Fairtrade Fortnight Film Screenings

To celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight Tipping Point Film Fund have teamed up with Lewisham Council to present a series of film and discussion events to raise awareness and explore the issues behind fairtrade. The screenings will all take place in libraries across the borough of Lewisham.

Film Programme

Life and Debt

– Lewisham Library, 5.45pm on Monday 1 March

– Forest Hill Library, 5.30pm on Thursday 4 March

Black Gold

– Downham Library, 7.30pm on Monday 1 March

– Manor House Library, 2.30pm on Saturday 6 March

The Luckiest Nut in the World – aimed at children and families

– Downham Library, 3.30pm on Tuesday 2 March

– Forest Hill Library, 12noon on Saturday 6 March

– Manor House Library, 1pm on Sunday 7 March

More about the films…

Life and Debt

Life and Debt is a documentary looking at the effects of globalisation on Jamaican industry and agriculture. The movie makes you think and question the motives of rich and powerful organisations.

If you care at least a little bit about what’s happening in the world, you should definitely take the time to see this movie. It talks about the negative effects of globalisation in developing countries. Perfect example of “the rich are getting richer because the poor are getting poorer.”

It shows the social implications of IMF policies and the human tragedy, Economic strangling of developing countries, total dominance over them financially, abuse of power, leaving no other choice but to agree to the terrible terms of big organizations. Many ordinary workers speak up.

It is a great movie! Catch it at Lewisham Library at 5.45pm on Monday 1 March or Forest Hill Library, 5.30pm on Thursday 4 March.

Black Gold

As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, Black Gold traces one man’s fight for a fair price.

Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.

But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

Catch the film at Downham Library, 7.30pm on Monday 1 March and at Manor House Library, 2.30pm on Saturday 6 March.

Luckiest Nut in the World

The film follows an animated American peanut, who sings about the difficulties faced by nuts from developing countries.

The singing peanut presents a mixture of animation, music and archive which sweeps the viewer through the stories of the cashew, brazil and ground nuts – all of whom suffer as world trade is liberalized. But it is a different story in America – where the peanut is protected by tariffs and heavily subsidized, and worth over four billion dollars a year to the American economy. Certainly the luckiest nut in the world.

The film helps people to see how the pressure to embrace free market’ economics, with it’s promise of a wealthy, abundant market place has actually driven many countries further into poverty.

The Guardian’s take on the director Emily James:
Emily James is a genius, and will, in time, be revered as a TV innovator, dead clever and a woman who really knows her nuts.”

Catch the film at the following times and places: