some great films

I took A to see three films this week, as part of the Take_One_Action film festival tour - 'bringing together people and movies that want to change the world'.

The first one we saw was HOME (available online), which A described as 'beautiful and horrible at the same time'. The images are truly beautiful - shot from the air in around fifty different coutries. It really brings home how amazing and wonderful our planet is, and how small our particular part of it is. The commentary, in some ways, is the 'horrible' bit, but its an unavoidable and truthful horror. The details of what is happening to our world's ecosystem are given in facts and statistics, some scary and shocking. But it does end with a positive tone, pushing the notion that we can change things.

We then saw Food,Inc which was an expose of the American food industry. It was very hard-hitting, and some of the scenes of slaughter houses and factory farming conditions were too awful for A to watch. I find it really scary how much power these massive corporations have, and the misery they can cause to both humans and animals.

Last night we went to see The_Yes_Men_Fix_The_World which we both absolutely loved. A fantastic film - hilarious, inspiring, anger-inducing, I really admire people who can do this stuff. Their blog gives this description:
"Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."
The stunts they pulled off were incredible, like posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson on the BBC World news channel and announcing that they take full responsibility for the Bhopal Disaster and will finally clean up and compensate those affected.
One bit that stuck in my mind was when one of the various members of right-wing/business think tanks who were interviewed gave his opinion on global warming. I'm paraphrasing greatly here, as I cant remember his exact words, but it was along the lines of: its good, because warmer is more pleasant.
Wow. The lack of any kind of depth of thinking or intelligent reflection behind his statement was astonishing. And these are the kind of people influencing policy. Explains a lot.