Watch books Eyes of the Machine, then Revolution of Our Times

WASHINGTON — The Maclean’s Watch desk is putting two films on the reel. On 22 September, at 19:00 Eastern, it will screen Eyes of the Machine. On 23 September, at 19:00 Eastern, it will screen Revolution of Our Times. Both play on this site, in the Watch centre, as special screenings — not as a teaser and not as a hand-off to someone else’s player.

Eyes of the Machine is Daya Cahen’s 2025 documentary. It runs 76 minutes. The film is one woman’s battle against China’s surveillance state. The witness is Kalbinur Sidik, an Uzbek woman who grew up in the Uyghur community and left for the Netherlands. Her account of the camps is cut against the state’s own propaganda of “training centres.” The film premiered at IDFA.

Revolution of Our Times is Kiwi Chow’s 2021 Cannes documentary of the 2019 protests. It runs 152 minutes. The title is the slogan the Hong Kong courts later treated as illegal. The film is banned in the city it documents. The only name on the credits who later stepped forward is the director.

A Canadian desk does not need a new excuse to watch the China brief. Ottawa still writes the alliance file as if the only Asian capital that matters is the one with a navy. Cahen’s film is the camera. Chow’s film is the street. Together they are the nights the desk asked readers to keep.

Both screenings will sit in Watch as a special bill, above the ordinary reel of White House and Pentagon clips. They are not replacing that reel. They go up at 19:00 Eastern — Eyes of the Machine on the 22nd, Revolution of Our Times on the 23rd.

Eyes of the Machine, 22 September, 19:00. Revolution of Our Times, 23 September, 19:00.