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Co-Presentation Event
What Would Jesus Buy?
CounterCorp is proud to co-present the SF
theatrical
premiere
of What Would Jesus Buy?, which follows
the Rev. Billy Talen and his
Church of Stop Shopping
on a cross-country mission
to save Christmas from the
"Shopocalypse" — humanity's end from commerciali-
zation,
consumerism,
consumption, and eternal debt.
From his humble days preaching on the New York City
subway
with a portable
pulpit, to
a full gospel choir and
congregation of
thousands, the film follows Rev. Billy's
journey as the leader of a national movement, from
his
exorcism of Wal-Mart HQ and
"retail interventions" at the
Mall of America to
the Promised
Land
on Christmas Day.
SPECIAL EVENT : Rev. Billy will be
in attendance at the
7:00 pm and
9:00 pm shows
on Saturday,
Nov. 24th, for
a Q & A with the audience, following an introduction by
CounterCorp director John
Wilner [View official
website]
[ PREVIOUS EVENTS ]
CounterCorp @ Arts
Expo
For the second year in a row,
CounterCorp will have a table
at the 8th
annual Expo for the Artist and Musician, featuring
nearly 100 Bay Area arts
and culture organizations, free
workshops and performances, an outdoor beer and
wine garden, and hundreds of local artists
and musicians.
Attendees can browse tables staffed by
local nonprofit groups, collectives, galleries, and small businesses;
find resources and services; and attend 75 workshops, salons, and
skillshares on arts techniques, history, and related
issues.
Performances include sea chanteys, Chinese
violin, and six local musical groups. Workshops include country dancing,
intellectual property, 'zine making, marketing, funding theater, female
filmmakers, science fiction writing, burlesque, and more. Children's activity
area and organic food available on-site.
Pre-Festival Screening
Urban Cinema Showcase
Please join us for an evening
of local, grassroots films from independent media centers, film festivals,
and young artists curated by Stephen Parr of the SF Media Archive
as part of the 8th Annual Expo for the Artist & Musician.
We will be screening three short
films — Alienation, Aqua Who?, and Children — from
the 2006 Anti-Corporate Film Festival as part of a program including
works from BAVC's Youth Video Works, SF Women's Film Festival,
and independent artists Sabrina
Alonso, Bill Basquin, Veronica Majano, and
others.
Maxed Out
A matter of life and debt
From
small-town America to the White House, Maxed Out reveals
how the modern financial industry really works:
how
 so-called
"sub- prime" borrowers — a
euphemism for the broke
and bankrupt — are now the industry's "preferred
customers",
why
banks and credit card companies
actually
want you to make late payments, and why Americans are
now going broke at a faster rate than during the Great Depression.
The film also looks at the personal
information business, in which 90 percent of all credit reports
have errors in them, but the credit companies don't bother to
correct them, because negative reports mean higher
interest rates — and
industry profits.
And, in an echo
of the current student loan scandal, Maxed Out exposes
how companies pay colleges millions of dollars for students' private
data, then entice teenagers into life-long debt servitude and
financial subsistence.
The film will be followed
by a Q & A
session with credit experts/activists. Tickets $10 to
benefit the 2007 Anti-Corporate Film Festival, October 18-20 in
San Francisco.
In Debt We Trust
America before the bubble bursts
CounterCorp
and New College's Media Studies program  are
co-sponsoring the San Francisco premiere
of In Debt We Trust, a new documentary
from writer and director Danny Schechter (Weapons
of Mass Deception) at the Roxie Theater on 16th Street (between
Valencia and Guerrero in the Mission) on Friday, Nov. 10,
at 7:00pm and 9:00pm.
The
film examines
why many ordinary people find themselves drowning in debt,
and what former Reagan administration advisor and
conservative commentator Kevin Phillips calls the "financialization" of
the American economy — how big banks and
credit card companies replaced factories as the engine of U.S. economic
growth, and
the rise of a powerful credit-and-debt industrial complex that's driving people into "modern serfdom".
