Globalization Films

  December 2, 2005:  For Man Must Work  The 20th Century saw the creation of colossal wealth and exploding economies. But the days of industry providing mass employment are over. In the global economy, human resources are being replaced by technology. We are moving from a mass labor force to an elite corps concentrated in the knowledge sector. Will this change result in a sort of economic apartheid in which a third of humanity is made redundant? Will it mean the end of work as we know it? For Man Must Work raises crucial questions and suggests rethinking the future. The film shows how living and working conditions are deteriorating for many people. It also features experts such as Vivianne Forrester, author of The Economic Horror; Jeremy Rifkin, American economist and author of The End of Work; sociologist Ricardo Petrella; Ignacio Ramonet, editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique; and Jacques Attali, former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. They have no illusions, and they think the 21st Century is getting off to a very bad start. (52 minutes; 2001.)

  October 28, 2005: Bloodletting: Life, Death, Healthcare

Bloodletting is a tale of two countries, one rich, one poor; it's the story of two healthcare systems, one nationalized, one profit-driven; and it's the personal story of two regular people living without healthcare in America. Filmmaker Lorna Green borrows a camera to make a documentary on Cuba's healthcare system, revealing history, culture, and paradoxes of contemporary Cuban life. When she returns to the U.S., she finds her mother, a teacher, and her brother, a manufacturing worker, living without health insurance. Both become caught in a downward cycle in the ugly underbelly of medicine for the uninsured in America. Turning the camera on her own family, Lorna documents the struggles of real life without a health safety net. What emerges is an intensely personal story, woven in with grave statistics and commentary on a country where 45 million people are uninsured. (67 minutes, 2004.)

 Margaret Allen & Christina Meacham from the Ravenswood Family Health Care Center in East Palo Alto, will speak and lead a discussion after the film. Margaret is a Stanford-trained Family Practice Physician Assistant who has practiced for 15 years with socio-economically deprived communities.  She is currently heading up the Health Care for the Homeless Program here in East Palo Alto. 

Jesse SwanHuyser – Director, California Coalition for Fair Trade & Human Rights will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

Feb 7, 2005: Argentina: Hope in Hard Times  joins in the processions and protests, attends street-corner neighborhood assemblies, visits workers' cooperatives and urban gardens, taking a close-up look at the ways in which Argentines are picking up the pieces of their devastated economy and creating new possibilities for the future. A spare narrative, informal interview settings, and candid street scenes allow the pervasive strength, humor, and resilience of the Argentine people to tell these tales. These are their inspiring stories - of a failed economy and distrusted politicians, of heartache and hard times, of a resurgence of grassroots democracy and the spirit of community - told in resonant detail.  74 mins, 2004

Antonia Juhasz – Project Director, International Forum on Globalization will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

Jan 31, 2005:Price of Aid  Everyday the U.S. donates millions of tons of food to famine victims and other starving people in the world's poorest countries. The provocative documentary reveals the vast bureaucratic network of American aid agencies involved in the 'hunger business,' one in which rich countries benefit from the problems of poor countries and questions how America's well-intentioned foreign-aid program has spawned a self-serving relationship between humanitarian aid and American business and politics.  Zambia, a country teetering on the precipice of famine, becomes a cause for a solemn discussion regarding the dignity of the people we seek to help.  55 mins, 2004

Karl Beitel – Food Policy Analyst, Food First will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

May 9, 2005:  World Stopped Watching - is a sequel to the award winning The World Is Watching, a cinema verité look at foreign news coverage of a climactic moment in the US-financed Contra war against Nicaragua’s revolutionary government.  Fourteen years later, filmmakers Peter Raymont and Harold Crooks return to Nicaragua to discover what became of the first revolution to be conducted in the glare of the world media. T The film revisits the mothers and children in the barrios, the taxi drivers, and of course, the politicians.  Much has changed. The country is now replete with strip malls, prostitutes and MacDonald’s. Literacy is down. Infant deaths are up. Many NGOs and UN agencies are doing useful development work, particularly in the area of women’s health and housing. But, according to recent UNESCO reports, 26% of Nicaraguan children never set foot in a classroom, a figure twice as high as the 13% average in the rest of Latin America.  52 mins,  2003

