Twenty Years of Awareness Celebration – December 10, 2014

Awareness Film Night will celebrate 20 years of presenting monthly documentaries on topics normally disregarded by the mainstream media with a re-screening of the first film we screened back in 1994: “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media“.

Mark Achbar (“The Corporation”) and Peter Wintonick’s award-winning documentary presents Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist and highlights his probing analysis of mass media and critique of the forces at work behind the daily news.  Including footage of Chomsky’s visit to Malaspina College in Nanaimo.  This film is almost 3 hours long, so we will only screen one part of it.

The rest of the evening will be devoted to cake, tea, the giveaway table (see below) and maybe some  reminiscing and reflection on how we might be more aware than we were in 1994.   Any other ideas for adding to the celebration are most welcome…..after all, Awareness Film Night is all of our baby.

There will be a no-shopping, recycle, re-purpose free store table at the film night for those wanting to reduce time spent in corporate stores during the holiday season.  

POSTSCRIPT:

Hello moviegoers…………

The 20th Birthday Party for Awareness Film Night brought back many memories for me, as I sorted through the list of screenings and some of the newspaper articles from over the past 20 years for a little “Memorabilia” table.  For the first few years there were only 3 or 4 or maybe a whopping 6 people attending many of the film nights. There was even one night, in March of 1997, when we screened a film called  “Genetic Time Bomb”,  about GMOs, where no one came at all except myself and Kathy, my stalwart Awareness Video Night cohort.  In all fairness, we screened the same film again the next March (1998) and 18 people came out (a big crowd in those days).  And by December 2012, when we screened ” Genetic Roulette”   there were 70 people who came to see the film and hear Dr. Thierry Vrain.

The film “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media” is available at the AFN library and also on YouTube, as are many Chomsky talks.  Here is a link for a 55 minute interview of him by Chris Hedges from September, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTDIpu5UjAw