Corporation

Theatrical Release Date: 2004 06 04 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 795975106535

Studio: Zeitgeist Films

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Adult Situations, Profanity]

Summary: In the mid-1800s, corporations began to be recognized as individuals by U.S. courts, granting them unprecedented rights. The Corporation, a documentary by filmmakers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott and author Joel Bakan, delves into that legal standard, essentially asking: if corporations were people, what kind of people would they be? Applying psychiatric principles and FBI forensic techniques, and through a series of case studies, the film determines that this entity, the corporation, which has an increasing power over the day-to-day existence of nearly every living creature on earth, would be a psychopath. The case studies include a story about how two reporters were fired from Fox News for refusing to soft-pedal a story about the dangers of a Monsanto product given to dairy cows, and another about Bolivian workers who banded together to defend their rights to their own water supply. The pervasiveness of corporate influence on our lives is explored through an examination of efforts to influence behavior, including that of children. The filmmakers interview leftist figures like Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky, and give representatives from companies Burson Marsteller, Disney, Pfizer, and Initiative Media a chance to relay their own points-of-view. The Corporation won the Best Documentary World Cinema Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Category: Business [nf]

Awards: Best Documentary – Genie Awards Most Popular Canadian Film – Vancouver International Film Festival Film Presented – Toronto International Film Festival Film Presented – Hot Docs International Film Festival World Cinema Audience Award - Documentary – Sundance Film Festival

Features: cc16:9 anamorphic transfer, enhanced for widescreen TVs
"Q's and A's:" video interviews with the filmmakers from radio, TV and theaters, including segments from CNN Financial, WNYC, WBAI, and Air America
Trailers for The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent
Janeane Garofolo interviews wrtier Joel Bakan on Air America's Majority Report
Two filmmaker audio commentaries
Grassroots marketing presentation
English descriptive audio for the visually impaired
Optional Spanish, French and English subtitles

Corporation

Format: DVD

Release Date: 04/05/2005

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DDS2.0 Dolby Digital w/ 4 channels

Runtime: 145 Minutes

Sides: 2

Number of Discs: 2

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Chapters: Side #1 -- The Movie
1. What Is a Corporation? [6:27]
2. Birth [4:25]
3. A Legal "Person" [5:03]
4. Externalities [2:12]
5. Case Histories [22:21]
6. The Pathology of Commerce [:48]
7. Monstrous Obligations [5:33]
8. Mindset [7:33]
9. Trading on 9/11 [2:10]
10. Boundary Issues [6:39]
11. Basic Training [9:24]
12. Perception Management [2:17]
13. Like a Good Neighbour [3:05]
14. A Private Celebration [3:38]
15. Triumph of the Shill [2:39]
16. Advancing the Front [5:06]
17. Unsettling Accounts [10:58]
18. Expansion Plans [4:01]
19. Taking the Right Side [6:25]
20. Hostile Takeover [2:42]
21. Democracy Ltd. [8:25]
22. Psycho Therapies [16:45]
23. Prognosis [2:49]
24. Credits [2:17]

Richie Unterberger

It's not easy to make an entertaining documentary -- running nearly two and a half hours, no less -- about a subject that most audiences find too depressing, challenging, and complex to foster engagement. Remarkably, The Corporation does just that, its achievement all the more laudable for taking on a topic whose very nature is amorphous and hard to identify. As the title indicates, that topic is the corporation itself -- that faceless but omnipresent body that, in the guise of countless business and manufacturing organizations, exerts massive influence over modern industrial life. The left-leaning politics of the filmmakers are apparent, but never in a dogmatic way, as they break up the movie into numerous sections diagnosing and offering prognoses for the corporation, as if that entity was a psychiatric patient. To no surprise, the corporation comes off roughly equivalent to the most disturbed mentally ill individuals, acting without guilt, shame, or consideration of consequences that include environmental devastation, disregard for personal and legal rights, and wanton exploitation of third-world peoples and resources (and much more, but a complete list would necessitate several capsule reviews). Sound dry? It isn't, because the filmmakers cannily employ witty graphics, stock footage, and above all, fascinating interviews to illustrate the history of the growth of the destructive power of corporations, fast-paced and well edited. The interviewees include some of the usual suspects you'd expect to show up in such a film -- Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Howard Zinn, for instance -- but many more less celebrated figures comment, sometimes guardedly and sometimes surprisingly frankly, on the monstrous but relatively anonymous behavior corporations generate. Some of them, one suspects, end up giving away more than they really want to. What's even more chilling than the environmental damage and human exploitation that corporations wreak is the guileless, almost gleefully willful co-option of some of the interviewees into the corporate process, like the university students whose studies are actually "sponsored" and paid for by corporations; the Shell executive who claims that he shares the same goals as protesters against his company's environmental policies; or the guy who makes a living being a deceitful corporate infiltrator-spy of sorts. In this way, it's suggested that part of the corporate malady is the human character itself. It's a depressing, if informative and thought-provoking, prognosis, though ameliorated slightly by a more hopeful closing section documenting some pockets of resistance to the corporate danger, most movingly through a carpet manufacturer who actually seems sincerely dedicated to making his business more ecologically responsible. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Noam Chomsky  Actor 
Michael Moore  Actor 
Naomi Klein  Actor 
Harold Crooks  Screenwriter 
Mark Achbar  Director 
Mark Achbar  Executive Producer 
Mark Achbar  Producer 
Mark Achbar  Screenwriter 
Joel Bakan  Screenwriter 
Jennifer Abbott  Director 
Bart Simpson  Producer 
Leonard J. Paul  Composer (Music Score) 
Jane Akre  Actor 
Raymond L. Anderson  Actor 
Joe Badaracco  Actor 
Maude Barlow  Actor 
Mark Barry  Actor 
Elain Bernard  Actor 
Edwin Black  Actor 
Carlton Brown  Actor 
Christopher Barrett  Actor 
Luke McCabe  Actor 
Peter Drucker  Actor 
Dr. Samuel Epstein  Actor 
Andrea Finger  Actor 
Milton Friedman  Actor 
Sam Gibara  Actor 
Dr. Richard Grossman  Actor 
Dr. Robert Hare  Actor 
Gabriel Herbas  Actor 
Lucy Hughes  Actor 
Ira Jackson  Actor 
Charles Kernaghan  Actor 
Robert Keyes  Actor 
Mark Kingwell  Actor 
Tom Kline  Actor 
Chris Komisarjevsky  Actor 
Dr. Susan Linn  Actor 
Robert Monks  Actor 
Mark Moody-Stuart  Actor 
Oscar Olivera  Actor 
Jonathon Ressler  Actor 
Jeremy Rifkin  Actor 
Anita Roddick  Actor 
Dr. Vandana Shiva  Actor 
Clay Timon  Actor 
Michael Walker  Actor 
Robert Weissman  Actor 
S.S. Wilson  Actor 
Irving Wladawsky-Berger  Actor 
Mary Zepernick  Actor 
Howard Zinn  Actor 
Mikela J. Mikael  Actor 

Country: Canada