April 25, 2005: Store Wars: When Wal Mart Comes To Town  In the US, Wal-Mart opens a new mega-store every two business days. This is the story of the impact of discount chain stores on American towns and cities, and on our society as a whole. STORE WARS follows events in Ashland, VA, over a one-year period, from the first stormy public hearing that galvanizes residents' opposition till the Town Council takes a final vote on the proposed Wal-Mart store.  The cast of characters includes the mayor and Town Council members who will eventually make the decision, Wal-Mart representatives and the "Pink Flamingos," the grassroots citizen group opposed to the store.  STORE WARS does not single out Wal-Mart, but rather highlights its position as the icon of the Big Box industry. While offering a critical view of this industry, the film presents fairly all viewpoints on this controversial issue. 59 min, 2001

Tony Alexander, Political Relations Director of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 428 (covers Palo Alto area) will lead a discussion after the film.

  April 18, 2005: Money (L' Argent)  Money: who creates it? Who controls it? Who profits from it?  The film takes us to Turkey, Argentina and the US in a moving portrait of citizens who have lost everything.  How could these relatively wealthy countries possibly go bankrupt in less than a decade.?  Interwoven with these stories, a lucid essay dissects the macro-economic policies, demanded by the World Bank and the IMF, that have plunged entire nations into economic crisis. Faced with a lack of money, the people have begun to reinvent it, initiating credit and barter systems, and inventing local parallel economies. An essential and incisive look into the hidden side of money.  65 min, 2004

Antonia Juhasz -  Project director at International Forum on Globalization will speak and lead a discussion.

April 11, 2005: Landless (Sin Tierra)  Part 20th-anniversary homage to what it is the “world’s most successful people’s movement” according to Naom Chomsky and part condemnation of the social conditions that gave rise to it, the film traces the rise of Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST), whose strategy is to peacefully and legally take over and set up encampments on unproductive land, which is then redistributed among the occupying families. The battle has been hard fought, with many landowners organizing themselves into paramilitary groups. In the last 15 years, some 1600 workers have lost their lives. The film, produced by Pedro Almodóvar, takes some fascinating detours into the underbelly of Brazilian life, perhaps the most heartbreaking being those dealing with child slavery and rural workers who work for years to pay off debts to landowners.  Audience Best Documentary Award- Málaga Film Festival, 2004.

Charlotte Casey – member of Friends of MST will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

April 4, 2005: Thirst   Population growth, pollution, and scarcity are turning water into "blue gold," the oil of the 21st century. Global corporations are rushing to gain control of this dwindling natural resource, producing intense conflict in the US and worldwide where people are dying in battles over control of water.  As revealed in "Thirst," the world is poised on the brink of epochal changes in how water is stored, used, and valued. Will these changes provide clean water to the billions of people who need it? Or save the child who dies every eight seconds from contaminated water? Looking at tensions in Bolivia, India and Stockton, California, "Thirst" reveals how water is becoming the catalyst for explosive community responses to the management of this precious resource. 62 min, 2004

Juliette Beck – California Director, Water For All Campaign of Public Citizen will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

July 8, 2005The Corporation, 145 mins, 2004

THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.

June 17 2005, The Take,  2004, 87 mins

In the wake of Argentina’s spectacular economic collapse in 2001, Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act —the take —has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

Director/producer Avi Lewis (Counterspin) and writer/producer and renowned author Naomi Klein (No Logo) take viewers inside the lives of ordinary visionaries, as they reclaim their work, their dignity and their democracy.

2004 Film Series

Dec 6, 2004: The Bottom Line: Privatizing the World
The Bottom Line is a multi-layered investigation into the erosion of the global commons within the context of increasing privatization and expanding patent rights. People from Canada, the United States, Mexico, France, Brazil and India share stories of the commodification of water, seeds, genes, healthcare, knowledge –and what citizens around the world are doing to oppose this trend. The Bottom Line presents a revealing snapshot of a global community at a crossroads.  52 mins, 2002

Jesse SwanHuyser – Director, California Coalition for Fair Trade & Human Rights will speak and lead a discussion after the film.

Deborah Koons Garcia – Director, Writer, Producer of the film will be present and lead a discussion after the film.

