"This movie offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I've ever seen on a movie or television screen." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Awarded
CRITICS JURY PRIZE,
Los Angeles Film Festival, 2001

"A harsh indictment, but the film is persuasive. Developing economies of the Third World are deliberately destroyed and turned into captive markets for the rich nations, while their once self-sufficient inhabitants become cheap labor and local competition is penalized."
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"LIFE AND DEBT" will open in LA
on Bob Marley's birthday, Feb 6.

Wednesday, Feb 6 at 6:30 pm
Pacific Design Center - 8687 Melrose Ave in West Hollywood

This screening is a benefit for the LA Independent Media Center (LA IMC), an all-volunteer grassroots organization that uses media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. The LA IMC is online at http://la.indymedia.org. The screening is co-sponsored by the Jamaica Cultural Alliance (www.jamaicaculture.com).

Ticket are $20 each (senior and student discounts available). Online: http://la.indymedia.org/ld
By phone 213-353-0033 In person: Rhino Records 1721 Westwood Blvd. (ask for the reggae manager) Espresso Mi Cultural 5625 Hollywood Blvd.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Robert Hill of UCLA, a nationally known expert on Jamaica, and Hanna Petros of Ustawi, a nonprofit organization founded by African women to promote sustainable economic and environmental alternatives in Africa and the global South (www.ustawi.org).

To read a recent review of the film on alternet.org go to: http://www.alternet.org/

If you have seen LIFE and DEBT, please pass this on to someone who you think would like to see it:

The NY Times review below makes it clear just how timely this film is in the debate over the role of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO in developing countries, in this case Jamaica. The movie is remarkable because it not only deals with human and labor rights, environmental and economic policy issues deftly, but also because it works artistically. It even has a great soundtrack. Activists will find the movie a great tool for educating the public about what's wrong with the way globalization is taking place. Movie buffs will be touched by it and learn why the demonstrations from Seattle to Genoa to DC are so intense.

Visit www.lifeanddebt.org

MOVIE REVIEW By STEPHEN HOLDEN

The term "globalization" is so tinged with rosy one-world optimism that it's easy to assume the essential benignity of an economic philosophy whose name vaguely connotes unity, equality and freedom. But as Stephanie Black's powerful documentary "Life and Debt" illustrates with an impressive (and depressing) acuity, globalization can have a devastating impact on third world countries. The movie offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I've ever seen on a movie or television screen.

"Life and Debt," which opens the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this evening at the Walter Reade Theater and continues its run on Saturday at Cinema Village, focuses on the deeply troubled economy of Jamaica and how that country's long-term indebtedness to international lending organizations have contributed to the erosion of local agriculture and industry.

Far from being a dry exegesis crammed with graphs, pie charts and talking heads spewing abstract mumbo-jumbo, the film goes directly to the farmers and factory workers whose livelihoods have been undermined. In basic everyday language, they explain how high interest rates have helped devalue the local currency, raising prices for their produce and permitting wealthier countries to import the same products and sell them more cheaply.

The hard-nosed lending policies of organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank may not deliberately set out to undermine fragile third world economies dependent on their aid. But as the movie shows, the market forces that operate once these organizations become involved are an economic form of Darwinism. The fittest economies prosper while the weaker ones tend to be snared in an endless and escalating cycle of debt repayment that eventually erodes the debtor country's economic base. The banks' lending policies are, of course, determined by the wealthier countries, especially the United States and those of Western Europe.

These dry economic realities are leavened by the cool, ironic lyricism of a voice-over narration by Jamaica Kincaid, who adapted the text from her nonfiction book, "A Small Place." Adopting the alluringly soothing tone of a subversive tour guide, Ms. Kincaid informs potential tourists of the things that will be hidden from sight should they visit Jamaica.

"When you sit down to eat your delicious meal, it's better that you don't know that most of what you are eating came off a ship from Miami," she says.

That's just one of a long list of things she mentions - from primitive hotel sewage systems that empty directly into the ocean to the dire poverty of Kingston's slums - that all but the most intrepidly curious visitors to the country will not see. Recurring through the film are unsettling images of jolly, overfed American tourists engaged in activities like beer-drinking contests in Jamaica's luxury hotels.

One result of the country's crumbling economy is the vulnerability to exploitation of Jamaica's needy labor force. A segment about Jamaica's free trade zones introduces us to workers who toil five or six days a week in near-sweatshop conditions for the legal minimum wage of $30 a week sewing garments for American manufacturers. No unionization is permitted in these foreign-owned garment factories where shiploads of material arrive tax-free for assembly before being transported back to foreign markets. Those who dare to make waves are fired.

The movie visits a plant that used to sell high-quality chickens for Jamaican consumption but whose business has been undermined by the dumping of cheaper, low-grade chicken parts from the United States under the guise of free trade. And until recently, Jamaica's banana industry flourished thanks to an agreement with Britain allowing a tax-free import quota. But through the World Trade Organization, the United States has protested the agreement, forcing Jamaica to compete with multinational corporations based in Central and South America where labor is cheaper.

These are just a few of the stories told in a film that despite all the bad news it delivers refuses to raise its voice. Among the prominent Jamaicans interviewed the most eloquent voice belongs to Michael Manley, the former prime minister who reluctantly signed some of the agreements that have damaged the country's economy.

Speaking more in sorrow than in anger, he acknowledges that his country made mistakes along the way. But the overall impression left by this devastating film is of the global economy as a dog-eat-dog world where the usual culprits, the United States and its multinational corporate clients, have the advantage.

LIFE AND DEBT

Produced and directed by Stephanie Black; narration written by Jamaica Kincaid, based on her book "A Small Place"; directors of photography, Malik Sayeed, Kyle Kibbe, Richard Lannaman and Alex Nepomniaschy; edited by Jon Mullen; music by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, Bob Marley, Dean Fraser, Buju Banton, Sizzla, Harry Belafonte, Mutabaruka, Rolando E. McLean, Peter Tosh and Anthony B.; released by Tuff Gong Pictures. Running time: 86 minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Belinda Becker (narrator).