Western MA Movie Meetup

Free Film: Controlling Interest: the World of the Multinational Corporation

August 31, 2012 · 7:00 PM
Francis Crowe Community Room

Meet for this film and participate in the discussion held in the same room, right after the movie. Enter through Woodstar Cafe entrance. The screening is at the Media Education Foundation's Francis Crowe Community Room. The venue is accessible.

Grand Prize, Bilbao Int'l Film Festival
Silver Dove, Leipzig Int'l Film Festival
Red Ribbon, American Film Festival
Selection d'Honor, Nyon Int'l Film Festival

This is the film that helped kick-off the anti-globalization movement. Upon its release, Controlling Interest quickly became a standard "audio-visual text" for those concerned about the growing impact of multinational corporations on global affairs. The film examines how the ever-increasing concentration and velocity of capital affect employment in the U.S., shape patterns of development in the Third World, and influence our nation's foreign policy.

Remarkably candid interviews with business executives provide a rare glimpse of the reasoning behind corporate global strategy and their never-ending search for resources, ever-cheaper labor, and new markets. The film documents the impact of their decisions on people around the world, including how "freedom" has come increasingly to mean the freedom of global corporations to operate without restriction anywhere on earth. The film includes case studies from Massachusetts' declining machine tool industry, Brazil's "economic miracle," and Chile before and after the 1973 coup.