Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Sun, Nov 13
7:30 pm
free

Brave New Films, a new production company dedicated to making cutting
edge films about the most relevant subjects of our time, announced
today that it will theatrically release its first film, Wal-Mart: The
High Cost of Low Price, in select independently-owned theaters in New
York and Los Angeles on Friday, November 4.

Challenging the traditional release window, the limited theatrical
release comes just a week before Premiere Week, when Wal-Mart will be
shown at well over 3,000 screenings and house parties across the
nation - by churches, small business owners, teachers, and others.

"Releasing the film in theaters will only build upon the largest
grassroots mobilization in the history of film distribution," said
filmmaker Robert Greenwald. "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is
the story of one company using its power to destroy the fabric of
American life, and it is important to us that as many people as
possible see it. The theatrical release will only serve to increase
the profile of Wal-Mart."

"Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices": Freedom is slavery -- but
we're cutting prices!
If Enron marked one extreme of turn-of-the-century capitalism, Wal-
Mart, as depicted in Robert Greenwald's grimly mesmerizing film,
marks another. You can't say that either company behaved
irrationally: Both exist in a system that lavishly rewarded greed,
falsehood and exploitation, and that never made clear where the
acceptable limits lay or even whether they existed at all.
Enron was encouraged to lie because the financial markets had
demonstrated, at least in the short term, that they didn't care
whether reported profits were real or not. Wal-Mart's logic is even
more inexorable: By virtually enslaving workers in third-world
sweatshops and keeping its retail employees at home systematically
overworked and underpaid, the chain could not only undersell all its
competitors but also create a marketplace where low wages and low
prices became mutually necessary. Nobody in the film quite puts it
this way, but Wal-Mart was the Perfect Storm of the downshifting
American economy. The cut-rate colossus didn't just ride the tide
that sucked industrial jobs out of our towns and cities and spat out
low-wage service-sector jobs in the sprawling exurbs -- it helped
create it, and at the very least drastically accelerated it.
You probably know most of the information that appears in Greenwald's
film by now -- a laundry list of anti-Wal-Mart indictments has been
aired in the news media over the past few years -- but it remains a
powerful experience to see it gathered together and supported by
witness after witness. On various levels, "Wal-Mart" is a more
effective and impressive film than either Greenwald's "Uncovered: The
War on Iraq" or "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." The
target is more elusive, arguably more dangerous and definitely less
well-understood, so Greenwald and his team have had to dig deeper and
weave together many different strands of research and reporting.
Knowledgeable critics of the Bush administration or Fox News are
relatively easy to find. Whistle-blowers who know about the inside
workings of Wal-Mart are few and far between, and this film will make
you appreciate their courage and convictions.

Venue:

Wallmart Movie-free screening at CELL
2050 Bryant/18th
San Francisco

www.cellspace.org

Additional Info:

415-336-7330
www.cellspace.org