Orwell Rolls In His Grave
Has America entered an Orwellian world off doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth? Are Americans being sold a bill of goods by a handful of transnational media corporations and political elites whose interests have little in common with the interests of the American people?
Orwell Rolls In His Grave explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about - itself.
Filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas has brought together an ex- “60 Minutes” producer, a United States Congressman, as well as some of the country’s leading intellectual voices on the media to examine the mix of businesses, politics and ideology that is the modern mainstream media. Does corporate media reflect public opinion or create it? Did the media help George W. Bush steal the presidency and market the war in Iraq?
From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t. Orwell Rolls In His Grave moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media. Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized?
Orwell Rolls In His Grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.
“The boldest and most incendiary film to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival, not to mention the most important “
Hollywood Elsewhere
“Refrains from preaching to the choir”
Variety
“A marvel of passionate succinctness”
Variety
“A mini political firestorm“
indewire
“Skewers the news media in a way that seriously chills and disturbs”
Jeffrey Wells Hollywood Elsewhere
“The most chilling of all new wave political documentaries”
Seattle Post Intelligencer
About the Writer/Director
Robert Kane Pappas was born in New York City and raised in Westchester County. He was educated at Georgetown University and New York University Graduate Institute of Film. After graduating he worked in Cable Television. In the early 80's he created a non-fiction series called the Computer Moment; the pilot featured William H. Macy. He wrote and directed the Narrative features Now I Know (Lifetime Television) and Some Fish Can Fly (Artistic License, 99). Both films were partly set in Ireland. In 2003, he directed the documentary feature Orwell Rolls In His Grave—a film that investigated the corporate conglomeration of the New Media and it's effects on our politics. The film was a culmination of a media critique that had begun when Mr. Pappas was a graduate film student at NYU, during the hostage crisis, and had interviewed the editor of the New York Post. Mr. Pappas has written a number of screenplays (the most recent is Nantucket Sleighride) and had received a Parents Choice Award for his children's videos.