John Pilger, honoured at The Griersons 2011

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The Grierson Trust announced today that John Pilger, one of the world’s preeminent documentary filmmakers will be awarded the Honda Grierson Trustees’ Awards at its annual award ceremony on November 1st.

The Honda Grierson Trustees’ Award recognises outstanding contribution to the art or craft of documentary making. It is the most coveted prize of The British Documentary Awards supported by Sky Arts HD and Honda. Each year, the Griersons crown the very best in documentary filmmaking from around the world.

Dawn Airey, Chairman of the Grierson Trust said: “John Pilger is one of the world’s great documentary producers. His work has uncovered atrocity, probed the underbelly of society, sparked controversy and challenged the heart of democracy. The Grierson Trust is proud and thrilled to honour John with its most prestigious award: the Honda Grierson Trustees’ Award”.

John Pilger grew up in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, author and documentary film-maker. He is one of only two to twice win Journalist of the Year, British journalism’s highest award, for his work all over the world. He has been International Reporter of the Year and a recipient of the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal. In 2003, he received the prestigious Sophie Prize for ‘thirty years of exposing deception and improving human rights’. In 2009, he was awarded Australia’s international human rights award, the Sydney Peace Prize, ‘for his courage as a film-maker and journalist in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard’.

He has won an American Television Academy Award, an Emmy, and the Richard Dimbleby Award for a lifetime’s work in factual broadcasting, awarded by BAFTA. His first film, The Quiet Mutiny, made in 1970 for Granada’s World in Action, revealed the rebellion within the US Army in Vietnam that led to the American withdrawal. His 1979 documentary, the epic Cambodia Year Zero is credited with alerting the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime. Year Zero is ranked by the BFI as among the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century. His Death of a Nation, about East Timor, had a similar impact in 1994. He has made 58 documentary films.

The Grierson Trust commemorates the pioneering Scottish documentary maker John Grierson (1898 - 1972), famous for Drifters and Night Mail and the man widely regarded as the father of the documentary. Established in 1972, the Grierson Awards annually celebrate documentaries that have made a significant contribution to the form. The list of past winners – which includes Penny Woolcock, Norma Percy, Molly Dineen, Nick Broomfield, Kim Longinotto, Paul Watson, Angus Macqueen and Pawel Pawlikowski - is testament to the high standard of work which is celebrated through these awards. They are the ultimate UK prizes for documentary film makers from across the globe.

The Griersons will take place at BFI Southbank on Tuesday 1st November 2011.