West Australian film-maker spearheading the international War on Drugs debate
A bunch of the world’s leading lawmen and women want to overturn the drug laws they have spent their lives enforcing – that’s the message of an exciting new documentary to be launched next year. However, the film-maker needs your help to do it.
Fremantle-based dual Emmy nominated writer-director Victoria Midwinter Pitt is gathering together some of the world’s leading lawmen and women – including the former head of the Australian Federal Police Mick Palmer and former Malaysian Prisons Department Director-General Tan Sri Mohd Zaman Khan – to make a documentary on the failure of the War on Drugs.
The documentary will be made for the internet to reach the biggest audience possible and will sit within a strong interactive website framework. Funding for the project is through ScreenWest’s groundbreaking 3 for 1 funding initiative, which will hand Victoria $150,000 if she reaches her total of $50,000 through a crowdfunding initiative on Pozible (an internet-based crowdfunding platform). The crowdfunding initiative is a race that launches on December 12.
Victoria has previously written and directed the Emmy-nominated Surviving Mumbai (Mumbai Masscre in the US), AFI-nominated Leaky Boat and Rampant: How a City Stopped A Plague, all of which filmed on the ABC and attracted international attention.
The documentary comes hot on the heels of groundbreaking international drug law docos Breaking The Taboo (narrated by Morgan Freeman) and The House I Live In (produced by Brad Pitt).
Busted: You Have The Right NOT To Remain Silent will continue the momentum of these documentaries to strengthen the conversation around drug law reform through the experience and perspective of the law enforcers themselves.
“We are in a crowdfunding race from December 12 to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible,” says Victoria. “If we don’t raise that money before others in the race raise their quota, then we won’t receive $150,000 from ScreenWest. If we do make if, we will have most of the money needed to make the film. We are asking people to donate between $10 and $2000 – we will appreciate any support to get out the message of the world’s leading law enforcers.
“This documentary will have no academics, commentators, victims or politicians. It will have just one group of people: the men and women who have actually fought the War on Drugs – police, prosecutors, judges and prison governors,” says Victoria.
“They will give a first-hand account, from a perspective that’s impossible to ignore, of why the world’s drug laws need to be rethought.
Together, they’ve got a very personal, very confronting story to tell. They’ll tell of the long years spent fighting the drug trade, share the epiphanies that overturned all their previous thinking and state why they’re now taking a stand to bury the laws they spent their careers enforcing.”
You Have The Right NOT To Remain Silent is expected to launch in October 2013.
Visit busteddoco.com for more information on how to be involved and register to be ready to donate on December 12.
For media info and interviews: Anna Flanders | 0410 551 048 | annapearl@aapt.net.au
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