We don't play golf here!

1 December 2007

Saul Landau

This film breaks new ground in political filmmaking.

Using Mexico as an example of what much of the Third World has experienced, the filmmakers show how foreign investment in export factories distort both the culture and environment. Its exquisite photography, elegant editing, and original music probe the essence of the new economic disorder.

To stop construction of a corporate golf course -- “globalization” -- and 1,500 vacation chalets, the people of Tepoztlan confronted federal troops. As it has done in countless other villages throughout the world where people still speak indigenous languages (Nahual), corporate culture invaded. The “investors” constructed not just factories and shopping malls, but in this Morelos village, proposed to replace soccer with the corporate “sport” of golf, which included building 1500 vacation chalets and a country club.

The newly elected Tepoztlan mayor sneered: “We don’t play that sport here,” because, he explained, maintenance of a large golf course “would sap badly needed farming water; pesticides and chemical fertilizer to maintain the grass would pollute the town’s aquifers.”

In another story, two “ecological peasants” describe how Mexican army personnel tortured them because they tried to stop Boise Cascade from clear cutting forests in Guerrero.

Tijuana residents describe how the US owner of a battery recycling plant allowed dangerous chemicals to seep into their neighborhood. It poisoned our children, the local mayor charged. Local, state and federal authorities refused to stop the contamination process. Then, neighbors stormed the factory and forced its owner to flee.

The film includes cinematic essays on progress, by native people as liabilities as told by SubComandante Marcos, and sociologist Victor Quintana offers a comparison between golf as the sport of the rich and few as opposed to soccer as the sport of the poor and many.

Musicians Greg Landau, Omar Sosa and Francisco Herrera combined to offer “Se Vende” and “La Pelotita Blanca,” dazzling compositions whose lyrics and sound express the agonies and humor the modern predicament.

This 33 minute filmic essay is ideal for high school classes and university professors that want to add an audio visual dimension to their teachings on globalization.

The film is directed by Institute for Policy Studies fellow Saul Landau – winner of Emmy, George Polk, Letelier-Moffitt and First Amendment awards, in addition to many film festival prizes, and co-produced by Saul Landau and George McAlmon.

Camera – Sonia Angulo; Editing –Tomas Hernandez.

Available through Round World Media: roundworldmedia@gmail.com

>See the trailer on Link TV

About the authors

Saul Landau

TNI Senior Fellow and former Director of TNI (1976), Landau is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and author. Landau writes weekly on US politics and foreign policy and has produced more than forty films on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights.

Landau has written fourteen books - his most recent book is A Bush and Botox World (Counterpunch, 2007). He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.

He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. Gore Vidal says, "Saul Landau is a man I love to steal ideas from"

Saul received the Bernardo O'Higgins award from the Chilen government in 2010. In 2011, he produced 'Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up' with Danny Glover and Fidel Castro, a film about 50+ years of US-Cuba relations.

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