latest screening, at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, directed by Nikita Woolfe, about the housing crisis in the UK, which I narrate. Do get in touch if you’d like to arrange a screening.

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   It’s over a year since the defining event of 2017 in the UK — the Grenfell Tower fire, in west London, in which 72 people died because everyone responsible for their safety — central government, local government, the management company that had […]

Please support the crowdfunding campaign here! Last year, the most significant event in the UK, to my mind, was the entirely preventable inferno that engulfed Grenfell Tower, a block of social housing in west London, killing over 70 people. Safety standards had been fatally eroded, in the search of easier profits, and the disaster put […]