Manchester Film Co-op, in association with Positive Money, would like to invite you to a screening of 97% Owned, a new documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis.

Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach.

Fact-based and clearly explained, in just 60 minutes it shows how the power to create money is the piece of the puzzle that economists were missing when they failed to predict the crisis.

Produced by Queuepolitely and featuring Ben Dyson of Positive Money, Josh Ryan-Collins of The New Economics Foundation, Ann Pettifor, the “HBOS Whistleblower” Paul Moore, Simon Dixon of Bank to the Future and Sargon Nissan and Nick Dearden from the Jubliee Debt Campaign, this is the first documentary to tackle this issue from a UK-perspective.

Time: Doors open at 7:30pm.

Admission: £3 waged, £2 unwaged/student.

Location: Kraak Gallery, Stevenson Square, Manchester.

Optional RSVP: Facebook and Meetup.

Manchester Film Co-op would like to invite you to an event held over two evenings in conjunction with Platform and Virtual Migrants.

Tuesday 27th November – Film Screening of Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal’s eye-opening documentary follows Ed Burtynsky’s photographic journey through the epic industrial landscapes of China & beyond, exploring “the aesthetic, social and spiritual dimensions of industrialisation and globalisation.” Burtynsky’s own phrase, Manufactured Landscapes parallels the 2003 internationally-acclaimed book of the same name, a retrospective of his unsparing examination of how 200 years of industrialisation has reshaped our natural world on an epic scale. His intention is to capture on camera our moment in the great ages of man; from stone to oil to silicon. To render the invisible visible he captures subjects that are rich in detail and vast in scale. “Recycling yards, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.”

Whereas Burtynsky’s photographs reveal human beings dwarfed by the massive industrialised landscapes that surround them, Baichwal records the sound and motion of workers subjected to the repetitive strain and monotony of assembling small components within huge manufacturing processes, unveiling the interconnectedness of tiny, medium-sized, large and global. Images of imported post-consumer waste only serve to remind the Western consumer that it is our lifestyle that is fuelling this Chinese “economic miracle”.

Time: Doors open at 7:30pm. Screening begins at 8:00pm.

Admission: £3 waged, £2 unwaged/student.

Location: International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester.

Poster: PDF Download

Facebook Event: click here.

Wednesday 28th November at 6-8pm: Book launch of ‘The Oil Road’

The following evening at the same venue, Virtual Migrants present the latest of their ‘Passenger’ events using live music and spoken word, plus a panel discussion in response to Platform’s new book, The Oil Road. This panel discussion will explore the themes of the book and ask, “How does the sanitisation of difficult, violent processes and imperialist histories inform the fight for climate justice today?”

More information on this second event is available at: http://crudekillings.eventbrite.co.uk

Manchester Film Co-op and Manchester Open Rights Group would like to invite you to a special screening of The Real Social Network – a film about the new generation of protest.

Protest has changed. Between the first UK student protests in November 2010 and the global uprising in the spring of 2011, a new radicalism, fuelled by modern technology, has hit the streets.

Over 6 months of government cuts, a collective of filmmakers has had exclusive access to the backroom meetings of a group of London students as they hacked software, occupied universities and shut down banks. In the process, they’ve helped build the movement currently sending ripples across the globe.

The Real Social Network captures the passion, the anger and the technology that has forever changed the game between those in power and us.

 [Facebook Event]