ECONOMIC JUSTICE
The following films from the multiple Media That Matters Film Festival collections explore the issue of economic justice. For even more films on this issue, visit MediaRights.org.
All That I Can Be
William, like many young Americans, feels that joining the military is his only way out of a dead-end job and a rough life.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary)
Journey to the “Asparagus Capital of the World” to discover why one little vegetable is so important.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Books Not Bars
The teens of the Books Not Bars movement demand that education be the government’s priority, now and in the future.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Bread
Guatemalan brothers Edwin and Edson crush rocks with their father so their family has enough to eat.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Broken Limbs: Searching for the New American Farmer
Wenatchee, Washington is the frontline of the battle to save America’s small-scale apple farmers.
Official selection of the media that matters: good food festival
CopWatch
Fed up with police brutality, the organization “Copwatch” decided to keep an eye on big brother. This short film shows how peaceful observation of police behavior can change the way a neighborhood and a police force deal with one another.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Esmeraldas: Petroleum and Poverty
Esmeraldas documents the intense human suffering that occurred when a Texaco oil refinery exploded and destroyed an Afro-Ecuadorian community.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Fast and Reliable
Nothing can stop Dexter the bike messenger — not homelessness or even a close encounter with a ten-ton truck.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Garbage Dreams
Egypt’s resident garbage recyclers, the Zaballeen, struggle as Cairo modernizes its waste disposal system.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
How Wal-Mart Came to Haslett
Michigan youth investigate the dubious circumstances under which a Wal-Mart appeared on a wetland in their small town.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Laptop
A computer is only as advanced as the person behind the keyboard. Laptop reminds us that the digital divide still resides within our borders.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Lean on Me
When the mayor’s office says “no,” a group of kids find a safe place to play basketball.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Night Visions
Individuals enlist in the U.S. military for different reasons, but they all return from war, changed.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
No Child
Minneapolis hip-hoppers Shakademic and Glenn Scott get the inside scoop on military recruiting tactics.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
No Escape, Prison Rape
When Rodney Hulin set fire to a trashcan, he never imagined he would end up in adult prison, serially raped and brutally beaten.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Novela, Novela
A group of Nicaraguan activists produce a homegrown soap opera about issues like safe sex and domestic abuse.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
POPaganda: The Art and Subversion of Ron English
Ron English’s billboards force the man on the street to look twice…or maybe three times.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Rapping at Fear
In Andrés Tabares’ barrio in Colombia, “social cleansing” groups wage war. When this thirteen-year-old raps against violence, people listen.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
Recycle
Poet Miguel Diaz transforms poverty into cultivation in the middle of a Los Angeles street.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Silence Speaks
Domestic abuse, hate crimes, poverty, political persecution and war. Highly personal multimedia pieces tell the stories of survivors and witnesses of these many forms of violence.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Still Standing
Ms. Gertrude returns to what remains of her New Orleans home and fights to rebuild what she can in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
Struggling to Survive
Teenagers in eastern Kentucky turn their cameras on the living wage crisis in their community.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
System Failure
Physical abuse, sexual harassment, inadequate education for incarcerated youth – if a society can be graded by how it treats its prisoners, then the state of California gets an “F.”
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
The Luckiest Nut In The World
A singing peanut and his gang of shelled friends explain that sometimes free trade is just nuts.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
The Rules of the Game
A Native American tribe’s dreams of prosperity clash with small town values in Rohnert Park, California.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
The Sixth Section
During the cold winters of upstate New York, a group of immigrants work together to give back to their hometown of Boqueron, Mexico.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Water Warriors
When water costs soar, residents of Highland Park, Michigan demand to know who will foot the bill.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
We Were Humans
This multimedia animation asks what would happen if the billions of dollars of yearly military spending were directed towards education and world hunger.
Official selection of the third annual festival
World On Fire
$5,000 could cover the cost of hair and make-up for one day on set in LA or pay for one year’s schooling for 145 girls in Afghanistan. Sarah McLachlan does the math and encourages you to join her.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
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