The Take
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DVD details
Actor: Naomi KleinDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
DVD Reviews of The Take
DVD Review: Self-Management at It's Finest.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have long been an advocate of workers self-management and socialism from below. This was the best documentary available to see these ideals, not just theorized on paper, but in actions executed by ordinary people. The most inspiring aspect of this dvd is that the workers created the entire movement. Free of a vanguard (leninism) or liberal reformers. This was direct democracy in it's purest and most beautiful.
The film was obviously slanted against the IMF and the rest of the unholy trinity but as Howard Zinn phrased so well "You can't be neutral on a moving train". I would say the near unanimous blame of the IMF by the Argentine people warrants such a view. Despite this slant time is given to leading businessmen and neo-liberals to defend their stances and explain their positions.
All in all it's a great way to look inside the world of direct democracy and what societies could look like in a decentralized, cooperative nation. Bravo!
DVD Review: Compelling story and theory ruined by lefty hype.
Summary: 2 Stars
I like the story that this film tells about the workers of the closed factories trying to bring Argentina back from the brink by getting back to work. I believe that recuperation is a fair way to settle owed wages, satisfy the other creditors and provide productive work. I think its a shame that the politicians would do anything but fully support the workers' endeavors in getting the economy moving again.
Despite this, the film is ruined by half-baked ideas about the IMF and the Multi-nationals causing the ruin of the Argentine economy. The IMF is the only organization in the world that continued to provide hard currency to the Argentine government after the economic crisis. The Multinational corporations only did what they could to try to mitigate their losses caused by the collapse by getting the hell out of Dodge.
The true culprits in the plot are the corrupt politicians and the nefarious bigwigs running the local enterprises like Forja San Martin. (Am I the only one who noticed that the film includes no examples of Multinationals abandoning a factory?) Argentina had crappy fiscal and monetary policies, including bloated subsidies to companies like Zanon (before the take-over), and a pegged currency. The references to IMF policy prescriptions (El Modelo) never mention that Argentina ignored the most basic reforms that are supposed to ensure stability and solvency of the government and support economic development while helping those hurt by the attendant dislocations that development will cause (i.e.: job loss, etc.) I don't know why they were so timid about calling out these scoundrels, other than that they'd have to pass up taking cheaps shots at the IMF, Multinational corporations, and other globalization bogeymen.
I would have appreciated this film much more if it were more honest about the true circumstances that lead to the sad state of affairs that it documents. I would have rated it at least four stars had it done so.
DVD Review: The Take
Summary: 5 Stars
Scripted by activist-author Naomi Klein ("No Logo") and directed by Avi Lewis, "The Take" is a probing look at the ugly underside of globalization and its discontents, as well as a compelling portrait of blue-collar pride and self-esteem. We get to know the workers and their families, hearing about the hardships so many have endured since an ill-advised International Monetary Fund bailout plunged Argentina deeper into debt and disarray. Urgent and damning in its implications, "The Take" is a David and Goliath story with real-world reverberations.DVD Review: El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!
Summary: 5 Stars
Using the recuperated Forja factory as a microcosm of the larger Argentine piquetero movement, author Naomi Klein and director Avi Lewis have done a brilliant job documenting the grassroots activism of marginalized workers in the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse caused by years of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and the corrupt presidency of Carlos Menem. Faced with abject poverty and state repression, the unemployed auto-parts workers of the Forja factory have occupied their abandoned workplace and transformed it into a successful cooperative, proving thus the power of labor solidarity. As such, the Forja factory, like all the recuperated factories, neighborhood assemblies, and independent media collectives in Argentina, provides an inspirational example of direct democracy, participatory economics, and horizontal social organizing. Besides being an important film politically, as a work of art it is simply exquisite. Fans of Mercedes Sosa will especially be moved by the protest scenes that were put to her music!
DVD Review: A Moving Film With a Few Serious Oversights
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall, this is a moving film. As an anthropology instructor, I've shown it several times and evoking a largely sympathetic audience. Currently I'm writing a paper on the process of recuperacion, and this seems to be potentially one alternative model to the destructive policies of transnational corporations, their agencies, and the neoliberal ideology they espouse.
That said, there is one serious problem in their choice of a case study that runs throughout the film; the auto parts manufacturer Forja San Martin (Forja). It's a very moving portrait of Freddy Espinoza, one of the leaders of the cooperative taking over the shutdown factory. Lalo, the coordnator representing the national organization for recovered factories, seems to be a likable guy. We see the leaders trying to work out a deal with a tractor factory.
This image breaks down, however, when we learn from Andres Ruggeri in his "Worker Recovered Enterprises in Argentina" that the backslider depicted in the film, the one who supports Menem in the 2003 election, has taken over the leadership of Forja San Martin, that the others portrayed in the film have been expelled from the factory and cooperative, and that the deal with the tractor factory--Zanello by name--has fallen through.
Even worse, we find from Zachary Fields in his unpublished paper "A Conservative, Middle Aged Revolution," that Forja is producing way below capacity, that it cannot add new technology because banks refuse them credit (private lenders hate all recovered factory cooperatives), and that it cannot make any investments until they deliver to their customers, who often furnish Forja the raw materials. Forja, in short, is not doing well.
Zanon and Brukman seem to fare better when it comes to accurate representation. One thing that they seem to be doing right is maintaining strong bonds with their neighborhoods and community, a deficit of Forja according to Ruggeri, and of many other recovered organizations.
Another issue is worker commitment to change. According to Andres Gaudin, many, if most, workers of recovered factories lack a sense of political ideology or commitment; they just want to get their wages and go home. In fact, says Ruggeri, many workers are in the enterprises because they have nowhere else to go.
Despite these reservations, The Take is on to something interesting. For one, Ruggeri points out that despite the miniscule number of recovered factories (0.08% of all such operations) and low number of workers, they have stabilized. In an hostile environment--no credit, stringent legal constraints, competitive economy, constant threats of evictions, and uncertain policies of the Kirchner government--this is an accomplishment in its own right.
The movement has spread to Brazil, Uruguay, Panama--and Venezuela, where the first conference on recovered facories was held. Venezuela is looking at 700 factories for possible recovery, and a paper mill, an aluminum company, and a valve manufacturer were featured at the conference.
Let's hope that the factory recovery movement is embryonic of the future; and I hope the couple comes back to film or otherwise provide an update of the situation in Argentina. It would also be nice to know how the rcovery movement is doing in other countries--especially Venezuela.
Description of The Take
{WINNER! Best Documentary, 2005 Cleveland International Film Festival}{WINNER! Grand Jury Prize, 2004 AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival}
{WINNER! Best Justice and Human Rights Film, 2004 Vermont International Film Festival}
In the wake of Argentina's spectacular economic collapse, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. Thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory in Buenos Aires, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.
Filmmakers Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein take viewers inside the lives of the workers and their families, who must fight for jobs and their dignity by confronting factory owners, politicians and judges. The result is a real-life political thriller that pits ordinary workers against the local ruling elite and the powerful forces of global capitalism.
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