"The Take", an EXCELLENT CBC documentary about Argentina...

Bruce McAuley

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Fri Mar-25-05 12:12 PM
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"The Take", an EXCELLENT CBC documentary about Argentina...

Has implications for how it might go in our OWN country if the rich start to migrate their money overseas too fast.
Exerpt from cbc.ca site:

The Take

(Documentary) Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein travel to Argentina to examine a phenomenon where workers seize factories to hold on to their jobs when companies shutdown.

Just a few years ago, Argentina was the darling of international investors. It had a seemingly safe economy subscribing to the rules of the global market-deregulation, privatization and downsizing of social programs. And it had a leader, Carlos Menem, who was heralded as a hero in Washington. For many citizens, the dramatic economic collapse in 2001 came as a sudden shock. Tens of thousands watched their life savings disappear, while multinational banks and corporations whisked $40 billion out of the country in the dead of the night. The working and middle classes found themselves facing massive unemployment in ghost towns full of abandoned factories. Journalists Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein went to Argentina and found something growing in the rubble of the country's shattered economy: a 'do-it-yourself' revolution, a new movement creating concrete alternatives to the global economic model.

In eight months of shooting with an international crew of activists and young filmmakers, Lewis and Klein found that Argentines did not only take over the streets-throwing out five presidents in three weeks in 2001-they also began to take over the abandoned businesses where they had once been employed. Their goal: to take matters into their own hands and re-start the machines left silent when their bosses locked the doors and fled.

THE TAKE seamlessly weaves first-hand accounts from unemployed workers and their families with a critical overview of macro-economic policies. Contrasting the failed recipe of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the shop floor democracy embraced by workers in their 'recovered companies,' the film exposes the ideology and effects of the capitalist 'Wild West.' It also champions a radical economic manifesto embodied in the workers' slogan, 'Occupy, Resist, Produce.' But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggles: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied. This is a fiercely engaging political thriller that pits ordinary workers against the ruling elite and the power of international corporate capitalism.

Want to know more? Visit the The Take website:
http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/thetake.html
End exerpt.
For those of you who can access Canadian TV, via web, or satellite or cable, be SURE and see this if you can, hopefully it will be repeated soon elsewhere. The wife and I were riveted by this 2 hour special on "The Passionate Eye" series of documentary journalism.
Highly recommended!!!
It COULD happen here!

Bruce