FILM: Challenging 500 Years of Globalisation
By Lucy Komisar

A Maasai community explains their fights for their traditional land. Credit:Image from “The End of Poverty?”

NEW YORK, Nov 14 (IPS) – To end poverty, you have to know how it began – with globalisation. No, not the 20th century variety engendered by multinationals and their friends at the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They just codified practices that kept developing countries poor.

French Filmmaker Philippe Diaz, in an illuminating documentary opening in New York Friday, traces globalisation back 500 years to the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas. Diaz shows how the colonial North used the South’s resources to build its industrial base and how its continued control over resources, global trade and debt rules prevents developing countries from ending poverty.

Diaz had produced French feature films such as “Bad Blood” and “The Man Inside” before turning to documentaries. He made “The Empire in Africa” about Sierra Leone. The drama of the new film, “The End of Poverty?”, is as startling as anything he could invent.

The title is a play on a book by economist Jeffrey Sachs – without the question mark – who, Diaz told IPS, “runs all around the world with Bono and these guys claiming that if we bring mosquito nets and fertilisers, it will end poverty.”

Read the full review here: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49267

Learn more about Lucy Komisar’s work here: http://thekomisarscoop.com/