MFG NEWS / NOUVELLES DU MFG

Posted September 18, 2006

Cinema Politica – Launch:

Cinema Politica launches its Fall 2006 season and you're invited!

Featuring Wal-Town The Film & My Cultural Divide, followed by Q & A.

Monday, September 18, 2006 at 7:30pm
Room H-110, Concordia University Hall Building
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. Ouest
Admission: Free
Info: http://www.cinemapolitica.org

Two new documentaries by Montreal filmmakers will kick-off the third year of Cinema Politica, Montreal's only ongoing political film series.

The double bill on Monday September 18th will begin with Sergeo Kirby's acclaimed documentary Wal-Town The Film . This one hour film follows a group of six Concordia students who call themselves Wal-Town, as they take to the Canadian highway over a span of two summers. Armed with thousands of pamphlets and flyers, and with one gonzo journalist along for the ride, they visit 36 of Canada's more than 200 Wal-Mart stores with one formidable goal: to raise public awareness about Wal-Mart's poor business practices and the effects of the company's policies on cities and towns across Canada.

The second screening will be Faisal Lutchmedial's one hour documentary, My Cultural Divide . Lutchmedial goes beyond the activist stereotype as he takes a personal journey into his mother's native country for the first time. A three-month visit to Bangladesh becomes a discovery of family and home that runs parallel with his attempt to tackle the complex issue of global trade. My Cultural Divide, through frank interviews with Bangladeshi garment and textile workers about their jobs and working conditions, questions the logic of the hardcore political activist, and wonders aloud whether ethical consuming actually does anything good for the workers behind the machines.

The screening will be followed by a Question and Answer session with Lutchmedial and members of the Wal-Town group.

The first screening of the year will also see the official launch of the Cinema Politica schedule for Fall 2006. This fall's line-up features several Montreal premieres as well as special 35mm print screenings. Included on 35mm will be the Montreal premier of Iraq in Fragments from director James Longley (director of Gaza Strip). A multiple award winner at the Sundance Film Festival, the film explores the lives of ordinary Iraqis: people whose thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and concerns are at once personal and illustrative of larger issues in Iraq today.

Also on 35mm will be Working Man's Death from Austrian director Michael Galwogger (of Megacities fame), a film which travels the globe and asks the question: is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible?

Cinema Politica is also excited to be premiering The American Ruling Class in Montreal later this fall. The first ever dramatic-documentary-musical combines the writing of by Harper's Monthly editor Lewis Lapham and the directing of James Kirby to take a an in-depth look at who truly has a chance to lead the United States of America.

Cinema Politica is a project of Montreal-based überculture collective and is co-sponsored by CitizenShift (http://citizen.nfb.ca), which strives to reclaim culture from corporate control. Going into its sixth year and third in Montreal, there are now eight Cinema Politica locals in Canada and the United States.

For more on Cinema Politica, visit www.cinemapolitica.org; for more on überculture collective, visit www.uberculture.org.