TheCorporation.com Blog

May 19, 2014

Dreaming of the Difference The Corporation Film can Make...

Get your tickets for May 26 Vancouver Screening + Panel + Party! RSVP on Facebook Press Release below.

Corporations are not the architects of my dreams. Corporate globalization is not my religion, though it be worshipped all around me. Profit over every other earthly concern is not my way of doing business.
~Kat Dodds, Hello Cool World founder/Campaign director for The Corporation

In these dark days of climate change, it sometimes feels like a waking nightmare with facebook feeds flashing before my eyes: Youtube visions of factories burning; tales of terminator seeds; the drones of PR as the call to war; waters rising; unceded territories the scene of corporate crimes, citizens rights eroding through government spying; and even oil spilling on the streets of LA — The plundering of our planet does seem apocalyptic.

There is a devil, and it is in the coporate institutions very DNA.

And the devil's advocates say only they can solve the crises they create.

We need to change the entire game.

The Corporation film, and audiences response to it, has given an albeit secular soul to my work. Working with this head & heart felt film alongside the people who made it, has spanned much more than the past decade. I formed Hello Cool World at the turn of this century so that we'd be ready to build the grassroots campaign to launch the film. Which is why we at HCW are a small, collaborative grassroots motley crew of do-gooders.

And now, we need to do gooder, again.

Which is my dream now: To re-launch the film through our activist and educators communities to re-awaken our collective spirit of resistance and rebuild our faith in each other to solve our problems as citizens, as friends, as communities, to reclaim the soul of democracy, which is solidarity.

Who's coming along on this ride?

XO kat

HELP US GET THE FILM FREE INTO 1000 SCHOOLS!
CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN COMING SOON...

Get your tickets for May 26 Vancouver Screening + Panel + Party! RSVP on Facebook

Fans - give us feedback to fuel the revolution: Survey

The Psychopath is Back! May 26 - Vancouver Screening.

The Corporation returns for a special 10th anniversary screening premiere of a new, shorter cut of the film

Panel after with Joel Bakan & guests from Fractured Land documentary & Gen Why Media: Caleb Behn, Fiona Rayher & Tara Mahoney

Vancouver, May 19, 2014. For Immediate Release: A decade ago, The Corporation, the hard-hitting documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, quickly became a Canadian box office success story and international hit, with the companion book by Bakan a best-seller. The film stunned audiences with its revelations of an out of control business model that mandates the pursuit of profit without regard for anything, or anyone, else. Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film put the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask, "What kind of person is it?" The diagnosis: psychopath.

Today, especially in a post-2008 financial crash world, its message has never been more relevant. Part film and part movement, The Corporation still has the power to transform audiences and dazzle critics with its insightful and compelling analysis.

For this reason, producer-director, Mark Achbar, and campaign designer and distributor, Hello Cool World, are re-launching a new, shorter cut of the film. A special ten year anniversary fundraiser screening will introduce the new cut with opening remarks by Hello Cool World campaign director, Katherine Dodds, who is heading up the community distribution initiative and upcoming crowdfunding campaign on the new dana.io platform, which launches this Friday.

The May 26 screening will be followed by a panel with The Corporation author and co-creator, Joel Bakan, in conversation with Indigenous activist and law student, Caleb Behn, and Gen Why co-founders and Fractured Land filmmakers, Tara Mahoney and Fiona Rayher.

Joel Bakan is working on a sequel to The Corporation and is taking the metaphor of psychopath even further. Says Bakan: “What I realized over the last 10 years sinceThe Corporation came out is that the issues we addressed are still with us and, in fact, have become much larger. We looked at the institution of the corporation then and its psychopathic operating principles, but what seems to be happening now is that our broader society is taking on those principles, that our collective existence is defined more and more by the pursuit of pure self-interest. To me, that’s a scary and dangerous thing, and that’s what I’m writing about. Are we all psychopaths now?”

Says Bakan: “I think one of the great deceptions that we are currently working within is that somehow though corporate leadership, we can actually achieve goals like sustainability and environmental protection. The only way we can move forward, however, is to reclaim the public sphere of democracy, and that’s not going to happen under corporate leadership. We need to reclaim democracy and occupy the public institutions of government. That’s really what democracy is supposed to be.”

Says campaign director Katherine Dodds: “We’ve never needed this film to spark a movement more than we do now. Even though it’s ten years later, we still hear personal stories over and over again of how The Corporation had a life-changing impact so we know it still has the power to motivate. There’s a lot at stake.”

Dodds adds, “Not only are corporations attacking our very idea of democracy, they would also like to control our food supply and bottle all our water for sale. It’s very clear in BC, with the issues of pipelines and LNG, they are trying to convince everyone, including First Nations and environmentalists, that we nave no other economic choice but to devastate the planet and put land at peril. Land that corporations actually have no legal rights to. The 99% are going to pay for choices we are not even making, especially the younger generations who will inherit the mess.”

Presented by Hello Cool World and Big Picture Media Corporation. Sponsored by DOC BC. Supported by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. After party hosted by Pull Focus Film School.

Thank you to all our 10^th Anniversary Campaign partners! Hello Cool World, Big Picture Media Corporation, Open Media, Cinema Politica, Gen Why Media, Fractured Land, Open Cinema, dana.io.

www.TheCorporation.com

EVENT DETAILS

The Corporation 10th Anniversary Fundraiser Screening May 26!

Don’t miss out get your tickets NOW

DATE: Monday, May 26, 2014

TICKETS (SLIDING SCALE) Eventbrite.

DOORS & INFO FAIR at 6pm

SCREENING OF THE CORPORATION 7-9pm

PANEL 9pm 9:45 with The Corporation author and co-creator Joel Bakan in conversation with Indigenous activist and law student Caleb Behn, and Gen Why co-founders and filmmakers Tara Mahoney and Fiona Rayher

LOCATION SFU Woodwards - Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings, Vancouver BC

PARTY 10pm at Pull Focus Film School (Just around the corner on Abbott)

RSVP to Facebook TICKETS (SLIDING SCALE) Eventbrite.

This will also be the launch of our crowdfunding campaign on www.dana.io: Your contributions will help us gift the film FREE to 1000 schools

Presented by

Hello Cool World & Big Picture Media Corporation

Sponsored by

DOC BC

Supported by

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement

After party hosted by

Pull Focus Film School