At the center of every armed conflict of the 20th Century, the machine gun has been a tool of conquest – and of liberation. Everywhere, it has unleashed consequences its creators never imagined. This is the history of one of the world’s deadliest inventions, a story of technological innovation, the industrial revolution, and political power. Machine Gun: History Down the Barrel of a Gun, is a sweeping look at the rise of the American empire.
Paul Jay’s Lost in Las Vegas (2001), is a film about reality and fantasy, money and morality, and the price one pays to chase a dream. Vegas is the place where the American soul is most naked and extreme. Is Vegas a bizarre distortion of American values, or is it the shape of things to come?
In light of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, we are reposting Paul Jay’s and Nelofer Paziras’s documentary ‘Return to Kandahar’. Originally released in 2003, this film follows Nelofer Pazira, as she returns from Canada to Afghanistan to seek out her childhood friend Dyana. While living under vicious Taliban rule, Dyana wrote Nelofer a haunting letter that ended, “you will have to live for both of us now”. Fearing the worst, in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban government, Nelofer searches for her lost friend. Landing in Kabul 13 years after her family left Russian-occupied Afghanistan, Nelofer unravels her past and the history of her country. The epic journey takes her to Kabul, Kandahar, and Masir-e-Sharif. Incisively weaving Nelofer’s personal story with that of Afghanistan itself, Return To Kandahar shows a country once again in the grip of warlords and the U.S “war on terror”.
When Julian Assange was arrested, he was holding up a copy of Paul Jay’s book, “Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.” This mini-documentary is the original 2005 interview with Vidal, upon which the book is based. We are republishing on the occasion of the release of Julian Assange after five years in prison.
