Raw Opium is a 2011 documentary film and two-part TV series produced by Robert Lang of Kensington Communications, directed by Peter Findlay and written by Peter Findlay and Robert Lang. The documentary examines the worldwide opium trade, and the vast criminal and public health issues that have arisen alongside.
Raw Opium is a journey around the world and through time, where conflicting forces do battle over the narcotic sap of the opium poppy. From an opium master in southeast Asia to a UN drug enforcement officer on the border of Afghanistan hunting down the smugglers of central Asia; from a former Indian government Drug Czar and opium farmer to a crusading Vancouver doctor and Portuguese street worker who daily confront the realities of drug addiction.
We see how this flower has played, and continues to play, a pivotal role – not just in the lives of people who grow, manufacture and use it – but also in the increasingly tense sphere of international relations. In the process, our assumptions about addiction and the War on Drugs are challenged.
| Raw Opium | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster |
|
| Directed by | Peter Findlay |
| Produced by | Robert Lang |
| Written by | Peter Findlay, Robert Lang |
| Distributed by | Kensington Communications |
| Release date(s) | 2011 |
| Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | Canada, India, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Portugal |
| Language | English |
Read more about Raw Opium: Production Credits, Filming Locations, People in The Documentary, Screenings, Broadcasts
Famous quotes containing the words raw and/or opium:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What opium is instilled into all disaster? It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)