Programme

Film forums: against poverty, protect the environment

The CEAR Foundation -the Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance- is an organization for protecting, aiding, and improving the living conditions for refugees, displaced persons, and those living in poverty. For this reason, we carry out projects for development (basic territorial rehabilitation, training and creating productive structures for generating resources and jobs, etc.) and awareness (campaigns aimed at raising awareness in more fortunate societies about the huge present day economic, social, and cultural differences).

As part of this awareness-raising work, our taking part again this year in the parallel activities at Documenta Madrid is for us an exceptional opportunity, because it brings our work closer to wider audiences, and does so through such an attractive and effective kind of mass media as cinema, and specifically, the genre of documentary film, which has always stood out for its social awareness, for its attention to issues of the underprivileged, for its commitment to the most dire and forgotten problems.

Following in the footsteps of last year’s festival, we have chosen for this fourth year of Documenta Madrid three films that for us bring together high quality and commitment, and at the same time have enough material to provide reflection and debate. Because for us, the screening of these films is much more than just a screening: it is a call for attention, an invitation for debate, for reflection, and lastly, for acting. The films chosen are the Oscar winning, An Inconvenient Truth, Ovas de oroand Leben ausser Kontrolle. All three deal with, each in its own way, problems that environmental associations have been denouncing for years and that politicians are hardly beginning to take seriously: climate change, the disregard for nature, and the repercussions for the most underprivileged. The first, in the hands of Al Gore, uses facts to show how climate change, as a product of human excesses, is a reality and not a fantasy. The Chilean film Ovas de orogives us an introduction into the world of mass fishing, and how it threatens to destroy sea reserves.
And Leben ausser Kontrolle, deals with the issue of genetically modified crops and their implications not only for health, but also for the economies and lives of the people who live off of agriculture. It tells the story of a group of independent scientists who take on the theories of the large corporations.

All three films also demonstrate something that for us is crucial: that there is still time for us to reverse things, and to slow down the race toward self-destruction. This very idea is the one that drives us to continue our work day after day: thinking that it is still possible to do something to make a better world.

Screenings
Conference schedule
Film screening: 17:30 h.
Round table and debate: 19:00 h.
Place: Centro Madrileño de Imágenes

Day 1: Global Warming and Poverty
Monday 7, 17:30
Film: An Inconvenient Truth

Day 2: Genetically modified foods bread today, hunger tomorrow
Thursday 8, 17:30
Film: Leben ausser Kontrolle

Jornada 3. Empresas y deuda ecológica
Wednesday 9, 18:15
Film: Ovas de oro