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WTO/99 at Speed Cinema

May 3 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
WTO still

WTO/99
Directed by Ian Bell

Sunday, May 3, 1 pm, CINEMA+ | BUY TICKETS

With a post-screening community discussion moderated by Dr. Angela Storey, Director, Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research featuring panelists Heather Fox, Director, Oral History Center, and Manuscript Archivist, University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections; K.A. Owens – Co-Chair, Kentucky Alliance Against Racist And Political Repression, Co-Host, KY Alliance Radio Show WLLV 1240 AM, 101.9 FM, and Host, On The Edge With K.A. Owens WFMP 106.5 FM; Emma Posey, Staff Writer for student newspaper The Louisville Cardinal, ,rising senior at UofL, English and Journalism majors & Pan African Studies minor; MLK, Porter, and Honors Scholar; and Shachaf Polakow, Photojournalist and Assistant Professor, Hite Institute of Art and Design, University of Louisville. 

$12 | $8 Speed members

“Watching WTO/99 is like peering into a portal to the future.”—Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

From November 30 to December 3 1999, tens of thousands of people occupied the streets of downtown Seattle to make known their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization and its impacts on the environment, human rights, and labor in the largest protests against economic globalization the U.S. has ever seen.

The protests brought together people from divergent sections of society—anarchists, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer protection advocates, pro-democracy groups, and even religious organizations. These protestors gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and strived to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.

Building from a thousand-hour archive, which includes more than 400 hours of never-before-seen footage, WTO/99 reanimates the ideological conflicts that drew thousands to the streets of Seattle in hopes for a better future. The film is an immersive visual artifact of a week that brought 40,000 people together to warn of environmental collapse, the vanishing middle class, and what the full inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization would mean for our collective future. The protesters—seen as a rabble-rousing nuisance at the time, yet appearing prophetic today—were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force, an all-too-fitting way to usher in a new century; one that is now defined by the U.S. failure to address climate change and increasing state aggression. 2025, U.S., DCP, 100 minutes. Recommended for 15+

Details

  • Date: May 3
  • Time:
    1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
  • Event Categories: ,

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