British documentary film-maker Ben Cashdan is on a nationwide crusade to convert people to his own brand of anti-globalisation
Alex Sudheim
One of the strange facts of life seems to be that aspirant independent film-makers wear black blazers. Whether to symbolise dark, subversive intellect or solemn commitment to the I-mean-business-in-an-anarchic-sort-or-way school of cool, the blazer remains the sartorial signifier of choice for the roving anti-establishment artiste.
This is true of Bob Cashdan, visiting British documentary film-maker whose oeuvre is characterised by a quasi-polemic disdain for global capitalism and its many manifestations. Since many of his works are located in the discourse of anti-globalisation with particular reference to South Africa, he is on tour of the country both showing his films and making more.
In the spirit of Michael Moore (Roger & Me) and Nick Broomfield (Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher; The Leader, the Driver and the Driver’s Wife) is Cashdan’s film Two Trevors Go To Washington, where he takes a wry look at the dual pilgrimages to the United States undertaken by Trevor Manuel and Trevor Ngwane.
Manuel, the Minister of Finance, was invited to the world International Monetary Fund (IMF) conference but anti-IMF activist Ngwane was most certainly not. Ngwane, an ex-African National Congress member apparently kicked out of the party for opposing privatisation, went to Washington to take part in the increasingly vociferous protests against such globalisation-minded organisations such as the IMF, the World Trade Organisation and the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The WEF was the reason for Cashdan’s seminar in Durban on June 7. His films, together with a complement of unedited footage, were shown at the same time that the WEF convened its three-day pow-wow in the city. Lending further import to the event was Cashdan’s material the WEF conference held in Davos, Switzerland.
His record of the event contains an illuminating session with President Thabo Mbeki (which served as a catalyst for vigorous audience debate around the issue of “what do/should the poor aspire to?”) as well as an interesting tte-a-tte with enigmatic billionaire George Soros.
Swiss demonstrators evinced one of the central paradoxes of anti-globalisation rhetoric by pelting a McDonalds with rocks while clad in expensive Adidas snow-gear.
Trevor Ngwane was once again in the thick of things, lambasting Soros via satellite link-up from the “alternative Davos”, the World Social Forum run concurrent to the WEF in Porto Allegro, Brazil.
An Argentinian nun also wished a special place in hell upon Soros, though, given her church’s historical role in several genocides, how a Catholic can adopt a self-righteous stance toward the creation of mass suffering is somewhat baffling.
Cashdan’s other film, the made-for-Swiss-TV documentary called Apartheid Gold and Reparations, once again painted a somewhat unflattering portrait of the Swiss. Exposing their famous neutrality as nothing but a euphemism for greed and hypocrisy, the film shows how Swiss banks kept that finger-wagging cretin, PW Botha, and his regime financially afloat when it was all but crippled by international sanctions.
Raw footage Cashdan shot of community protests over water meters in Mpumulanga, west of Durban, also threw into relief the pervasive extent of the debate between growth, employment and redistribution heads and the “people before profits” brigade and captured Durban intellectual Ashwin Desai in a hilarious turn as a wannabe-demagogue.
Though Cashdan’s continual pause-film-interject-smug-jibe demonstration technique became somewhat irritating, the audience was stimulated into a healthy state of mental and ideological agitation while getting a good airing of one of the most fundamental debates regarding the future of this country and the world.
Ben Cashdan’s Thinking Globally, Filming Locally will take place on June 16 at 7pm at the Armchair Theatre in Cape Town, on June 18 at the Workers’ Library in Johannesburg at 6.30pm, on June 20 at Windybrow Theatre in Hillbrow at 7pm, on June 28 at the Health Resource Centre in East London at 6.30pm, on June 30 at Rhodes University at 6.30pm and on July 1 at Unisa in Pretoria at 6.30pm. For more information contact Tel: (011) 727 7000