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 Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:21 pm Post subject: Naomi Klein Disowns Channel 4 Shock Doctrine Film |
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Unfortunately this documentary has not been given the seal of approval by author Naomi Klein. Below are three articles on the subject.
1. | Quote: | Not in my name: Klein disowns Winterbottom adaptation
Writer left off credits by mutual agreement for Channel 4 version of her book after creative tensions with director
By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
The Independent - Friday, 28 August 2009
Neither is afraid of controversy. So when the filmmaker Michael Winterbottom was picked to direct a storming screen adaptation of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine, which takes a hatchet to free market capitalism, Ms Klein heartily approved.
But Winterbottom's work, which is to be broadcast on More4 on 1 September, has led to such insurmountable creative tensions that Klein, who originally came on board to narrate the film and act as a consultant, does not appear in the credits as a writer or consultant, or act as its narrator.
A source at Channel 4 said the writer was so disappointed with Winterbottom's vision of her book – which she reportedly felt did not carefully lay out the thesis or explain the economics but instead made unproven assertions – that she sought to distance herself from the film after seeing the early cuts.
Klein, who is believed to have wanted more interviews and have less narration in the film, was not present at its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and does not mention the film on her website. She conceded yesterday that there had been major differences in opinion as the project developed. "I can confirm that the original idea was for me to write and narrate the film," she told The Independent. "For that to have worked out, however, there would have needed to be complete agreement between the directors and myself about the content, tone and structure of the film.
"As often happens, we had different ideas about how to tell this story and build the argument. This is Michael's adaptation of my book, and I didn't want there to be any confusion about that. I wish the film success."
A Channel 4 spokeswoman insisted the network was "very happy with the final result". A statement read: "This film was always intended to be Michael Winterbottom's interpretation of Naomi Klein's thesis and she was closely consulted throughout the film-making process."
A film review by The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year called Winterbottom's film: "A rough, disjointed doc that fails to get across Naomi Klein's arguments against disaster capitalism."
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism was Klein's third book, first published in 2007. It became an international and a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages.
The book sought to explode the belief that free markets went hand in hand with democracy. Klein asserted that deregulated capitalism had consistently been forced upon vulnerable people to suit alliances of big governments and big businesses, who exploited moments of disaster and trauma, such as the Falklands War and Hurricane Katrina, to make commercial gains. A YouTube short film of the same name has been viewed more than one million times. |
Link - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/not-in-my-name-klein- disowns-winterbottom-adaptation-1778386.html
2. | Quote: | Naomi Klein disowns Winterbottom adaptation of Shock Doctrine
Author and activist disagrees with documentary's take on her critique of 'disaster capitalism', to be screened on More4
Sam Jones, guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 August 2009
Naomi Klein has disowned Michael Winterbottom's forthcoming screen adaptation of her bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine, by asking to be removed from the credits of the documentary after serious differences arose between her and the British director.
The Canadian journalist, activist and author of No Logo had originally been slated to narrate the film and act as a consultant.
But it is thought Klein became unhappy with Winterbottom's take on her critique of "disaster capitalism" and western economic cynicism after seeing early cuts of the film. She is understood to have felt the documentary – which accuses the US and other countries of exploiting natural and man-made catastrophes in developing countries to push through free-market reforms from which they stand to gain – would have benefited from more interviews and less narration.
Klein was not present for the film's premiere at the Berlin film festival and makes no mention of it on her website.
She told the Independent that serious differences in opinion had emerged between her, Winterbottom, and the film's co-director, Mat Whitecross.
"I can confirm that the original idea was for me to write and narrate the film," she told the newspaper. "For that to have worked out, however, there would have needed to be complete agreement between the directors and myself about the content, tone and structure of the film."
She added: "As often happens, we had different ideas about how to tell this story and build the argument. This is Michael's adaptation of my book, and I didn't want there to be any confusion about that. I wish the film success."
A spokeswoman for More4, which will broadcast the film on 1 September, said the documentary "was always intended to be Michael Winterbottom's interpretation of Naomi Klein's thesis and she was closely consulted throughout the film-making process". She added that the broadcaster was "very happy with the final result".
Although an early review of the film by the Hollywood Reporter described it as "a rough, disjointed doc that fails to get across Naomi Klein's arguments against disaster capitalism", Variety found it superior to many contemporary musings on the same subject.
"Judged against the many other recent docus that also critique the machinations of modern capitalism, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's [film] looks eminently sober, polished and persuasive," it said.
The Shock Doctrine argues that big corporations in search of new markets benefit when governments import the neoliberal economic system, often as a result of pressure from the US, but that this often has catastrophic consequences for ordinary people. Political leaders have turned to "brutality and repression", it contends, to crush protests against their ideologically inspired programmes of privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts.
The Shock Doctrine was commissioned by More4 from Revolution Films/Renegade Pictures. Winterbottom's previous work includes 24 Hour Party People and Welcome to Sarajevo. |
Link - http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/28/naomi-klein-winterbottom-sh ock-doctrine
3. | Quote: | Johann Hari: This is an idiot's version of her masterpiece
The Independent, Friday, 28 August 2009
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important political books of the past decade. She takes the central myth of the right, "that since the fall of Soviet tyranny, free elections and free markets have skipped hand in hand together towards the shimmering sunset of history", and shows that it is a lie. It is a major revisionist history of the world that Milton Friedman and the market fundamentalists have built.
In the new Depression, with their vision lying in smoking rubble, it is a thesis whose time has come, yet its film, alas, has not. The new "adaptation" of the book by Michael Winterbottom is garbled to the point of meaninglessness.
Klein argues that humans consistently vote for mixed economies, a mix of markets and counterbalancing welfare states. The right has been unable to defeat it in democratic elections. So in order to achieve their vision of "pure capitalism", they have waited for massive crises "when the population is left reeling and unable to object" to impose their vision.
Klein's story begins with the market fundamentalists' show-room: Chile. Milton Friedman, the apostle of pure unfettered capitalism, sent many of his finest students to Chile to spread the message that markets must be allowed to work their pristine logic unhindered by governments. They persuaded nobody. Their parties were defeated, and the democratic socialist Salvador Allende was elected. So when the CIA backed an anti-democratic coup by the fascist general Augusto Pinochet, Friedman stepped in to design "the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere", as Klein puts it.
All subsidies for the poor were scrubbed away, prices were sent soaring and unemployment reached unprecedented levels. The wishes of the people could be safely ignored, because "the shock of the torture chamber terrorised anyone thinking of standing in the way of the economic shocks", she notes. So the right-wing vision of "total markets slice away all social protections and let the corporations rule" was born with the iron fist of state violence as its conjoined twin. Klein tracks this pair from post-Soviet Russia to post-apartheid South Africa to post-tsunami Sri Lanka, showing how they were imposed by the same forces each time.
Klein's account of this "disaster capitalism" is written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. So what happened to the film? Winterbottom serves up a cold porridge of archive footage and soundbites that have some vague link to the book, without the connecting spine of Klein's explanations. It is as though an idiot has explained the book to another idiot, who then made a film.
This film should have been another Inconvenient Truth. Instead, it's just inconvenient and a shocking waste of a masterpiece. |
Link - http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-h ari-this-is-an-idiots-version-of-her-masterpiece-1778387.html |
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