As a lead up to The Institute’s 50th birthday, IPS will host a film series on the 4th Wednesday of each month featuring eleven of the widely respected film productions of our colleague, Saul. After each screening participants will have the opportunity to discuss the films with distinguished guests.

Saul Landau, is an Emmy-winning, internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.

We Don’t Play Golf Here! breaks new ground in political filmmaking. Using Mexico as an example of what much of the Third World has experienced, the filmmakers show how foreign investment in export factories distort both the culture and environment. Its exquisite photography, elegant editing, and original music probe the essence of the new economic disorder. To stop construction of a corporate golf course — “globalization” — and 1,500 vacation chalets, the people of Tepoztlan confronted federal troops. As it has done in countless other villages throughout the world where people still speak indigenous languages (Nahual), corporate culture invaded. The “investors” constructed not just factories and shopping malls, but in this Morelos village, proposed to replace soccer with the corporate “sport” of golf, which included building 1500 vacation chalets and a country club. In the end the people stormed the factory and forced its owner to flee.

The film includes cinematic essays on progress, by native people as liabilities as told by SubComandante Marcos, and sociologist Victor Quintana offers a comparison between golf as the sport of the rich and few as opposed to soccer as the sport of the poor and many.

These screenings are free and open to the public but a suggested $5 donation will be appreciated. Popcorn and beverages will be provided. Please note: The location for any particular screening may vary. Please let us know you’re coming by sending an RSVP to netfa@ips-dc.org.

Films left in the series:

• November 28 – WE DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE and other stories of globalization (2007)
• January 23, 2013 – Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up (2011)