Manchester Film Co-op would like to invite you to our screening of ‘Blood In The Mobile’ by Frank Poulsen, Winner of Berlin’s Cinema for Peace Award for Justice in 2011.

The documentary Blood in the Mobile shows the connection between our phones and the civil war in the Congo. Director Frank Poulsen travels to Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to see the illegal mining industry with his own eyes. He gets access to Congo’s largest tin-mine, which is being controlled by different armed groups, and where children work for days in narrow mine tunnels to dig out the minerals that end up in our phones.

Most of the minerals used to produce cell phones are coming from the mines in DR Congo. The Western World is buying these “conflict minerals” and thereby financing a civil war that, according to human rights organisations, has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II. During the last 15 years the conflict has cost the lives of more than 5 million people and 300.000 women have been raped. The war will continue as long as armed groups can finance their warfare by selling minerals. Blood in Mobile is a film about our personal responsibility and corporate social responsibility for the conflict in the Congo.

Time: Screening to begin at 8pm prompt.

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

Venue: Levenshulme Inspire Cafe, 747 Stockport Rd, Manchester, M19 3AR

Optional RSVP: Facebook.

Manchester Film Co-operative – in association with Manchester Friends of the Earth – would like to invite you to a screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary film, More Than Honey.

Over the past 15 years, numerous colonies of bees have been decimated throughout the world, but the causes of this disaster remain unknown. Depending on the world region, 50% to 90% of all local bees have disappeared, and this epidemic is still spreading from beehive to beehive – all over the planet. Everywhere, the same scenario is repeated: billions of bees leave their hives, never to return. No bodies are found in the immediate surroundings, and no visible predators can be located.

In the US, the latest estimates suggest that a total of 1.5 million (out of 2.4 million total beehives) have disappeared across 27 states. In Germany, according to the national beekeepers association, one fourth of all colonies have been destroyed, with losses reaching up to 80% on some farms. The same phenomenon has been observed in Switzerland, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Poland and England, where this syndrome has been nicknamed “the Mary Celeste Phenomenon”, after a ship whose crew vanished in 1872.

Scientists have found a name for the phenomenon that matches its scale, “colony collapse disorder,” and they have good reason to be worried: 80% of plant species require bees to be pollinated. Without bees, there is no pollinization, and fruits and vegetables could disappear from the face of the Earth. Apis mellifera (the honey bee), which appeared on Earth 60 million years before man and is as indispensable to the economy as it is to man’s survival.

Should we blame pesticides or even medication used to combat them? Maybe look at parasites such as varroa mites? New viruses? Travelling stress? The multiplication of electromagnetic waves disturbing the magnetite nanoparticles found in the bees’ abdomen? So far, it looks like a combination of all these agents has been responsible for the weakening of the bees’ immune defenses.

Time: Screening to begin at 7pm.

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

Venue: On the Eighth Day Cafe, Oxford Road, Manchester.

Optional RSVP: Facebook (soon).

Manchester Film Co-operative would like to invite you to a screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary film, Dirty Wars.

The film follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestseller Blackwater, into the heart of America’s covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond.

Part political thriller and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. What begins as a report into a U.S. night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens.

Drawn into the stories and lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill is forced to confront the painful consequences of a war spinning out of control, as well as his own role as a journalist.

Time: Doors open at 7:30pm.

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

Venue: On the Eighth Day Cafe, Oxford Road, Manchester.

Optional RSVP: Facebook.