Originally published in the Spring 2010 issue of POV Magazine.
Einstein on the screen
Recently, Disney, the largest children’s entertainment firm in the world, offered rebates on its hugely popular educational DVD set Baby Einstein. While the company refused to acknowledge the link, many point to the ongoing lobbying efforts by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood as the reason behind the company’s capitulation. Apparently, research shows that little Abdul or Suzy can’t learn much at all from screen media, that is, if they’re under two years old.
Disney had marketed Baby Einstein to eager parents and created the impression that toddlers could indeed benefit cognitively from screen media, maybe even picking up a little physics along the way. But the information proving the contrary was all in the documentary Consuming Kids by the Media Education Foundation, an organization of academics and media makers based in Northampton, MA who produce educational documentaries on topics ranging from homophobia in hip hop culture to corporate greenwashing. Their documentary had warned of such marketing ploys.
This begs the question: if babies can’t learn from screen media, can the rest of us learn from documentaries?
Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story takes aim at the elite bankers and CEOs who are steering America’s economy into the gutter, and among the bad guys he goes after is none other than the world’s largest and most brutal retailer, Wal-Mart (now re-branded as Walmart). Moore exposes Walmart’s dirty practice of taking out insurance claims on its employees and cashing in on their deaths without telling their families.
So it may come as a bit of a surprise that Moore’s anti-capitalism, anti-Walmart documentary goes on sale today…in Walmart. Yes, you can buy the DVD at your local low-wage, environment-destroying, human-rights abusing Walmart, as well as at Amazon and other video retailers. Moore thinks that the reason Walmart is happily carrying Capitalism: A Love Story is due to the fact that they are uber-comfy in their position of ruler of the world. In an email sent out today, he writes:
A frank discussion on sex workers and labour rights appears to be too hot and heavy for the brass at Sweden’s Stockholm University.
The local chapter of Cinema Politica had plans to commemorate International Women’s Day with a screening of Live Nude Girls Unite!, a documentary on the creation of the first labour union for strippers in the United States.
Exotic dancers are regularly exploited by club owners, and the story of one woman’s quest to organize her fellow workers and fight back against the oppression of sex workers seemed like a perfect way to foster debate around the issues of empowerment and workers’ rights.
If university management has their way, however, no such discussion will take place. The administation has effectively banned the event, having canceled the student film group’s room booking and destroyed all of their promotional material.
Jay Black’s photographs of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic mascots first caught my eye down at the W2 Culture + Media House in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. They are at once poignant and playful, and seemed to be a well thought out and cohesive effort to tell the story of the concerns people had about the Olympics using the plush toys. I interviewed him and discovered that really, the photos had been completely spontaneous, merely play done to fill time. Despite the protest-like nature of the photos, Jay also had a positive experience with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
To celebrate the ending of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and the launch of a new book about political documentary and art as social intervention we have chosen You Are On Indian Land (YAOIL) as our Friday Film Pick.
Produced under the National Film Board of Canada’s Challenge for Change Program in 1969 YAOIL was one of the first documentaries produced with members of the Indian Film Unit (a production unit made up of aboriginal filmmakers, cancelled some years later). The 37 minute black and white film, made by Mort Ransen and Mike Mitchell (who is currently Grand Chief of Akwesasne) is a powerful instalment of cinema verité and an incredibly important historical document that still measures up to today cinema standards.
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