This Friday, 8th December, Koperattiva Kummerċ Ġust will be showing the film The Take in the cinema at St. James Cavalier in Valletta at 6.30pm. The Take (2004), which the New York Times commends as “a stirring, idealistic documentary,” tells the captivating true story of thirty unemployed auto-parts workers in suburban Buenos Aires who walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.
This event on Friday is related to the theme of this year’s fifth edition of the Taste the World fair trade festival to be held this Saturday between 10.00am and 10.00pm at St. James Cavalier. Entrance to the film is free. However, a small donation to cover expenses will be appreciated.
The film follows Argentina’s radical new movement of occupied businesses: groups of workers who are claiming the country’s bankrupt workplaces and running them without bosses.
The Take won the Documentary Award in the annual AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival and was nominated for various other awards. According to The Los Angeles Times, “Set in a time of national economic disaster, The Take is a stirring story of workers organizing… a suspenseful and cautionary tale documenting the consequences of globalization… universal in its implications.”
The film is directed by Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and written and narrated by Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. What shines through in this fascinating documentary is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied. In its review of the film, The New YorkerThe Take argues that “Lewis and Klein have done something extraordinary! The workers in are so admirable, displaying a melancholy eloquence and a genuine revolutionary spirit.”
In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They're part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.
But Freddy, the president of the new worker's co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory.
The story of the workers' struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they'll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive.
Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.
The Vancouver Sun describes The Take as “a story of every-day heroism that also offers a model for productive change by repositioning the people as the power-brokers.” It is a story that shows that common people are not helpless in the face of gross injustice and that change can only take place if people reappropriate their own destinies with their courage and willpower.
