Filmmaker's 'Warning' explores consequences of Bush-era abuses Stephen C. Webster

Published: Saturday December 20, 2008





Print This Email This Five iconoclastic authors, one crucial message.



Filmmaker JP Sottile, after years toeing the line among the ranks of mainstream press, has broken away. His new documentary, 'The Warning,' is nothing if not an urgent plea for a return to Constitutional values in an age of rampant abuse.



Comprised of interviews with authors Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ("Crimes Against Nature"), Naomi Wolf ("The End of America"), Naomi Klein ("The Shock Doctrine"), Chris Hedges ("American Fascists") and Joe Conason ("It Can Happen Here"), 'The Warning' plumbs deep the frightening, totalitarian advances seen in US governance since the appointment of George W. Bush, and the threats these new executive powers pose in the coming years.



"A lot of people are very hopeful for an Obama administration," said Sottile speaking to RAW STORY. "And one of the questions that comes up is, now that Bush is leaving, do you think this film is relevant? I think it's more relevant than ever."



Sottile spent a portion of his career at PBS, with The News Hours with Jim Lehrer, pursuing what he calls an "antiseptic" way of handling the news.



"But here were five people who were saying something very, very important, and very, very startling, and basically was being ignored by the mainstream media," he said.



Sottile's film avoids cinematic flare in favor of an 85-minute, focused, heavily researched diatribe that caustically categorizes the Bush administration's most egregious abuses.



"One of the reasons for the rise of alternative press on the Web is because people are turning off their TVs," said Sottile, expanding on his reasons for breaking away from televised journalism. "They don't trust the media. The American people regard the media pretty much the same way they regard lawyers. I think the fact that important questions have not been asked by the media after 9/11, in the lead-up to the Iraq war, people are reacting to that."



Moving forward, Sottile said he plans future 'Truth to Power' films on the neoconservative ideology, and the use of depleted uranium in Iraq.



Watch a preview for 'The Warning' below, or purchase the full version at Sottile's Web site, TruthToPower.tv.







