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Bob Iger is barely out the door at the Walt Disney Company and already a film from a scion of the founding family has come along to give the well compensated ex-ceo a kick in the ass.

However, the Abigail Disney co-directed The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales documentary doesn’t have much to add to the discussions of income inequity, ice cold hearted corporations and the legacy of the Reagan Revolution, except a high profile and well-heeled surname.

Debuting with its world premiere at the virtual Sundance Film Festival tonight as the House of Mouse’s stock took a whack from Wall Street, the Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes directed The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales proves to be less an exercise for social and economic justice and more a vanity exercise with talking heads.

Which is more than a real shame, it is a tragically missed opportunity.

Much has changed in the 17 years since the release of Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's The Corporation. Some corporations said they were sorry and appeared to turn a new leaf. Others continued trucking along until they were wiped out by the recession a few years later. Still others made it through the recession and pretended to change their ways only to remain exactly the same. Essentially, things seemed to change but the reality is that we're back to where we were in 2003 except this time, the corporations aren't being as blatant about their abuses instead, hiding behind the facade of responsibility, caring, and the promise to make a difference.

And so Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott are back with The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel which, yet again...

Back in 2003 — a magical time when Amazon was basically still just a glorified book store, and Enron was the height of American malfeasance — filmmakers Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar made a sprawling but cogent documentary that addressed the insatiable chimeras that have come to dominate modern capitalism. Over the course of 145 minutes, “The Corporation” unpacked how business entities have come to assume a perverse degree of legal personhood (one that doesn’t square with the idea of public ownership), and ended by extrapolating that idea into a satirically damning thought exercise. If corporations were actually people, what kind of people would they be?

The conclusion that Abbott and Achbar reverse-engineered was convincing enough: Corporations are psychopaths. They don’t care about others, they’re incapable of feeling guilt, they often disregard the law out of their own insatiable self-interest, and they’re only getting worse. While the psychiatrist who Abbott...

I can still recall my red pill moment while watching Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation with my best friend, at the (pre-financial crisis) time an analyst at a big bank. “Corporations are people? What the hell?” I practically shouted. “Yup,” he simply responded with a weary shrug. For many clueless progressives like myself, unaware that corporate power had been spreading like the coronavirus, silently hijacking all branches of our government for decades, The Corporation was both horror film and wakeup call. The real deep-state conspiracy. Since then we’ve endured the Great Recession and our current economic calamity/health catastrophe/racial injustice awakening. […]...

I can still recall my red pill moment while watching Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation with my best friend, at the (pre-financial crisis) time an analyst at a big bank. “Corporations are people? What the hell?” I practically shouted. “Yup,” he simply responded with a weary shrug. For many clueless progressives like myself, unaware that corporate power had been spreading like the coronavirus, silently hijacking all branches of our government for decades, The Corporation was both horror film and wakeup call. The real deep-state conspiracy. Since then we’ve endured the Great Recession and our current economic calamity/health catastrophe/racial injustice awakening. […]...

Better than ever, now in its seventh year, the spectacular program with its filmmaking guests and a committed community of dedicated and intellectually alive filmgoers invigorates the mind and activist tendencies already in play.

Take for instance, University of Arizona Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, speaking with Regents’ Professor Toni Massaro about social justice and the environment. Here he is, in person, being honored as every word he speaks is treated as a jewel. Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his most recent being Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. An ardent free speech advocate, Chomsky has published and lectured widely on U.S. foreign policy, Mideast politics, terrorism, democratic society and war. Chomsky, who joined the UA faculty this fall, is a laureate professor in the Department of...

It's not often that something as dry as tax theory can result in an engrossing night at the movies, but credit Harold Crooks and his team for providing an exceptional articulation about the vagaries of "off shoring" in an accessible, engaging way with The Price We Pay. Crooks co-wrote the narration for Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's 2003 Sundance winning doc The Corporation, and with his own film he manages to better that, maintaining a level of even-handedness when required, while allowing a streak of advocacy to run through but never overwhelm the storytelling. In many ways, The Price We Pay is even more balanced in its presentation, giving many voices from the world of finance a chance to dispassionately (but eloquently and engagingly)...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

It's not often that something as dry as tax theory can result in an engrossing night at the movies, but credit Harold Crooks and his team for providing an exceptional articulation about the vagaries of "off shoring" in an accessible, engaging way with The Price We Pay. Crooks co-wrote the narration for Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's 2003 Sundance winning doc The Corporation, and with his own film he manages to better that doc, maintain a level of even handedness when required while allowing a streak of advocacy to run through but never overwhelm the storytelling. In many ways, The Price We Pay is even more balanced in its presentation, giving many voices from the world of finance a chance to dispassionately (but eloquently...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

India and Canada have signed a co-production agreement, wrapping up talks that have been on-going since 2010.

The agreement was signed in New Delhi by India’s Information & Broadcasting Secretary Bimal Julka, and Canada’s High Commissioner to India, Stuart Beck, during the visit of Canada’s Governor General David Johnston to India.