Schechter will introduce and speak after the
screenings, and there will be a wine-and-cheese reception at the Picaro tapas restaurant across the street
from the theater. CounterCorp will announce the initial line-up of films for the 2006 Anti-Corporate Film Festival, Dec.
1-3 at the Victoria Theatre down 16th Street.
Film Screening Benefit Event
IRAQ FOR SALE
The
War Profiteers
Who's getting killed — and
who's making a killing
In his previous film (Wal-Mart: The High Cost
of Low Price), director Robert Greenwald showed the insidious and far-reaching
effects of 'Godzilla capitalism' on ordinary people across
the U.S. and around the world.
Greenwald's new documentary, Iraq
for Sale: The War Profiteers, shows what happens to those same
Americans — and their Iraqi counterparts — when the military gets
privatized, conflict becomes big business, and corporations go to war.
The film reveals the inside
story of the soldiers, truck drivers, widows, and children whose
lives have been changed forever as a result of the staggering amount
of corporate profiteering in post-invasion Iraq.
Greenwald uncovers the connections between a small
group of private U.S. companies that have made literally billions of
dollars doing jobs that the military used to do on its own — and that Iraqis
could do better, faster, and cheaper themselves —
and the corporate-funded policymakers who have allowed these firms to turn
no-bid contracts into a license to steal from American soldiers and taxpayers.
Although the privatization of the Pentagon did
not begin with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the sheer scale and brazenness of the
profiteering in Iraq — and the total lack of government oversight or accountability
for a handful of well-connected American corporations — is unprecedented.
The results of this profit-driven policy include
the deaths of U.S. soldiers, contractors, and Iraqi civilians; the alienation
of most of the Iraqi population, and transformation of Iraq into the #1 recruitment
and training center for militant Muslims; and the exacerbation of sectarian strife
into a civil war that threatens the stability of the whole region, and beyond.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion
featuring Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and CodePINK, Charlie Cray of the
Center for Corporate Policy, and Aaron Glantz of Pacifica Radio. The event will
be preceded by a demonstration at the corporate headquarters of war profiteer Bechtel Corporation,
50 Beale Street, San Francisco (Embarcadero BART) from 4:00-6:00pm.
Multi-Media Benefit Event
"Public Image Ltd."
Other Cinema impresario and cult film curator Craig Baldwin
emerges from his subterranean lair and celluloid archives to
present a medley of retro industrial propaganda and vintage
"corporate-identity porn" loops from the '50s, '60s, and '70s.
Don't miss the stentorian voice-overs, howlingly earnest
dialogue, characters firmly bound by their gender roles,
and more rayon than you shake a martini stirrer at — all
in an atmosphere best described as "guerrilla theater."
Among the jaw-droppers are Delco's That's the Way It Is,
General Motor's Our American Crossroads, IBM's early
paean to computers Piercing the Unknown, and Oscar
Meyer's Because We Care — plus a special treat from
Rick Prelinger's unique collection of cinema ephemera.
The overt corporate proselytizing and homogeneity are
startlingly surreal and unintentionally funny today, but
these films were the precursors of our "info-mercials",
and served much the same socio-economic purpose.
So come on down to ATA to see the fossilized remains
of the future that never came — and the inspiration for
the wicked parodies of these decidedly disinformative
"educational" films on The Simpsons (featuring failed
B-movie actor and variety show host Troy McClure).
During the breaks between film sets, DJ Mindwrecker,
host of Mindwrecker TV on SF cable TV's Channel 29,
will premiere his most recent audio-video mash-up —
"Believe in Technology" — featuring images from newly
liberated (dumpster-retrieved) Bay Area corporate films.
.
Adult beverages and tasty treats will be available from
a CounterCorp-hosted bar. Proceeds benefit the 2006
CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival in October.