Nov 15, 2004: Coming to Say Goodbye: Stories of Aids in Africa is a stunning documentary on the AIDS pandemic as it is experienced today by East Africans. Through the eyes of courageous people suffering from AIDS and their eloquent and committed care-givers, we see how AIDS is not just a “health crisis” but is part of the cycle of poverty and inequality that is devastating to food security and economic development in the poorest countries of the world.  30 mins, 2002

Nunu Kidane, Coordinator, Priority Africa Network and John Iverson, Director, ActUP East Bay will speak and lead a discussion after the films 

June 1, 2004: Doing the Right Thing
Porto Alegre, capital of Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, was once a run-of-the-mill, dirty, Brazilian port city. But an amazing transformation has taken place: unemployment has fallen, public transportation is now excellent, and poor neighborhoods have improved dramatically.  These changes are thanks to a process of direct democracy known as the 'Participatory Budget' scheme that's giving all Porte Alegre's citizens a say in how their city is run.  27 min, 2002

Also on June 1, 2004: Another World Is Possible
In early 2002, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, public officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, indigenous nations, farmers, and labor gathered for the World Social Forum an international event covered extensively by the media in other parts of the world, was virtually ignored by the US press. The film presents a sampling of the issues and events at this enormous and creative gathering, featuring speakers such as Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Kevin Danaher, Wolfgang Sachs, and Rigoberta Menchu.  24 min, 2002

Suzzane York, Research Director at  International Forum on Globalization and Shannon Biggs, Development Director at Global Exchange who were both present at the World Social Forum in Brazil will jointly give a presentation and lead a discussion after the film.

May 25, 2004: No Logo: Brands, Globalization and Resistance
Based on the best-selling book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, reveals the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and cultural reach of multinational companies. Analyzing how brands like Nike, The Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger became revered symbols worldwide, Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products (outsourced to low-wage workers in developing countries), but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles. 51 min, 2003

Jason Mark communications director of Global Exchange and the co-author (with Kevin Danaher), of the new book Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power will speak and lead a discussion after the film.   Jason has helped develop campaign strategies to stop Nike and Gap sweatshops, transform the IMF and WTO, and pressure Starbucks to offer Fair Trade certified coffee

May 11, 2004: Deadly Embrace: Nicaragua, the World Bank & IMF
Using outstanding footage this program traces the history of U.S. involvement in Central America, presenting the 1990's economic policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and U.S. agencies as a continuation of the war of the 1980's by economic means. Notes that after 5 years of IMF and World Bank programs Nicaragua experienced the worst economic collapse in its history and was reduced to one of the poorest countries on earth.  30 min, 1996  

Also on May 11, 2004: Global Village or Global Pillage: The Race to the Bottom
Today's global economy lets corporations pit workers and communities against each other to see who will provide the lowest wages, most abusable workers, cheapest environmental costs, and biggest subsidies for corporations.  The result: a "RACE TO THE BOTTOM" in which conditions for all tend to fall toward the poorest and most desperate. But that gives people around the world a common interest in opposing the race to the bottom. This movie shows how they are doing so.  27 min, 1999  

Carmencita Chie Abad from Global Exchange will speak and lead a discussion after the films.  Chie speaks from personal experience about the hardships endured by millions of workers in sweatshops around the world. Chie spent six years as a garment worker on the Pacific island of Saipan, a U.S. territory and endured wretched working conditions, frequently working 14-hour shifts in order to meet arbitrary production quotas for her employer, the Sako Corporation, which makes clothes for the Gap and other U.S. retailers. 

April 27: Life and Debt  
The film addresses the impact of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and current globalization policies on a developing country such as Jamaica focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agenda.  86 min, 2001

November 11, 2003: Economics: Reinventing the World, 50 mins, 2001

Takes an insightful look at the modern economic system and its purported benefit to global society. It denounces the myths that everything has a price tag, purchasing things will bring people happiness, and that wealth, happiness, and fulfillment are inseparable from money. It asserts that focusing on human and natural capital can truly benefit society and suggests that the values of life outweigh financial values.

Second Place, EarthVision International Environmental Video Festival  

October 21, 2003: Cappuccino Trail:The Global Economy in a Cup 50 mins, 2001

A 150-pound bag of coffee beans might earn a farmer $50; the "street value” of that same bag--10,000 cups of coffee--is around $20,000. By following the trail of two coffee beans grown in the Peruvian Andes, this program takes a unique look at the ubiquitous stimulant which, after oil, is the most globally traded commodity. One bean takes the route of the open market where its price is determined by commodities traders and analysts. The other bean finds its way into a new gourmet coffee launched in Britain by a company dedicated to paying fair prices to farmers for their high-quality organic crop.

