Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Diverted to Delhi Australia, 2003, 55 min Director: Gregory Stitt Producer: Kachin Holdings Director's Contact: gregstitt@ozemail.com

'Diverted to Delhi' is about Indians working in Delhi's call centres who are taught to speak and think like their international customers. When unsuspecting American or Australian consumers ring customer service, their local calls are often re-routed to India, and answered by Indians impersonating local telephone operators. This well-guarded secret, called outsourcing, has its comical side, but critics see more sinister implications. For them, India is being recolonised by the forces of globalisation, as college graduates are forced to put aside their cultural identity, modify their accent, change their name, and take on the personality of whoever pays the bills.

 

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Dumpster Divers Australia, 2003, 6 min Director: Phoebe Hart Director's Contact: phoebehart@hotmail.com

Nat and John bypass the supermarket shelves and head straight for the 'just beyond the use-by-date' stuff in the bins out back.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Globalisation: Violence or Dialogue? France, 2001, 62 min Director: Patrice Barat Producer: Article Z Director's Contact: patrice.barrat@articlez.fr

September 11, 2001 ... After thousands of deaths occurred that day in New York and Washington, some talked about a confrontation between good and evil, or a war between religions. Pretty soon, it was also said that this particular act of violence, those suspected of committing the attack, and its consequences, were related to globalization. At the beginning of the third millennium, opposing visions of globalization confront each other at the slightest opportunity. Between North and South and between what's called civil society and the powers-that-be. For almost a year, the filmmakers have followed different actors in this conflict and sometimes brought about encounters. What they are proposing therefore, is to try to understand what separates them and what could bring them together ...

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Inheritance: A Fisherman's Story Australia/Hungary, 2003, 52 min Director: Peter Hegedus Producer: Soul Vision Films Director's Contact: soulvision@bigpond.com

In the year 2000, the Hungarian River Tisza suffered a monumental ecological disaster. Now fisherman like Balazs Meszaros battle to survive. In an effort to save his people and their way of life, Balazs travels to Australia to confront the mining company responsible. The 'Inheritance' counterposes the struggle for justice by the people who are the human tragedy behind the headlines against the very grim reality of corporate accountability and responsibility.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

I am a Rebel South Africa, 2003, 53 min Director: Vincent Moloi Producer: Ben CashDan, Seipone Director's Contact: hamoloi@yahoo.com

An eighty year old activist who was a key anti-aparthied activist is now confronting his former comrade in the struggle against apartheid. He believes that they have betrayed the principal of people before profit. He is joined by a naive young filmmaker who is trying to unravel him and tries to understand why he is still on the street demonstrating while his comrades have taken offices in the government and with institutions like the World Bank. Will the young filmmaker unravel the 80 years of Dennis Brutus?

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Kilometer Zero Korea, 2003, 22 min Director: Hoonkyu Lee Director's Contact: webmaster@studioiscream.com

At the beautiful seaside resort of Cancun, Mexico, there was a long barricade to defend the cenference center where the 5th WTO ministerial conference was being held in September 2003. Amid capitalists negotiations about their own economic interests, many activists from around the world joined the struggle against this greedy WTO conference. The fighting point of this inevitable showdown was called 'Kilometer Zero', the point at which the barricades began. In the middle of a march of farmers from around the world, Lee Kyunghae from the South Korean delegation climbed up to the barricade and shouted "WTO kills farmers!", and this was his last shout.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Kaippuneeru The Bitter Drink India, 2003, 27 min Director: P. Baburaj & C. Saratchandran Producer: Third Eye Communications Director's Contact: sarat@satyam.net.in

'The Bitter Drink' chronicles the two year long struggle of the most marginalized people of Indian Society, the Adivasis, against the mighty multinational Coca-Cola corporation in Plachimada of the Palakkad district in Kerala. The documentary also discusses India's natural resources, mainly water.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Making a Killing: Philip Morris, Kraft and Global Tobacco Addiction USA, 2003, 45 min Director: Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold Producer: Karla Capers, Infact Director's Contact: kelly@bway.net

'Making a Killing' exposes Philip Morris's abuses around the world, showing how the corporation uses its political power, size and promotional expertise to spread tobacco addiction internationally. 'Making a Killing' reveals Philip Morris's role in the tobacco industry's deceptive history, its use of aggressive advertising and promotional tactics in Eastern Europe and Asia and how the corporation hides behind the family-friendly image of its Kraft Foods subsidiary. In doing so, 'Making a Killing' also reflects and builds upon growing grassroots pressure for corporate accountability. The film includes a 15-minute conclusion about the tremendous success of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world's first public health and corporate accountability treaty.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Patents or Patients? Netherlands, 2002, 25 min Director: Joost De Haas Director's Contact: jdehaas@knoware.nl

