In the United States, “coercive interrogation techniques” are allowed on detainees in the so-called War on Terror. We’ve seen the photos and heard the testimony from Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Coersive interrogation is a not so subtle end-run around American law which makes the use of torture a crime.
Artists Serena Wallace and Nancy Popp have teamed up to create a video installation named after the legislation that continues to make torture a crime – United States Code Section 2340A. In the video, the artists pair the dehumanizing language of the justice department lawyers with the sound of a populace inured to the spectacle of torture in the media.
The video is currently screening as a part of the UC Santa Barbara series Critical Issues in America: Torture and the Future through June 2007. And will also screen on April 23rd at the University of California alongside a talk by James Yee, former US Army Muslim Chaplain at Guantanamo Bay.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on April 18, 2007 in
Posted by Aisling Chin-Yee on April 18, 2007 in
Current TV—a global television network broadcasting user made content—currently features this short documentary that follows a guerrilla gardener as he seeks to make one London neighbourhood a greener place.
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 17, 2007 in
Posted by Aisling Chin-Yee on April 17, 2007 in
Looking for a reason to pay your taxes? You're not likely to find one here: this funky little video, brought to you by the folks at GOOD magazine, illustrates how American taxpayers' money is spent. The 30 percent figure it gives for military spending, however, is (unfortunately) inaccurate, as it does not include the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are funded through separate bills and are not accounted for in the budget for the Department of Defense.
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 13, 2007 in
Director David Lynch tells it like it is when asked how he feels about the “new” trend in product placement in movies. Check out the video clip at youtube
Product placement in films is not, however, exactly a new trend. According to media analyst Jay Newell of Iowa State University, the Lumiere brothers used product placement in the 1890s to promote Sunlight Soap, which features prominently in several widely distributed Lumiere features as early as 1896. And Hollywood films have been hawking products in return for investment at least since the 1920s.
There are other folks who are just as unhappy as Mr. Lynch about cinema made into advertising brain muck. Check out Brand Hype, an online database that tracks product placement in films.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on April 13, 2007 in
HowardZinn.org recently let fans of Zinn’s seminal “A People’s History of the United States of America” know that a new video on YouTube has political musico Mos Def reading a passage from the book. Maybe it doesn’t sound all that exciting, but it’s nice to see pop culture and progressive politics collude, even if it is in the most subtle of ways.
Not so subtle, however, is the political music video by Mos Def, Immortal Technique and Eminem called “Tell the Truth.” The short video points the finger at Bush as the cause of 9/11, and calls for an end to the “professional liars” that are the “fake christians” and “fake politicians” in America. The video is graphically dynamic, with words and images constantly building off each other and making perpendicular turns reminiscent and no-doubt inspired by the fabulous, brilliant, trendsetting and über-political web video “What Barry Says.”
Posted by Ezra Winton on April 13, 2007 in
The 2007 CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival is seeking submissions for this year's festival, which is scheduled to take place from October 19-21 in San Francisco.
From the organizers:
The CounterCorp Festival seeks a variety of U.S. and foreign-made movies, feature-length and shorter works, and narrative (fictional) and documentary films (including animation) in both film and digital formats. Non-English films must have English subtitles.
To submit a film for consideration, please download and fill out the 2007 submission form on the Festival page of the CounterCorp website and mail it in with your film by this year's deadline of JULY 2nd.
CounterCorp also welcomes suggestions for films to show at the Festival. Please e-mail your suggestions to submissions@countercorp.org, and include as much of the following information as possible:
* The name of the film
* Approximate running time
* A brief description
* The director's name
* Year it was released
* Country of origin
* Name of production and/or distribution company
* Why you think it fits in the CounterCorp Festival
If we end up screening a film that you suggest, we will give you TWO TICKETS to *any* film at this year's festival.
For more information about CounterCorp or the Anti-Corporate Film Festival, visit our website or .
Posted by Ezra Winton on April 12, 2007 in
This past February Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako was released in the UK and North America. The film is a searing indictment against the IMF and the World Bank, shot documentary-style with real lawyers, witnesses and family members, culminating in a fictitious mock-trial where African society "legally" challenges the World Bank. The direction is exceptional, but the dialogue is unflinching in its politics, where witnesses speak of the devastating effects that 20 years of structural adjustment policy by the G8 has had on the African continent.
The film launches a devastating, albeit rhetorical, blow to economic neoliberalism and the West's inability to intervene in the process of privatization. Witnesses give long speeches that connect the audience to the real lives lived in Mali - the country where the trial takes place - and to the socio-political realities of much of African society. The film is an emotionally-charged personal essay articulated by many, levied against the powerful and the affluent, and acted out in the courtyard of the director's family, where throughout his upbringing he was politicized through lengthy debates on Africa and the West with his father. Bamako is mostly potent speeches from African teachers and writers who expose the regressive and destructive nature of privatization, who point to the complete and utter failure of an imported economic strategy, and who tell stories of suffering and struggle caused by or exacerbated by such policy. Do not be fooled, there is little pity to be found in all this: the vigorous speeches set a fiery tone of anger, resistance and regeneration that should cause even the odd republican bow-tied banker on Wall Street to at least exercise the imagination in seeing numbers as real, lived consequences. Bamako is after all, a film that personalizes policy without pulling any punches.
The trial device is the central element of the film, with some snippets of stories acted outside of the courtyard, revealing "life-as-usual" day to day activities like weddings, work, family, and relationship complexities. However the heart of this film is an uncompromising investigation into the greedy, racist and neo-colonial economic policies of a self-concerned Western hegemony and the ultimately destructive policy effects on the continent of Africa. The problem's cause identified and indicted, the film also focuses on accountability and "sentencing" for the guilty. This adds up to a powder keg of calculated political attacks that places power in the hands of the oppressed, at least for two incredibly moving cinematic hours. It is an important piece of art that demands an especially Western audience, as it is after all the West's leaders who apparently act in the interest of the West's populations while pursuing the pillage-based policy of Africa. As Sissako says:
"...faced with the seriousness of the situation in Africa, I felt a kind of urgency to bring up the hypocrisy of the North towards the Southern countries."
For more information visit the Bamako site.
Posted by Ezra Winton on April 9, 2007 in
Hey Mr. Businessman, remember us? In a display of brutal honesty, this decades old advert for public employees union AFSCME asks white-collared folk to acknowledge the people out there who are "doing a lot of shit work that you take for granted."
Rumor has it that the improved voiceover was done as a joke during the same session in which they recorded the original. Whether fact or fiction, this type of video is what unions should have been producing all along. Drawing attention to the great class divide works wonders in promoting worker solidarity. "Hey, that's right, we do make sure their kids don't drink piss from no fuckin' water fountains!"
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 3, 2007 in
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