IN 2007 John Pilger, after four decades of producing reportage films for TV, created his first film for cinema, The War on Democracy, and began a series of feature films for cinema that built on his achievement as a journalist and political writer, and surpassed  it.

To embrace the longer form allowed him to change his relationship to the viewing public, from one that reported information towards a radical critique of capitalism from within, focusing on the abuse of power, the elimination of human rights and the inevitable tendency towards war. 

There are five great films in this late, mature burst of creativity, all of them free to watch on his website johnpilger.com, and they demonstrate the political usefulness of the documentary essay as a form, unlike journalism, that can project analysis into the future and remain relevant beyond the date of production.