Yusuf Hamied is the Robin Hood of the pharmaceutical industry. He steals medicines from the rich and gives them to the poor. His company Cipla produces so called generic medicines, cheap copies of the original patented medicines of large pharmaceutical companies from the US and Europe. Is he a thief? No, patent laws are national laws. Just like the US decided for reasons of national security that inventions dealing with nuclear energy cannot be patented, India decided that medicines cannot be patented to guarantee a viable health system. Hamied surprised the world when he offered cheap AIDS drugs to South Africa. His initiative started a worldwide discussion about patent rights. Do the pharmaceutical companies really spend as much on the development of new medicines as they say they do? And do they need patents to protect their huge profits?

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Rahan Jaljilla The Order Finland, 2003, 165 min Director: Harakka Timo Producer: Akimof Lisa, Production House Director's Contact: timo.harakka@yle.fi

A middle-aged, middle class man makes an investment in a Far East fund and wonders about what his money really brings accomplishes. He follows his investment around the world and ends up in Denmark, Korea, Africa, China, the United States, India and England. He learns about Mozambique's nut industry, gathers rubber in the Brazilian Amazon, and participates in the World Bank's summit meeting in Washington. The small investor meets the cashiers in the supermarket that he owns, a laid-off secretary from his company, the underwear models in Nanhai, a 70 year old stock market speculator in Shanhai, as well as the people who pay the price of China's economic decline with their health. If the world is destroyed, the world economy might suffer. But he discovers that even the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is good business for a London options trader.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

The Corporation Canada, 2003, 150 min Director: Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbot Producer: Big Picture Media Corporation [Official Website] Director's Contact: mark@thecorporation.com

150 years ago, the Corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church and the Monarchy in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The Corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history. A timely, critical inquiry, 'The Corporation' invites players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Case studies, anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Each story, each portrait, illuminates an aspect of the corporation's complex character. It is a mix of irreverent, unsettling, metaphoric graphics, classic documentary elements, and appropriated corporate aesthetics that engages viewers while encouraging a critical distance from the outrageous normalcy of corporate culture.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

The Leech and the Earthworm UK/USA, 2003, 68 min Director: Marc Silver and Max Pugh Producer: Debra Harry, IPCB Director's Contact: marcsilver@onetel.net.uk

'The Leech and the Earthworm' celebrates indigenous world views and brings to light the global fight against biopiracy - the new colonialism. From the Cook Islands to New Zealand, from Vanuatu to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, we have been asking indigenous people for their views on Western science - its vision of a genetically engineered future and its deep links with the corporate profits, globalisation and colonisation. Combining passionate critiques of our potential futures and living alternatives to the globalised monoculture with music and stunning visuals, this film will take its audiences on a journey into truths they thought disappeared long ago, inspiring and educating them to ask serious questions of the collective illusion we call progress.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Trinkets and Beads USA, 1996, 52 min Director: Christopher Walker Producer: Debra Harry, IPCB Director's Contact: marcsilver@onetel.net.uk

After twenty years of devastating pollution by oil companies in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, a new kind of oil company - Dallas-based MAXUS - promises to be the first company which will protect the rain forest and respect the people who live there. 'Trinkets & Beads' tells the story of how MAXUS set out to convince the Huaorani - known as the fiercest tribe in the Amazon - to allow drilling on their land. It is a story which starts in 1957 with the Huaorani massacre of five American missionaries, moving through the evangelization of part of the tribe by Rachel Saint, pollution of Huaorani lands by Texaco and Shell and manipulation and buying off of Huaorani leaders by MAXUS. Filmed over two years, 'Trinkets & Beads' reveals the funny, heartbreaking and thrilling story of the battle waged by a small band of Amazonian warriors to preserve their way of life.

Films at Other Worlds Are Breathing The Global Market

Voces Argentinas UK/Argentina, 2002, 16 min Director: Zoe Young and Dylan Howitt Director's Contact: zoe@esemplastic.net

Behind the headlines of economic crisis lie an angry, eloquent people determined to survive - despite the endless stream of trouble thrown their way by unaccountable power elites. Interwoven voices from the streets of Buenos Aires tell how it feels to be Argentine as the country plunges from the first world to the third. Resisting the dire personal and social consequences with poetry, song, laughter and practical solidarity, this film records a people and a city staying very much alive through the very worst of times.