WWJBManchester Film Co-op would like to invite you to our Christmas-themed screening of the hilarious documentary film ‘What Would Jesus Buy?”.

What Would Jesus Buy?, produced by Morgan Spurlock (Super-Size Me!, 30 Days) and directed by Rob Van Alkemade, features Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping on a cross-country, holiday revival tour as they exorcise chain store cash registers and discuss the “Stop Shopping Gospel” with families suffering from the Shopocalypse.

The film takes the viewer into the homes of families as they max out their credit cards to live up to the Consumer Ideal of Christmas, while also telling personal stories from those who remember the holidays as a simpler, less commercial, and more joyful time. Interviews with labor rights experts, historians, and spiritual leaders reveal how the consumerization of the holiday season over time taught Americans they can only show love for their children by purchasing toys made by other children in overseas sweatshops.

“The earth has text-messaged us by way of glaciers and tornadoes and – common sense! – we’ve got to get a handle on this Consumerism. Our great ritual of giving to loved ones, Christmas, must be wrested away from the retail Santa and returned to real giving. There is the unforgettable research about the marketing to children, the “Valley of the Shadow of Debt,” the increasing invasion and destruction of our neighbourhoods by malls and big box stores… But there is something beyond the issues. There is a feeling that we want to be humans in that fascinating thing called Community. “What Would Jesus Buy?” is a very good question.“What Will YOU Buy?” is the next one. Change-a-lujah!”
– Rev Billy


Date:
Monday, 16th of December.

Time: Doors at 7.45pm, the film to begin at 8pm.

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

Venue: The Kings Arms, Bloom Street, Salford.

Optional RSVP: Facebook (soon).

Trashed_WebManchester Film Co-op and the Trafford-based Breathe Clean Air Group would like to invite you to a screening of the environmental documentary film, Trashed.

We buy it, we bury it, we burn it and then we ignore it. Does anyone think about what happens to all the trash we produce? We keep making things that do not break down. We have all heard these horrifying facts before, but with Jeremy Irons as our guide, we discover what happens to the billion or so tons of waste that goes unaccounted for each year. On a boat in the North Pacific he faces the reality of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the effect of plastic waste on marine life.

We learn that chlorinated dioxins and other man-made Persistent Organic Pollutants are attracted to the plastic fragments. These are eaten by fish, which absorb the toxins. We then eat the fish, accumulating more poisonous chemicals in our already burdened bodies. Meanwhile, global warming, accelerated by these emissions from landfill and incineration, is melting the ice-caps and releasing decades of these old poisons, which had been stored in the ice, back into the sea.

Having faced the worst through much of TRASHED, Jeremy Irons turns to hope. He goes in search of solutions. From individuals who have changed their lives and produce almost no waste, to increasing anti-waste legislation, to an entire city which is now virtually waste-free, he discovers that change is not only essential, but happening.

Date: Friday, 22nd of November.

Time: Doors at 6.30pm, the film to begin at 7pm.

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

Venue: Urmston Grammar School Theatre, Moorside Rd Entrance, Urmston, M41 5UU.

Optional RSVP: Facebook.

 

battle-of-algiersManchester Film Co-operative would like to invite you to a screening of the 1966 war film The Battle of Algiers.

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s film concerns the violent struggle in the late 1950s for Algerian independence from France, where the film was banned on its release for fear of creating civil disturbances. Certainly, the heady, insurrectionary mood of the film, enhanced by a relentlessly pulsating Ennio Morricone soundtrack, makes for an emotionally high temperature throughout. With the advent of the “war against terror” in recent years, the film’s relevance has only intensified.

Shot in a gripping, quasi-documentary style, The Battle of Algiers uses a cast of untrained actors coupled with a stern voiceover. Initially, the film focuses on the conversion of young hoodlum Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) to FLN (the Algerian Liberation Front.) However, as a sequence of outrages and violent counter-terrorist measures ensue, it becomes clear that, as in Eisenstein’s October, it is the Revolution itself that is the true star of the film.

Date: Tuesday, 22nd of October.

Time: Doors at 7.30pm, the film to begin at 7:45pm.

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

Venue: The Kings Arms, Bloom Street, Salford.

Optional RSVP: Facebook.