10.30 for 11am SUNDAY 9 JANUARY 2011
MICKEY MOUSE GOES TO HAITI
National Labor Committee, US 1996 [E]
DVD, 17 mins
This video documents the harsh conditions in which some of the Disney Company's garments and products are manufactured in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Workers are intimidated and will be fired if they try to unionise. While a living wage would only cost the corporation 58 cents an hour to pay the contracted factory workers, the wage doesn't even come close to that.
TROUBLE THE WATER
Karl Deal and Tia Lessin, US 2008 [15]
DVD, 90 mins
The day before Hurricane Katrina makes landfall-twenty-four year old aspiring rap artist Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. "It's going to be a day to remember," Kim declares. With no means to leave the city and equipped with just a few supplies and her hi 8 camera, she and her husband Scott tape their harrowing ordeal as the storm rages, the nearby levee breaches, and floodwaters fill their home and their community. Shortly after the levees fail, their battery dies.
Seamlessly weaving 15 minutes of this home movie footage shot the day before and the morning of the storm with archival news segments and verite footage shot over the next two years, directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal tell a story of remarkable people surviving not only failed levees, bungling bureaucrats and armed soldiers, but also their own past.
In addition to Jeremy Corbyn MP and Ben Sprung as discussion leaders, we shall have Christian Wisskirchen, Chair of the Haiti Support Group. Haitian guest Georges Werleigh is due to reach London on Sunday morning and may be able join us. We shall be greatly honoured if we are able to welcome him.
