Allies

Director: Marian Wilkinson

Institute History

  • 1986 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Allies is about the Cold War and how Australia was and continues to be seen as vital to U.S. “interests” in the Pacific and Indonesia. It relates in some detail a number of fascinating incidents, some obscure, some well known, that have bound Australia to American policy for the last forty years-supporting the American effort in Vietnam,. acquiescing to the installation of nuclear bases and thwarting nationalist movements throughout the West Indies.

Allies is a powerful film and cumulative in its effect. It’s brought to life by probing interviews with both American and Australian politicians and CIA agents and, in one case, a convicted spy. Marshall Green, U.S. Ambassador to Australia in the mid-seventies, sums up a fairly widespread attitude: “President Lyndon B. Johnson always thought that Australia was the next large rectangular state beyond El Paso and treated it accordingly.”

Screening Details

Credits

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