Why can’t the world’s biggest retail empire allow their employees to eat lunch?

Adding to a litany of serious labor abuses, thousands of California Wal-Mart employees are currently suing for their missed, legally-entitled lunch breaks. But even bigger trouble for ‘evil smiley’ is brewing in the blogosphere. Robert Greenwald is about to release ‘Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price’. Catch this eye-opening documentary during the grassroots distribution week, November 13-19, at a location possibly near you.

“There’s a real hunger out there for stuff of substance about the critical issues of the day,” says Greenwald, the maker of ‘Outfoxed’ and ‘Uncovered: The Iraq War.’

After 9/11, Greenwald moved from conventional filmmaking to creating socially relevant documentaries, starting with ‘Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election’. As he sees it, his job is to make public the untold stories of real people behind the machinery of war and corporatocracy.

‘Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price’, follows the intensely personal stories of workers from the Midwest to California, Florida to Mexico. Shot on three continents by dozens of film crews, the film takes us on a remarkable journey that promises to challenge the way we think and feel, and most of all, to change the way America shops. The film reveals how Wal-Mart’s values destroy families, strangle communities and wage war on the American way of life [for the trailer click here].

Greenwald’s previous indy smash hits succeeded not only because of their critical social stance, but also because they ingeniously rallied real people instead of movie executives to participate, create the buzz, and distribute the films. Even the name of the film is the winner of an online competition. Aiming to make the film available to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible, Brave New Films turns the old-paradigm distribution model on its head. They sell DVDs directly to an enthusiastic following who find out about them through churches, universities, and other internet-savvy organizations throughout the world.

“You are my Universal Studios, you are my Warner Brothers,” Greenwald recently told a cheering audience in San Francisco.

There will be over 3,000 screenings of the film during the grassroots distribution week, in 19 countries and 50 states. Locally, ‘Wal-Mart’, the movie, not the corporation, will be brought to you courtesy of HopeDance Films (HDF). I asked Bob Banner to tell us about his experience as a field producer.

BB: I received an email from Brave New Films about six months ago and signed on immediately to show the film through our traveling theatre in a suitcase. There were about 70 meetings held initially throughout the U.S., Australia and Mexico. They have some good media kits available for ‘producers’ like myself. The hope is that many of these people will promote the film. I’m glad Greenwald is using a grassroots distribution system. But what’s really cool has been organizing the various venues in Montecito, Santa Barbara and SLO, and now we are trying to show the film in Santa Maria since Wal-Mart is seeking its way in that city. [ For showtimes in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo, click here ]

SA: How did HD FiLMS choose the venues for ‘Wal-Mart’?

BB: We’ve shown films at the Faulkner Gallery and at the SLO Library before, so it was just a matter of reserving the dates. La Casa de Maria was excited to work with HDF to make it a successful gathering. We’ve held film festivals at their other campus quite often. Last spring we held an all day event called ‘Overconsumption, Oil Depletion and the Inevitable Road to Sustainability’, with Richard Heinberg (author of ‘The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies’) as a special guest.

SA: Have you witnessed any evidence that the documentaries have encouraged local dialogue around ‘uncomfortable’ scenarios?

BB: I can’t say. However, after a screening of the film ‘The End of Suburbia’, people in Santa Barbara created an organization called ‘For The Future’ (forthefuture.org), which has been very active in galvanizing their community into learning more about peak oil, as well as getting city officials interested in creating a sustainable model that can perhaps be duplicated in other cities [see more stories about cities working around the issue of peak oil in this issue].

SA: Would you say a few words about films’ role as witness, in the spiritual sense.

BB: To me, spirituality is bankrupt unless it moves us into action. It’s great to have a calm mind, to meditate, to learn how our mind works at creating disharmony, violence, etc. But once a person has some relative freedom in controlling one’s mind, one’s desires, despair, greed and emptiness, it becomes only natural to want to give some of that wisdom back to a world running amok in chaos.

SA: Thanks for jumping onboard and bringing this film to our community.

Clearly Greenwald’s films can genuinely reinvigorate the flabby public forum by inviting creative participation and by catalyzing community dialogue about the moral, ethical issues raised. Come see what Wal-Mart is hiding.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Showtimes:

Santa Maria:

• Sunday, Nov 13, 2:30pm at the Board of Supes on Betteravia (suggested $5)
  

Santa Barbara area:

• Sunday, November 13; 7:00 p.m.: La Casa de Maria in Montecito (suggested donation $10) (See also the large ad on the back cover of the print issue. Or download the pdf flyer here.)
• Monday, Nov. 14; 7:00 p.m.: Faulkner Gallery in the Santa Barbara Library, 40 E. Anapamu (suggested donation $5)
  

San Luis Obispo area:

• Friday, Nov. 18, 7:00 p.m. at the SLO Library (Osos & Palm) (suggested donation $5)
• Saturday, Nov. 19; 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., & 4:00 p.m. at the SLO Library (Osos & Palm) (Suggested donation $5); no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
  
  
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