Hollywood Honors Anti-Russia Propaganda Film
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
On geopolitical issues, Hollywood operates as a virtual arm of US policymakers, supporting their imperial agenda.
It was evident Sunday evening during Oscar awards, annual exercises in self-adulation. Movie moguls value profit-making over filmmaking the way it should be. Hollywood-style history is reinvented, not the real thing.
Last year, an al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets propaganda film was honored as the year’s best documentary short. Hollywood disgracefully honored terrorism.
In 2013, the 1979/1980 Iranian hostage crisis was reinvented – Argo propaganda awarded the Academy’s best film of the year.
Last evening, politicized Olympism won top documentary film honors.
The propaganda film Icarus portrayed director/amateur bike racer Bryan Fogel’s sought help from fugitive former Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory/World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) informant Grigory Rodchenkov to use banned substances for an amateur cycling race.
In Moscow, he was indicted in absentia on charges of illegally trafficking potent substances.
He accused at least 15 Russian Olympic winners of using performance-enhancing drugs.
Moscow refuted his state-sponsored doping charge, admitting involvement of some of its athletes in using banned substances. The same practice occurs elsewhere, including in professional sports.
Rodchenkov fled to America, given refuge under the federal witness protection program, his whereabouts unknown.
Yet he appeared in Icarus, claiming Russian agents used sample-swapping tactics to help the nation’s athletes win 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics medals by using performance-enhancing drugs.
Banning Russia’s entire track and field team from the 2016 Rio summer games followed.
The International Olympic Committee suspended the Russian Olympic Committee. It banned Russian athletes from participating under their nation’s flag – disgraceful politicized actions.
The IOC acted despite no credible evidence of Russian state-sponsored doping. Individual athletes representing many countries use banned substances.
Should entire nations and their Olympians be punished for the abuses of some team members?
Should entire US baseball, football and other sports teams be banned from league competition because some of their players used these drugs?
Actions against Russia and its athletes are politicized. Icarus was honored for Russia bashing.
It’s unworthy documentary filmmaking, warranting condemnation for serving US interests.
Fogel called his film “a wakeup call…about Russia,” dedicating Icarus to Rodchenkov, a fugitive from justice, protected by Washington to use against Moscow.
Separately, the Academy chose the Chilean film “A Fantastic Woman” as best foreign language movie of the year over highly acclaimed Russian director Andrey Zvagintsev’s film “Loveless.”
It won last year’s BFI London Film Festival top honors. The Cannes Film Festival awarded it the Jury Prize, second only in importance to its Palme d’Or.
Washington disgracefully considers Russia its leading threat.
Hollywood is complicit with US policymakers, producing propaganda, not truth-telling, in films about its officials, policies and athletes.
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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
