3rd Annual CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival October 15, 2008

The 2008 CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival is a three-day series of films, post-screening discussions, and related events held in San Francisco.

By "anti-corporate" we don't just mean "independent" (i.e., non-corporate) films, but those that examine and reflect the role that corporations play in our daily lives, and the effect they have on people, communities, and cultures around the world — and on the planet itself.

The 2008 Festival offers a series of U.S. and foreign films, including both feature-length and short documentary and narrative (fictional) films.

The goals of the Festival are to raise public and media awareness, promote critical thought and analysis, and encourage informed discussion and debate about how corporations actually operate, and what they really add to — and subtract from — humanity's "bottom line".

The Festival opens on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7:00pm with GROWING AWARENESS, which offers an unvarnished look at a more sustainable alternative to the current corporate-controlled, government-subsidized global food system: small, organic, local farms. Director Jade Ajani and local organic farmer Jesse Kuhn of Marin Roots Farm will speak after the film. (USA, 2008, 100 minutes)

This year’s opening night film is THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO (9:15pm) a detective story that follows the trail of deception, devastation, and death left by a corporate serial killer whose weapons include PCBs, herbicides/insecticides/defoliants, bovine growth hormone, dioxin, genetically-modified crops, and seed patents and other so-called “intellectual property”. (France, 2008, 109 minutes)

The Festival continues on Thursday, Oct. 16, at 7:15 with a program called “The True Cost of Oil” that coincides with two pending trials in San Francisco against Richmond, CA-based Chevron. It includes previews of two works-in-progress — THE NAKED OPTION and SWEET CRUDE — and one short film, JUSTICIA NOW!, all about Chevron’s exploitation of people and the environment in Nigeria and Ecuador.

The theme of oil carries over into GASHOLE at 9:15, which tells the history of U.S. oil consumption, oil prices, and the economic, political, and cultural effects of being the world's largest consumer of oil. What is impeding efforts to change that fact — such as the development of alternative fuels? Narrated by actor Peter Gallagher. Co-director Scott Roberts scheduled to attend. (USA, 2008, 101 minutes)

The Festival concludes on Friday, Oct. 17, with two films about how corporate pervasiveness affects people’s daily lives. THE BIG SELLOUT at 7:30 documents the real outcomes of the privatization of basic public services such as water, electricity, transportation, and healthcare on four continents: essentially, higher prices for fewer services — or, if you’re poor, no service at all. (Germany, 2006, 94 minutes)

And finally, in keeping with the CounterCorp tradition of having a narrative (fictional) work as the centerpiece of the Anti-Corporate Film Festival, we are thrilled to close this year’s screenings with the California premiere of VISIONEERS (9:30), a satirical look at the effects of corporate culture at the big-gest and most profitable company in the history of the world. Stars rising comic talent Zach Galifianakis of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, NBC’s Boston Common, and cable’s Comedy Central. (USA, 2008, 94 mins.)

Tickets are available at the door or through the CounterCorp website. For more information about CounterCorp or the Anti-Corporate Film Festival, visit our website (www.countercorp.org) or e-mail filmfest@countercorp.org.

Official Website: http://www.countercorp.org