* * *
From the Other Cinema Spring 2006 calendar:
SAT. 5/13: CounterCorp Kicks Korporate Ass
"We are heartened by a kindred project here in the ‘hood, the
(hopefully) annual weekend presentation of films and panels
that take corporations to task: the CounterCorp Film Festival!
Come on down for a drink and a snack in this screening-room
reception that serves to launch this ambitious undertaking."
Film Screening Benefit Event
Independent America:
The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop
These days, you have to go pretty far out of your way to
spend your money in a local "mom and pop" store instead of one of
the thousands of corporate chains that seem to be sprouting up in every city
in America (and increasingly overseas, too).
One couple has taken that notion a little bit farther — 13,000
miles farther, to be exact.
 In
their new documentary, Independent America, award-winning journalists
Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes took the roads less traveled to uncover the
growing opposition to corporate franchises and “big box” retailers
across the U.S., and the David vs. Goliath struggle that local small businesses
are being forced to wage to stay alive.
The film is an account of the former reporters’ 32-state
road trip in search of “unchained" America. They have only two
self-imposed rules: 1) no interstate highways, and 2) no corporate chains — including
gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores. In other words, they
can only shop with mom and pop.
What they discover during their trip is growing discontent
with corporate America, and a growing movement away from globalization and
toward “localization,” as individuals and small businesses across
the country band together to preserve not only their livelihoods, but their
local communities as well.
In Colorado, a Starbucks is repeatedly vandalized. In Texas,
a rebellious city forces Borders Books into retreat. Residents of America’s “Fourth
of July” capital in Nebraska turn against their new Wal-Mart. And an
entire Wyoming town goes into business for itself after it is abandoned by
its chain department store.
Along the way, their conversations with corporate executives,
economists, entrepreneurs, political leaders, union members, and ordinary
Americans from all walks of life lead Hosein and Hughes to conclude that a
healthy democracy needs local small businesses if it wants to control
ever-growing corporate power.
The 80-minute film will be followed by a panel discussion
and audience Q&A featuring David Room of Energy Preparedness; Don Shaffer
of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE); and Lani Riccobuono
of AK Press. Tickets are $5 – $10, and go on sale 30 minutes before
the show. Proceeds benefit the 2006 CounterCorp Film Festival in October.
Benefit Film Screening
The San Francisco premiere of
Grain of Sand
 Grain
of Sand (Granito de Arena, 2005) is a new documentary about the grassroots
struggle of teachers and parents to resist efforts to privatize Mexico's public
school system, which have accelerated since the 1993 NAFTA treaty made education
a so-called "tradable service."
Under pressure from the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. government
and corporations, Mexican President (and former CEO of Coca-Cola Mexico) Vicente
Fox has stepped up efforts to supplant the country's public schools and teachers,
who have traditionally defended the rights of Mexico's poor, disenfranchised,
and indigenous citizens.
Grain of Sand also documents the historic role that
teachers have played in Mexican politics, including the struggle against their
own corrupt and co-opted national union, which has used intimidation and violence
to undermine the teachers' efforts to preserve their classrooms, jobs, and
autonomy
— as well as Mexican democracy.
The film is in both English and Spanish, with bilingual
subtitles. It was written and directed by Seattle filmmaker Jill Freidberg
(Corrugated Films),
who also produced the award-winning documentary This is What Democracy
Looks Like about the 1999 anti-globalization protests against the WTO
in Seattle.
Following the film, a panel of speakers will discuss the
connection between the privatization of Mexican schools and similar trends
in the U.S., and answer questions from the audience. Proceeds from the event
go to support the CounterCorp Film Festival.
For updates and announcements on future news and events,
subscribe to our low-volume e-mail list, CounterCorp
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Event details
Saturday, Nov. 24
7:00 and 9:00pm
Lumiere Theater
California Street
(at Polk St.), SF
"[A] financial
horror show"
— MSNBC
Order
a copy of the Iraq for Sale DVD and support CounterCorp at the same time!
Read a preview
of this event in
San Francisco's
Bay Guardian
|
