Entitle participates in the film festival Tales From Planet Earth
The festival is organized around the themes of Waste, Energy, the Circumpolar North and Environmental Justice. The festival will combine film screenings in the evenings with workshops, lectures and discussion panels during the afternoons involving activists, scholars, film-makers, students, and the general public.
Among others, filmmakers Fahad Mustafa & Deepti Kakkar will present their recently released documentary "Powerless" (2013), which focuses on the lack of access to electricity in Kanpur (India). The inequalities and lack of basic necessities of Kanpur residents drives people to use generators run on fossil fuels and to stealing electricity, while the city’s electricity company has decided to crack down on energy theft.
Keynote speaker Rob Nixon, professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of the book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, will talk about environmental justice in our age of accelerating globalization and advancing climate crisis. The seminar on film-making and activism “Making a difference? Film, research and activism”, scheduled for April 12th, will count with the collaboration of Entitle mentor Stefania Barca and Entitle fellow Felipe Milanez.
Click here for the full program
The festival is arranged by the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in cooperation with Entitle.
Watch the trailers of the films below:
Toxic Amazon
Felipe Milanez (64 min., Brazil)TOXIC: AMAZON is an investigation of the murders of Brazilian couple and rainforest activists Zé Claudio and Maria. The documentary tells the story of their brutal murders and the political and civil unrest at the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. On the same day Brazil's Parliament voted to decrease logging and ranching restrictions in the country's Forest Code, outspoken environmental activists Zé Cláudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espirito Santo were shot to death outside their house in the Amazonian state of Pará.
Brazilian journalist and researcher Felipe Milanez was a close friend of the couple and was following their life, filming them and helping them to get public attention in order to be save from threats. A month after the killings, he traveled with VICE to their hometown of Marabá to investigate the killings. The documentary TOXIC: Amazon, by VICE, directed by Bernardo Loyola and Felipe Milanez, drives into the rainforest to the site of the killings, follows the heavily armed men of Brazil's environmental protection agency as they bust up illegal timber mills, visits the militant squatters of Brazil's Landless Movement (MST), meets modern day slaves, and examines the lawless, violent atmosphere that permeates the town that locals call “Marabála” (aka Mara-bullets). Director Felipe Milanez will be present at the film screening.
Powerless
Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar(82 min, color, India, in Hindi and English with English subtitles)Would you risk your life to flip a switch? In Kanpur, India, putting oneself in harm's way to deliver electrical power is all too common. More than 1.5 billion people around the planet lack regular access to electrcity: 400 million of them live in India. In the city of Kanpur, a 28-year-old electrician is renowned for his prowess in stealing electricity. He is a Robin Hood figure, stealing electricity and charging the rich to provide free connections in impoverished neighborhoods.
In the face of day-long power-cuts, he runs illegal connections from one neighborhood to another so that homes, factories and businesses can function normally. At the other end of the city, the new female head of the city power company has decided to crack down on power-theft, which costs them millions of rupees in losses each year. Yearly drives to remove illegal connections are met with street protests and anger. In the meantime, lack of electricity drives people to use generators run on fossil fuels. This is choking the town, making Kanpur one of the most polluted cities in India. Powerless puts a lens to an unexplored narrative of one of the world's fastest developing economies still wracked by inequality and lacking basic necessities for everyone. Official selection of the 2013 Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals. Director Fahad Mustafa will be present for the screening.
