Byron Shire filmmaker David Bradbury’s latest documentary War on Trial is screening at the Brunswick Picture House on Wednesday July 13 at 6pm.
The night will also include Mookx performing Vietnam War protest songs from the 1960s and activist Graeme Dunstan, who is part of the film, is expected to come from Hobart for the screening.
Bradbury says the film is about two old men confronting the military industrial complex.
‘It’s the courage of two old men – activists Graeme Dunstan and Brian Law – who accessed the Rockhampton runway, which was full of Black Hawk helicopters, US fighter planes and thousands of US military.
‘The US were there as part of the biannual US/Australian war “games”.’
‘The two activists then cut through the padlock gate and airport perimeter fence.
‘Brian Law pedals a giant red trike across the tarmac to get to his target – a Tiger attack helicopter bound for Afghanistan – and takes to it with a garden mattock.
‘In the ensuing trial, which Brian didn’t live to face because diabetes took him, Graeme Dunstan was left to defend himself.
Possible ten years’ prison reduced
‘He was looking at ten years in jail, but managed to put war and the helicopter on trial during the court case.’
As a result of the 2013 trial, Dunstan received a two-year suspended sentence and a three-year good behaviour bond.
War on Trial is Bradbury’s third film set in Rockhampton and surrounds. He made Shoalwater: Up for Grabs in 1994 with his longtime university friend, then Midnight Oil lead singer, Peter Garrett.
‘At the Rockhampton premiere of War on Trial, Japanese academic and renowned peace activist, professor Kazuo Kobayashi, spoke about the hidden social and environmental costs the people of Okinawa have paid for hosting US military bases on their small island.
‘It’s alledged depleted uranium was secretly used by the Americans.’
n See more at facebook.com/warontrial.
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