Co-productions made under the agreement will have access to Canadian subsidies and tax breaks and also be eligible for India’s National Film Awards and the Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi). India also has some government assistance available to filmmakers.

India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting also said that the treaty could lead to more Canadian films shooting in India. “The agreement will also lead to the transparent funding of film production and will boost export of Indian films into the Canadian market,” the I&B Ministry said in a statement.

India already has co-production treaties with the UK...

India and Canada have signed a co-production agreement, wrapping up talks that have been on-going since 2010.

The agreement was signed in New Delhi by India’s Information & Broadcasting Secretary Bimal Julka, and Canada’s High Commissioner to India, Stuart Beck, during the visit of Canada’s Governor General David Johnston to India.

Co-productions made under the agreement will have access to Canadian subsidies and tax breaks and also be eligible for India’s National Film Awards and the Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi). India also has some government assistance available to filmmakers.

India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting also said that the treaty could lead to more Canadian films shooting in India. “The agreement will also lead to the transparent funding of film production and will boost export of Indian films into the Canadian market,” the I&B Ministry said in a statement.

India already has co-production treaties with the UK...

The Mumbai International Film Festival (Miff) 2014 will be hosting a five-day programme ‘Miff Producer’s forum’ from February 4, on the sidelines of the festival, to facilitate an interaction of filmmakers and producers with funders, festival representatives, experts and lawyers on how to strategize, pitch, seek funding and market their projects.

The speakers includes Pawan Kumar, Nilotpal Majumdar, Rashmi Lamba, Dylan Mohan Gray, Anil Wanvari, Supriyo Sen, Kaushik Moitra, Shiladitya Bora, Miriam Joseph, Rajjat Barjatya, Angela Haardt, Fujioka Asako, Jurij Meden, Rada Sesic and Mark Achbar.

Lucia filmmaker Pawan Kumar will conduct a session on crowdfunding and distribution on February 6.

Dylan Mohan Gray, director of Fire in the Blood will talk about his journey with the film on February 7. In another session the same day, media lawyer Kaushik Moitra will look at the legal challenges of documentary filmmaking.

Shiladitya Bora of PVR Director’s Rare will conduct a session on theatrical...

Having just participated at the 2013 Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Sound, Mark Grieco’s heavily supported docu (Cinereach, MacArthur and Britdoc Foundations) debut is in the final stages of completion – and this after a long six year process. There is light ahead of the tunnel for the Canadian/Colombian production, currently seeking completion funds, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marmato culminates into a ’14 showing.

Gist: Marmato is a documentary feature about an artisan gold-mining village in rural Colombia on the precipice of opportunity and destruction as a Canadian mining company plans a massive regional investment. For five centuries these miners have lived in the lush Andes Mountains; the gold being their only source of sustenance. This intimate portrait follows the lives of the villagers as they struggle to preserve their centuries old way of life and confront the arrival of large-scale mining operations.

Production Co./Producers: Mark Achbar,...

Peter Wintonick, whose exemplary work in documentary was surpassed only by his passionate championing of the documentary form, died yesterday  in Montreal. He was 60 and had been diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer.

Wintonick's best known work included Manufacturing Dissent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), directed with Mark Achbar, and Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment (1999). According to a press release from the National Film Board of Canada, with whom Wintonick worked closely for decades, Manufacturing Consent was one of the most successful documentaries in Canadian history, earning ...

With the clear target of egging on fresh film-makers, artists and their work and also, to promote the arts and media culture among the general public through independent film, video and new media,The UFO 0110 International Digital Film Festival is now open for entries from across the world.  UFO 0110 Idff is India.s only film festival to recognise and promote .different cinema..  It will take place from the 23rd of February to the 1st of March 2012 at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi.  Entries will be open until 20th December 2011This is a historic year in the journey of the film festival because companies Mediaguru and Qed join Ekaa Films as Partners and UFO Moviez India Limited is now the title sponsor.   And because of these associations, this year The UFO 0110 International Digital Film Festival is set to be bigger and, if we may presumptuously add, much better.  The UFO 0110 International...

"Sure to be drowned out by the drum circles at Occupy Wall Street, writer-director Jc Chandor's lifeless Margin Call depicts roughly 36 hours at an unnamed Manhattan investment firm at the dawn of the 2008 financial freak-out," begins Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Chandor's debut feature audaciously asks us to empathize with obscenely overpaid risk analysts and their bosses, a gambit that fails not only because of what's happening at Zuccotti Park, but largely because his characters are little more than mouthpieces for blunt speechifying and Mamet-like outbursts."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir isn't so quick to dispatch Margin Call to the disc-pile of history. For one thing, he notes that it "features one of Kevin Spacey's best screen performances as the firm's middle-aged ace salesman, trapped between his longtime loyalty and his waning sense of ethics. But explaining how these guys justified their rapacious and immoral behavior to themselves is not...

Toronto -- First a single filmmaker withdrew his short film from the Toronto International Film Festival over its spotlight on Tel Aviv. Now the artists are piling on.

