Sunday 26 April 2015
Presented and narrated by Sam Worthington, Deadline Gallipoli -The Full Story is an exhilarating documentary, which follows the making of the landmark drama mini-series about four journalists who fought the upper echelons of the military to get the truth out about the audacious but ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915. This is the untold story of the journalists who battled against a brutal censorship regime imposed during WW1 -- the story at the heart of the politically charged, high-octane drama -- is a story of our times. The gulf between the Gallipoli campaign and the theatre of modern war may span a century, but the struggle to find the truth in war reportage, often skewed by propaganda, mythmaking and censorship, remains as challenging today as it was in 1915. The documentary explores the drama producer's decision to tell a well-known story from a new angle. Theirs is the point of view of the four journalists: Charles Bean, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, Phillip Schuler and Keith Murdoch who find themselves unable to report the truth they bear witness to. Though they understand that truth may sometimes be a casualty of war, the futility and carnage starts to weigh heavily on them. Two of them mount an offensive of their own with extraordinary results. These are the first truly embedded war correspondents whose actions and defiance ignite a change in the campaign's course and whose commitment to the stories of fighting men turn Gallipoli from a strategic failure into legend.