Blowin’ in the Wind is the latest film from two-time Academy Award nominee David Bradbury, who is arguably Australia’s most contentious and provocative documentary filmmaker. Here Bradbury turns his unflinching camera on the issue of depleted uranium weapons as used in Bosnia and Iraq, and now allegedly at a US military training site in Queensland. Clearly laid-out technical information and heartwrenching photos of deformed children born in affected areas of Iraq are backed up by testimony of star witness Doug Rokke, a former US military scientist diagnosed with cancer following field trips to 1991 Gulf War bomb sites. Shifting to a disapproving history of US-Australian military relations, Bradbury launches a full-tilt attack on the build-up of US military personnel and weapons on Aussie soil. In one of the film’s knockout blows, a US official’s denial of such weapons being transported to Australia is followed by a naval officer admitting an American warship docked in Perth is armed with the offending articles.
Short film beforehand:
PIRATE
(Dir: Marion Lee. 2004. 11 min.)