August 26, 2003, August 12, 2005:  Who’s Counting - Directed by Terre Nash, 94 mins, 1996

Maryiln Waring on Sex, Lies & Global Economics

Marilyn Waring is the foremost spokesperson for global feminist economics, offering new avenues of approach for political action. challenging the myths of economics, its elitist stance, and our tacit compliance with political agendas that masquerade as objective economic policy. “Why is the market economy all that counts?  This film has inspired many people, notably the Who's Counting Project, to work on human-scale economic alternatives, local currency exchanges, and more humane ways of measuring the quality of life.  

"Meeting Marilyn Waring on film will forever change your perception of justice, economics, and the worth of your own works. Watch this film." Gloria Steinem

"I give this film every superlative...riveting, revealing, inspiring etc. It penetrates to the heart of the global, ecological, and social crisis that afflicts the world."  Dr. David Suzuki

Chris Award, Columbus International Film & Video Festival
GENIE Award, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Silver Plaque, Chicago International Film Festival

August 12, 2003: T-Shirt Travels – Directed by Shanta Bloemen, 57 mins, 2001

What happens to all those old clothes you bring to the Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries? Focusing on Zambia, this journey investigates the second hand clothes business, how it plays a devastating role in the economy and seeks to understand the growing inequalities that exist between the first and third world. The film draws connections between the history of colonialism, slavery, depletion of Africa’s natural resources and the current huge debt and IMF/World Bank structural adjustment policies resulting in terrible suffering from malnutrition, poor healthcare, inadequate schools and a crumbling infra-structure.

Best Documentary, Human Rights and Justice, Vermont International Film Festival, 2001
Best Documentary, Atlanta Film Festival, 2001
Certificate of Merit, San Francisco International Film Festival, 2001

July 29, 2003: Banking on Life and Debt –   Mary Knoll Productions, 30 mins, 1995

Narrated by actor Martin Sheen, presents a highly informative analysis of the origins and development of the IMF and the World Bank. It examines the ways in which these international financial institutions have usurped control of economic and political decision making in Ghana, Brazil, and the Philippines, and analyzes the disastrous effects of their structural adjustment policies.

July 29, 2003: Cancel the Debt, Now – Directed by Ann Macksoud and John Ankele, 24 mins, 1999

What is the origin of Third World debt? Narrated by actress Julie Harris the video explores how aggressive lending policies in the 1970s helped create the Third World debt and how, beginning in the 1980s, heavy-handed and misguided World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies exacerbated poverty. The video explains how the multilateral institutions not only weaken national economies but also undermine governments in developing countries.

July 15, 2003: Profit and Nothing, But  - Directed by Raoul Peck, 52 mins, 2001

Who said that the economy serves mankind? What is this world where the wealthiest two percent in rich countries, control everything?  Raoul Peck contrasts the ‘triumphant capitalist’ system  with the devastating reality in his native land, Haiti where its GNP for the next thirty years is roughly equivalent to Bill Gates (current) fortune. The film's stark images of the lives of the damned on earth provide a striking backdrop for a pertinent, and impertinent, exploration of the profit motive and its consequences on our day to day lives, our history, and our outlook for the future.

June 24, 2003: New Rulers of the World - Directed and presented by John Pilger, 53 mins, 2002

Who are the real beneficiaries of the globalized economy?  Who really rules the world now?  Governments or a handful of huge corporations? The film looks at the new rulers of the world – great multinationals and the governments and institutions that back them - the IMF and the World Bank.  The reality behind much of modern shopping and the famous brands is the loss of millions of jobs, and a sweatshop economy duplicated in country after country. 

Silver Hugo Award, Chicago International TV Competition

June 1, 2003: Global Banquet, Politics of Food - Directed by Ann Macksoud and John Ankele, 50 mins, 2001

Details how several large multi-national corporations have come to dominate the food production business, driving small family farmers both in the US and developing world out of existence, controlling markets, destroying the ability of developing nations to feed themselves and perpetuating the structures which promote poverty and hunger.

James Goldstone Filmmaker Award, Vermont International Film Festival

Cine Golden Eagle Award