Working Group Film Festival
Every Thursday from February 4th until April 8th, come and enjoy a great film by one of QPIRG’s working groups!
February 4th, 19:30 – Antigentrification Project
Film: Squat!
Cultural Studies Building, 3475 Peel
Été 2001 à Montréal, en pleine crise du logement, des sans-abri, des mal-logés et des jeunes militants occupent un bâtiment vacant. Au nom du droit au logement et pour vivre autrement, un squat politique prend forme avec l’appui de la ville. Au jour le jour, Ève Lamont filme la réalité des squatters. Elle fixe sa lentille sur certaines des 50 personnes qui habitent le squat Préfontaine et dresse un portrait social révélateur.
Gagnant – Prix de la meilleure réalisation long-métrage documentaire et prix humanitaire, Hot Docs, 2003.
En francais avec sous-titre francais. The film will be in french with french subtitles.
Hote: Projet Anti Gentrification de la GRIP McGill.
February 9th, 19:30 – Barrier Lake Solidarity
Film: DetermiNATION Songs
Leacock 232, McGill University
**DetermiNATION Songs** directed by Michelle Smith and Paul Rickard
http://www.pmm.qc.ca/determinationfilm/
trailer of the film:
DetermiNATION songs brings to the screen the stories of three Indigenous singer/songwriters – Samian, Cheri Maracle, and CerAmony – who are inspired by the realities and struggle of their communities.
A rising star on the Quebec music scene, Algonquin hip hop artist Samian gives voice to a generation of dispossessed youth and forces Quebecers to confront their historical relationship with First Nations. Cheri Maracle recently returned to her community of Six Nations, and she sings about the life of First Nations women, paying homage to the hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. Cree rockers Pakesso Mukash and Matthew Iserhoff, members of CerAmony, air the concerns of their people, disenchanted with the selling off of Cree land to Hydro Quebec and big industry.
The film revolves around a benefit show the musicians played for the Barriere Lake Algonquins, who have been involved in a multi-generational struggle of their own to protect their lands and way of life from clear-cut logging. After the film, hear from community members, who will be in Montreal to broadcast a series of shows on CKUT radio.
For more info: www.barrierelakesolidarity.blogspot.com
February 18th, 19:30 – Q-Team
Film: Zero Patience
Cultural Studies Building, 3475 Peel
Zero Patience is a 1993 Canadian musical comedy written and directed by John Greyson. Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian adventurer and scholar, has survived to the modern day due to his secret discovery of the fountain of youth. While working for the Toronto Natural History Museum, Burton plans an exhibit on the origins of HIV in Canadian society. The ghost of Patient Zero, accused of being the first to bring the virus to North America, appears to Burton and forces him to rethink his positions and the display. From this unlikely premise begins an exploration of the politics of HIV-AIDS, complete with unique and coarse musical numbers and fantasy sequences.
This event is free.
Please note!: This is an English film without French subtitles.
March 4th, 18:00 – Campus Crops
Film: Food, Inc.
Shatner Building, TBA
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
NEW DATE: March 18th, 19:30 – KANATA
Film: Rocks at Whiskey Trench
Cultural Studies Building, 3475 Peel
On August 28, 1990, a convoy of 75 cars left the Mohawk community of Kahnawake and crossed Montreal’s Mercier Bridge–straight into an angry mob that pelted the vehicles with rocks. The targets of this violence were Mohawk women, children and elders leaving Kahnawake, in fear of a possible advance by the Canadian army. In Rocks at Whiskey Trench, Mohawks remember the terror as windows shattered around them. Police had orders not to arrest anyone–and though they stood by during the rock-throwing, they were able to prevent the mob from reaching the cars and attacking their occupants. This video is the fourth in Alanis Obomsawin’s landmark series on the Mohawk rebellions that shook Canada in 1990. A painstakingly researched social document, the film looks back at the events surrounding the August 28 attack, and delves into the history of Kahnawake and the consequences of the appropriation of land that have shrunk its territory by more than two-thirds over the last 300 years. Time and healing circles have helped close the wounds, but it will take much longer for Kahnawake residents to forgive and forget.
