Cinema Politica Doc Explores The Neoliberal World Order, At Its Core
How does money grow? Who does it benefit and who does it affect? Let’s Make Money, Cinema Politica’s next revelation, explores this question in documentary form.
Erin Wagenhofer, an Austrian author and film director, received the German Documentary Film Prize in 2009 for this provocative and dark depiction of the neoliberal world order.
Let’s Make Money highlights the world’s financial market that we are all part of, whether we like it or not. Wagenhofer takes us on a visual and auditory journey around the world and traces the path of money that appears as soon as we open a bank account.
The film offers a historical and ethical look into why the majority of the developing world has sunk so deeply into poverty and how such a small population has gained unthinkable wealth.
This documentary has an emphasis on poverty in Africa. The film begins in the Ahafo mine in Ghana where huge portions of land are being used for gold extraction. One would think that such a resource would be taken as a gift and utilized as a powerful asset for enriching the country. This is not the case.
The film depicts what scholars have long called “The Natural Resource Curse.” As opposed to generating wealth in the country, natural resources such as gold, but also oil and minerals, undermine a country’s capability to develop.
Let’s Make Money shows how international financial institutions such as the World Bank are responsible for the accumulated debt of African states. In this case, it is the World Bank that has invested in the Ahafo mine, but takes no “responsibility for the aftereffects, or any externalities that flow out of the investment project,” according to Mark Mobius, president of the investment company Templeton Emerging Markets. “Their job is to invest, and to make money.”
In the end, it is the poverty stricken locals that pay the price of investment. The settings range from India to Austria, and from Burkina Faso to Washington D.C., and emphasize the major factors of the neoliberal order through the most chilling examples of market deregulation, credits and privatization of public facilities.
The Sundance Film Festival has characterized this film as “chilling,” with stories “that you’d expect to find in a science-fiction movie rather than a documentary.”
Wagenhofer uncovers just how much influence the rich and powerful have. Whether you are part of the world’s elite, struggling to obtain basic human needs, or fall into the grey area, money has an influence over everyone. Let’s Make Money explores this complex relationship and sheds light on the immense divide between the rich and the poor.
Cinema Politica will screen Let’s Make Money next
Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7:00 p.m.
The screening will take place in Concordia University’s
Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve) in room H 110. Free.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 21, published February 1, 2011.
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