NYTimes.com Article: 'Life and Debt': One Love, One Heart, or a Sweatsho

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.

for anyone teaching international perspective classes, sounds like one to watch 
for--hopefully it will make it into local video stores nationwide--Steve Sherman

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'Life and Debt': One Love, One Heart, or a Sweatshop Economy?

MOVIE REVIEW
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

 

he 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. Opens
tomorrow at Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village.
Running time: 86 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Belinda Becker (narrator). 


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/arts/15LIFE.html?ex=993630526&ei=1&en=4926e29e7b8de117

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