2000, 105 min 18 s
Directed by Alanis Obomsawin
http://films.nfb.ca/rocks/
March 18th,18:30 – Tap Thirst
Film: Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Leacock 232, McGill University
Sam Bozzo/ USA, Canada/ 2008/ 90 min
It’s not the money. It’s the power.
In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant over-development of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.
We follow numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to violent revolutions to U.N. conventions to revised constitutions to local protests at grade schools. As Maude Barlow proclaims, “This is our revolution, this is our war”. A line is crossed as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive?
www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com
March 25th, 19:30 – Greening McGill co-presented with Animal Liberties
Film: The Cove
Cultural Studies Building, 3475 Peel
The Cove begins in Taiji, Japan, where former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry has come to set things right after a long search for redemption. In the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the 5 dolphins who played the title character in the international television sensation “Flipper.”
But his close relationship with those dolphins – the very dolphins who sparked a global fascination with trained sea mammals that continues to this day — led O’Barry to a radical change of heart. One fateful day, a heartbroken Barry came to realize that these deeply sensitive, highly intelligent and self-aware creatures so beautifully adapted to life in the open ocean must never be subjected to human captivity again. This mission has brought him to Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonders and mysteries of the sleek, playful dolphins and whales that swim off their coast.
But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by barbed wire and “Keep Out” signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in an unseen hunt. The nature of what they do is so chilling — and the consequences are so dangerous to human health — they will go to great lengths to halt anyone from seeing it.
Undeterred, O’Barry joins forces with filmmaker Louis Psihoyos and the Oceanic Preservation Society to get to the truth of what’s really going on in the cove and why it matters to everyone in the world. With the local Chief of Police hot on their trail and strong-arm fishermen keeping tabs on them, they will recruit an “Ocean’s Eleven”-style team of underwater sound and camera experts, special effects artists, marine explorers, adrenaline junkies and world-class free divers who will carry out an undercover operation to photograph the off-limits cove, while playing a cloak-and-dagger game with those who would have them jailed. The result is a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and arresting imagery that adds up to an urgent plea for hope.
The Cove is directed by Louie Psihoyos and produced by Paula DuPre Pesman and Fisher Stevens. The film is written by Mark Monroe. The executive producer is Jim Clark and the co-producer is Olivia Ahnemann.
http://www.thecovemovie.com/
April 8th, 19:30 – Frente Amplio Opositor (FAO) and Students Taking Action with Chiapas (STAC)
Film: Coconut Revolution
Cultural Studies Building, Peel 3475
This is the modern-day story of a native peoples remarkable victory over Western Colonial power. A Pacific island rose up in arms against giant mining corporation Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) – and won despite a military occupation and blockade. When RTZ decided to step up production at the Panguna Mine on the island of Bougainville, they got more than they bargained for. The islands people had enough of seeing their environment ruined and being treated as pawns by RTZ. (from £10.00)
http://www.cultureshop.org/cat_img/COCOREV.jpg
View one minute trailer:
RTZ refused to compensate them, so the people decided it was time to put an end to outside interference in the islands affairs. To do this they forcibly closed down the mine.
The Papua New Guinea Army (PNGDF) were mobilised in an attempt to put down the rebellion. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) began the fight with bows & arrows and sticks & stones. Against a heavily armed adversary they still managed to retain control of most of their island. Realising they were beaten on the ground, the PNGDF imposed a gunboat blockade around Bougainville, in an attempt to strangle the BRA into submission. But the blockade seemed to have little or no effect.
With no shipments getting in or out of the island, how did new electricity networks spring up in BRA held territory? How were BRA troops able to drive around the island without any source of petrol or diesel?
What was happening within the blockade was an environmental and spiritual revolution. The ruins of the old Panguna mine were being recycled… to supply the raw materials for the worlds first eco-revolution.
A David and Goliath story of the 21st century, The Coconut Revolution will appeal to people of all backgrounds