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RESISTANCE CINEMA  and UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE of Community Church  Present  “THE END OF POVERTY” Produced and Directed by Philippe Diaz,  Narrated by Martin Sheen,  with Joseph Stiglitz,  Susan George, Chalmers Johnson, John Perkins, Amartya Sen, John Christensen, 104mins, 2008 

 

WHEN:  Sunday march 22, 2009, 1pm

WHERE:  Community Church NYC, Assembly Hall, 40 East 35th st. @ Park ave.

ADMISSION:  Free,

SPECIAL GUESTS:  Cay Hehner, Directer of Education, Henry George School of New York and George Garland Chair of UNGA will lead a post-screening discussion

 

The feature-length documentary The End of Poverty won critical acclaim at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and is narrated by actor Martin Sheen. It is a daring, thought-provoking and very timely documentary by filmmaker Philippe Diaz. The film takes a hard look at world poverty and challenges capitalism and the American model for development.

 

In a world where we have so much wealth, with modern cities and plentiful resources...how can we still have so much poverty that people must live on less than $1 per day? Where entire families live in one small room in squalid informal housing settlements, far away from skyscrapers and city centers, where they don’t have the means to take care of themselves?

 

Where do we have to look to understand how it all started, where some started to become rich and others poor? Looking beyond the popular ”solutions” for poverty, The End of Poverty asks if the true causes of poverty today stem from a deliberate orchestration of resource misallocation started in colonial times.

 

Poverty is not an accident. 1492 marks the birth of modern times when the conquistadors violently extracted goldand other natural resources. Since then, our economic system has been financed by the poor by forcing them to give up their land and access to natural resources, then through unfair trade, debt repayment and unjust taxes on labor and consumption. This system was carefully built and maintained by the free market policies, resource monopolies and structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and the IMF.