Follow this link to view and download the event poster.
Each of the films in this series will be preceded by a brief introduction, and will be followed by a commentary, and an open floor discussion period.
OISE, 252 Bloor Street West at the St. George Subway Station. Room numbers are indicated below. Map
Everyone welcome. $4 donation requested. For more information, contact us.
Friday, March 13 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-280
Citizenfour
2014 / 114 minutes.
A documentarian and a reporter travel to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. In January 2013, Laura Poitras received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself Citizen Four. In it, he offered her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Poitras had already been working for several years on a film about monitoring programs in the US, the result of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. In June 2013, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, she went to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who identified himself as Edward Snowden. Several other meetings followed. The recordings gained from this form the basis of the film.
John Wunderlich, a former senior policy adviser to the Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario, will open the discussion. He is a socialist, a member of the Toronto Danforth NDP executive, and works as an independent privacy researcher and consultant.
Friday, March 20 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-280
Pride
2014 / 119 minutes.
U.K. gay activists work to help miners during their lengthy strike of the National Union of Mineworkers in the summer of 1984. Based on a true story, the film depicts a group of lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners’ strike in 1984, at the outset of what would become the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign.[7] The National Union of Mineworkers was reluctant to accept the group’s support due to the union’s public relations’ worries about being openly associated with a gay group, so the activists instead decided to take their donations directly to Onllwyn, a small mining village in Wales, resulting in an alliance between the two communities.
Guest speaker Tim McCaskell’s history in queer liberation and social justice issues goes back to the 70’s. A founder of Aids Action Now. Presently a prominent activist in Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.
Friday, March 27 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-280
The Voice for Independent Unions & OPSEU Campaign Video
2014 / 47 minutes.
“The Voice for Independent Unions in Canada” is a documentary produced by Sean Cain about the Canadian Confederation of Unions and its dedication to a democratic, independent labour movement, its commitment to workers’ rights and social justice, and its new working relationship with the Canadian Labour Congress. Sean, who is also the editor of Turn Left, the magazine of the NDP Socialist Caucus, will lead off the discussion following the screening of his film, and the OPSEU current campaign video.
Thursday, April 2 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 2-214
The Missing 43 & #YoSoy132 and the Mexican Elections
2014 / 37 minutes
What happened to the 43 students who went missing in Southern Mexico in September of this year? The Vice News produced documentary examines the mass disappearance of the young men who were all training to teach the youth of their country, as well as the tragedy and controversy surrounding their disappearance.
2013 / 21 minutes
Yo Soy 132 was a social movement composed for the most part of Mexican university students from private and public universities, residents of Mexico, claiming supporters from about 50 cities around the world. It began as opposition to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican media’s allegedly biased coverage of the 2012 general election. The name Yo Soy 132, Spanish for “I Am 132”, originated in an expression of solidarity with the original 131 protest’s initiators.
After the two films we will hear from guest speakers Professor Richard Roman, co-author of “Continental Crucible”, and Columba González from the campaign organization WeAreAllMexico.
Friday, April 10 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-280
Stealing Africa
2013 / 58 minutes.
In Ruschlikon, a sleepy village in Switzerland, the wealthy residents are receiving more tax revenue than they can use since the arrival of Ivan Glasberg, CEO of commodity giant Glencore. Yet in Zambia, where Glencore owns a majority stake in the country’s biggest copper mining operations, tax is an issue that’s contributing to its poverty…Glasberg netted $9.6 billion when Glencore went public in 2011. The receipt of of his taxes overwhelmed the public coffers of Ruschlikon so much that the mayor decided to lower the town’s tax rate by 7%. Not so fortunate for the residents of copper-rich Zambia – where Glencore owns a 73% stake in the Mopani Copper Mines (one of the biggest mining operations in the country). Unfortunately, Zambia’s copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia’s copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they’ve extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. So why hasn’t copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia yet made the residents of Ruschlikon better off? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia’s case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Our guest speaker is York University Ph. D. candidate Alex Caramento.
Friday, April 17 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-150
Miners Shot Down
2014 / 52 minutes.
Miners Shot Down: In August 2012, mine workers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mine began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. The police insisted that they shot in self-defence.
Friday, April 24 – 7 p.m.
OISE Room 5-240
Trick or Treaty
2014 / 84 minutes.
This feature documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin (Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance) profiles Indigenous leaders in their quest for justice as they seek to establish dialogue with the Canadian government. By tracing the history of their ancestors since the signing of Treaty No. 9, these leaders aim to raise awareness about issues vital to First Nations in Canada: respect for and protection of their lands and their natural resources, and the right to hunt and fish so that their societies can prosper. In recent years, an awareness-raising movement has been surfacing in First Nations communities. In this powerful documentary, those who refuse to surrender are given a chance to speak out. The guest speaker is Ernie Sandy, Academic Elder, born and raised on a semi-isolated First Nation about one hundred miles north of Toronto, called Chim Nissing in the late 1940s, and who is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario in Journalism, Canadian Social History, pre-law and Political Science as a mature student.