Toronto is set to open next week with a widening artist protest and possible boycott over its spotlight on Israel and its filmmakers.

British director Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Wallace Shawn, musician David Byrne and actor Danny Glover are among 50 directors, writers and activists who have signed an open letter to the Toronto festival that went online Thursday.

The document, titled "The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation," alleges that Toronto, "whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine."

  The list of international filmmakers signing on to the declaration includes U.S. producer Joslyn Barnes, distributor Cornelius Moore, screenwriter Jeremy Pikser and Canadian documentary maker Mark Achbar, whose films have screened in Toronto.

Middle Eastern filmmakers joining the protest include Egypt's Ahmad Abdalla,...

TORONTO -- U.S. filmmakers Eugene Jarecki and Judith Helfand will be part of a nine-member jury at next month's 14th annual Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, organizers said Wednesday.

Jarecki ("Why We Fight") and Helfand ("Blue Vinyl"), both Sundance award winners, will be joined on the jury by Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar ("Manufacturing Consent") and Alexandre Trudeau ("Secure Freedom"); Amir Labaki, founder-director of It's All True International Documentary Film Festival; and New York-based Canadian journalist Simon Houpt.

The Hot Docs jury also includes Claas Danielsen, festival director of the Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Films; Palestinian filmmaker Ibtisam Mara'ana; and Ivana Milosevic, head of studies at the Prague-based Institute of Documentary Film.

The nine jurors will choose winners in four categories: best Canadian feature documentary, best international feature documentary, and best short and mid-length documentaries.

The Hot Docs festival runs April 19-29 in Toronto.

Sundance Channel said Tuesday that it has acquired pay TV rights to six documentary films from the international docu sales company Films Transit International Inc. The films are Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's The Corporation, Dane Elon's Another Road Home, Oren Seidler's Bruce and Me, Andrew Douglas' Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, John Appel's The Last Victory and Carey Schonegevel's Original Child Bomb. The films will make their U.S. television premieres on Sundance Channel late this year and early next.

TORONTO -- Canadian documentary makers got some good news as the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival is set to start today. Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's homegrown documentary The Corporation became the first Canadian documentary to pass the CAN$1 million mark at the domestic boxoffice. Canadian distributor Mongrel Media said the Vancouver-made documentary, which dissects the modern corporation's "psychotic tendencies" using commentary from, among others, Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, had pulled in CAN$1.03 million ($750,000) so far in boxoffice sales since its Jan. 16 debut in Toronto and Vancouver. Zeitgeist Films has planned a platform release for The Corporation, which is based on Canadian law professor Joel Bakan's book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, to begin June 4 in San Francisco and move to New York on June 30.

LONDON -- London-based independent distributor Metrodome has acquired U.K. theatrical and retail DVD rights to Patty Jenkins' Monster, the company said Tuesday. The movie stars Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a performance that earned her a Golden Globe nomination. No financial details of the deal were revealed. Metrodome acquired the rights from DEJ Prods. and will release the film April 2 in U.K. theaters. Jenkins penned the screenplay for Monster, which also marks her feature film directorial debut. The movie is produced by Theron, Mark Damon, Clark Peterson, Donald Kushner and Brad Wyman. Other recent Metrodome acquisitions include Mark and Michael Polish's Northfork and The Corporation, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot.

TORONTO -- Robert Lepage's La Face Chachee de la Lune, Denys Arcand's Cannes hit The Barbarian Invasions and Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World are among the top 10 Canadian movies of the year as chosen by the Toronto International Film Festival Group. The top-10 list for the festival group's Canadian Film Week, set to be unveiled Tuesday night in Toronto, also included Scott Smith's Falling Angels, the Sarah Polley starrer My Life Without Me from Isabel Coixet, David Sutherland's Love and Sex and Eating the Bones, Nathaniel Geary's On the Corner and another Quebec French-language film, Bernard Emond's 20h17, Rue Darling. Also named in the unranked top-10 list were two documentaries, Alan King's Dying at Grace and Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot's The Corporation.

VANCOUVER -- "Kamchatka", an Argentina-Spain drama about a family in flight during the early days after the 1976 Argentinian military coup, earned the People's Choice Award for most popular film Friday at the Vancouver International Film Festival. And the homegrown movie favorite was "The Corporation", a documentary by Mark Achbar and Jennifer abbot, which grabbed the trophy for the most popular Canadian film. Documentaries fared well Vancouver festival audiences this year. U.S. filmmaker John Cadigan won the Chief Dan George Humanitarian Award for "People Say I'm Crazy", an HBO documentary about an artist's struggle with schizophrenia. And the National Film Board award for best documentary feature went to "Los Angeles Plays Itself", from U.S. filmmaker Tom Andersen. Trophies were also handed out to local British Columbia directors. Gina Chiarelli's "See Grace Fly" grabbed the Women in Film and Video Vancouver Artistic Merit Award, Nathaniel Geary's "On the Corner" earned the CityTV Western Canada Feature Film Award, and Jessie McKeown's "The Big Charade" won the Keystone Award for best young western-Canadian director of a short film.