Berlin film fest digs for roots of global crisis
Güncelleme Tarihi:
AFP
OluÅŸturulma Tarihi: Åžubat 11, 2009 00:00
BERLIN - Award-winning British director Michael Winterbottom unveiled "The Shock Doctrine," on Monday, one of a raft of Berlin Film Festival entries looking at what set off the chaos that is ravaging the global economy.
"The Shock Doctrine" is based on the best-selling book by Naomi Klein that examines the rise of disaster capitalism, the practice of governments and multinational firms preying on countries struck by natural disasters or wars.Â
The theory asserts that because world powers such as the United States and Britain can profit from bedlam, they not only hunt for shocks to exploit but often instigate them themselves Ñ notably in Latin America and Iraq. Klein argues that the result of the practice Ñ which she says is based on the privatization doctrine of Nobel-prize winning economist and neo-liberal scholar Milton Friedman Ñ help plant the seeds for the global economic crisis.
Footage of Obama
Winterbottom includes recent footage of U.S. President Barack Obama as a hopeful footnote to the grim ground covered in the film, with the prospect that the shock of the crisis could also give rise to radical reform.
"I think when you see bankers who have been taking billions of dollars for themselves for all these years, it makes people very angry," he said.
"I think that's the only positive thing, that people around the world are so angry about what has been going on and that that will perhaps change what happens in future Ñ that people will change their perspective, and feel that there has to be more regulation, has to be more involvement, there has to be more control."
Although the film falls into some of the same pitfalls as the book, such as largely ignoring the ethnic and religious tensions feeding the bloodshed in Iraq, it was praised here for its ambitious scope and arresting visual style.
Winterbottom directed the picture with Mat Whitecross, with whom he also made the war-on-terror documentary "The Road to Guantanamo," which won a Silver Bear directing prize at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.
The theory asserts that because world powers such as the United States and Britain can profit from bedlam, they not only hunt for shocks to exploit but often instigate them themselves Ñ notably in Latin America and Iraq. Klein argues that the result of the practice Ñ which she says is based on the privatization doctrine of Nobel-prize winning economist and neo-liberal scholar Milton Friedman Ñ help plant the seeds for the global economic crisis.
Footage of Obama
Winterbottom includes recent footage of U.S. President Barack Obama as a hopeful footnote to the grim ground covered in the film, with the prospect that the shock of the crisis could also give rise to radical reform.
"I think when you see bankers who have been taking billions of dollars for themselves for all these years, it makes people very angry," he said.
"I think that's the only positive thing, that people around the world are so angry about what has been going on and that that will perhaps change what happens in future Ñ that people will change their perspective, and feel that there has to be more regulation, has to be more involvement, there has to be more control."
Although the film falls into some of the same pitfalls as the book, such as largely ignoring the ethnic and religious tensions feeding the bloodshed in Iraq, it was praised here for its ambitious scope and arresting visual style.
Winterbottom directed the picture with Mat Whitecross, with whom he also made the war-on-terror documentary "The Road to Guantanamo," which won a Silver Bear directing prize at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.