George Gittoes

The Miscreants of Taliwood

George Gittoes

George Gittoes, Javed Musazai

The Australian maverick director George Gittoes travels to Terror Central in Pakistan, where he decides to shoot a local Pashto telie film (high on kitsch and machine guns) right under the nose of the Taliban’s anti-entertainment forces. He throws himself into the clash of fundamentalism and entertainment – virtual and real – in this off-beat docu-drama mix. Gittoes takes us on a surprising, terrifying journey, into the forbidden zones of Pakistan’s explosive North West Frontier. Is it a documentary or is this ‘war art’?

Love City, Jalalabad

George Gittoes, Torstein Grude

George Gittoes

A wild and funny documentary showing how the progressive youth of Afghanistan are rejecting the use of armed force and see film production as an alternative means of bringing peace and social change to their war-torn and occupied country.

Soundtrack to War

George Gittoes

Soundtrack to War showcases spontaneous music performances by a striking cast of battle weary. Performances made without rehearsal, under the blaring Iraqi sun, with a destroyed city, the distraction of gunfire and bursting mortar shells forming a frightening backdrop. American culture came into Iraq, wired into its tanks and helicopters - a live soundtrack to war, with lyrics such as Let The Bodies Hit The Floor, Round Out, The Tank and Bombs over Baghdad, being memorised by every soldier and forever linked to the violent events they accompanied. As the war extended into a second year, many started writing and performing their own songs. It was rock, rap & roll.

Rampage

George Gittoes

Following his film about music and war in Iraq, Soundtrack to War , Producer/ DirectorGeorge Gittoes slices into the mirky underbelly of the Giant Land of the Free. RAMPAGE is another Gittoes journey into the forbidden zones; – America’s war in Iraq, and in it’s own backyard – life in a Miami ‘hood – an exploration of hiphop’s musical innovations, as important as the field s the field hollers, the blue, the blues, and jazz, which also began in the black ghettos, and went on to evolve as major music styles.

Rainbow Way

George Gittoes

George Gittoes is well-known as a war artist and documentary provocateur. In the late 1970s, George explored holography, underwater photography and multimedia environments involving performance, dance and projections. In Rainbow Way (1979), reflected sunlight, water and prisms are used to create flowing, psychedelic stories of colour and light.

White Light

George Gittoes

George Gittoes’ latest film focuses on South Side Chicago, with worse gun violence statistics than any active war zone of the last two decades.

Snow Monkey

George Gittoes

For almost 50 years, activist artist George Gittoes has stood on the frontlines of the world's most brutal conflicts and borne witness to the best and the worst of humanity. Now living in Afghanistan's remote, Taliban-infested Jalalabad province, Gittoes turns his attention to the lives of the children and outcasts of this war-torn land. In Snow Monkey, Gittoes paints a portrait of a Jalalabad seething with humanity, adversity and hope – focusing on three gangs of children: the Ghostbusters, persecuted Kochi boys who hawk exorcisms of bad luck and demons; the Snow Monkeys, who sell ice cream to support their families; and the Gangsters, a razor gang led by a nine-year-old antihero called Steel, terrifying to the core but still capable of experiencing aspects of the childhood seemingly taken from him. With a deeply humane vision that won him the Sydney Peace Prize, Gittoes shows us the unseen nature of Afghanistan's politics, culture and society, up close and startlingly personal.