Film Club: Archive 2007
FRIENDS OF LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - FILM - PROGRAMME 2007
The cafe-diplo programme of talks is being extended to take in a film programme of showings of independent film makers work with following discussion.
VENUE THE HUB,5 TORRENS ST, LONDON EC1V 1NQ
TIME 6.30- 8.30 Sunday 4 February
The Drama Documentary Film
The War Game Director: Peter Watkins
This film originally commisioned by the BBC was not permitted to be shown on television. Subsequently it was released for cinema viewing.
Peter Watkins left the BBC and worked abroad. He also directed the famous dramatised documentery Culloden for the BBC. A film maker of genius was lost to UK television.
Why? When is it allowable to use dramatised techniques in a documentary? Can it ever be possible to be balanced in a film?
VENUE THE HUB,5 TORRENS ST, LONDON EC1V 1NQ
TIME 6.30- 8.30 Sunday 4 March
The Reporting Documentary Film
Walmart Director: Robert Greenwald
Robert Greenwald is a producer, director and political activist. Greenwald is the director/producer of several documentaries: "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" (2006), “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price” (2005), and "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism" (2004). He also executive produced a trilogy of political documentaries: "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential election" (2002); "Uncovered: The Iraq War" (2003), which Greenwald also directed, and "Unconstitutional" (2004)
Review
With little fanfare, Robert Greenwald has become one of the most incisive activist filmmakers in America. Like his superb eve-of-the-election docs, Uncovered and Outfoxed . Wal-Mart is an investigative outcry driven by stringent reporting rather than attitude. Mixing statistics and employee testimony, Greenwald details business practices that provoke a gathering outrage: the coerced unpaid overtime, the foreign sweatshop labor, the health- insurance packages (now being upgraded) that have left thousands of employees to rely on Medicaid, the sucking dry of mom-and-pop stores. Greenwald floats the vital issue of whether Wal-Mart should be restrained by antimonopoly regulations, but his real question is cultural: Even with its rock-bottom prices, is Wal-Mart in the best interest of American consumers?
VENUE THE HUB,5 TORRENS ST, LONDON EC1V 1NQ
TIME 6.30- 8.30 Sunday 1 April
The Radio Documentary
Gerry Kennedy
Gerry Kennedy is a freelance writer and broadcaster having made a number of ½ hour documentaries and “packages” for BBC Radio 4. He’ll introduce us to some of the pitfalls of sound recordings from his own archive catalogue of errors and lead off a discussion on the importance of sound and the relationship between audio and visual media. Gerry will also play a radio feature he produced entitled, “ Where the wild kids are.” The documentary is about the subsequent adult lifestyles of children whose parents had lived in a commune and gave all their children the same surname “Wild”
Sunday May 6
6.30-8.30 pm
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES Part 1/3
Producer/director Adam Curtis
"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic vision they offered their people. Those dreams failed, and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers.
But now they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us - from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, the powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world; a threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments throughout the world, the security services and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives, and the radical islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world, and both had a very similar explanation of what caused that failure. "
This film is a visual essay intellectually putting forward a political point of view with supporting evidence. In the media world of searching continually for a headline catching film often of superficial content this sort of documentary is really worth watching and dicussing afterwards.
Monday October 29th: FILM - THE LAND OF THE SETTLERS with PAUL USISKIN
We will screen an episode from the prize winning Israeli documentary series “The Land of the Settlers”. This is a powerful and controversial series of documentary films made by Israel TV's veteran news presenter Haim Yavin and it caused a storm when first shown because of Yavin's intense criticism of the settlement enterprise.
The Q&A will be taken by Paul Usiskin Co-Chairman of Peace Now UK an organisation dedicated to opposing the occupation and seeking a negotiated settlement for a Two States solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Paul produced documentary films for the BBC also on the occupation. We can therefore have a discussion both on the politics of the conflict and on the role film can play in the political process.
Monday December 10th – FILM - THE NON-VIOLENT APPROACH TO ACTIVATING POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE with QUAKER PEACE AND SOCIAL WITNESS
We will show two short films on the work of the Quakers, both in the UK and overseas. The first illustrates three projects where non-violent methods have been used to help bring about change: action against the Trident nuclear submarines, a protest against the World Bank, and campaigning for a healthier planet. The second features the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme run by the World Council of Churches in the West Bankand Israel. Two members from Quaker Peace and Social Witness, both deeply involved in major projects employing non-violent means in support of the oppressed, will be with us to answer the questions raised.
Conference alert! Saturday, June 16th, 2007 
It’s broke – let’s fix it!
