Take One Action! Launchs 2015 Festival Programme

Take One Action! Film Festival reveals its 2015 programme

Feature by News Team | 13 Aug 2015

Film-fans of a revolutionary nature rejoice! Take One Action! Film Festival, the UK’s leading social change film festival, returns 16-27 September with a programme of acclaimed films tackling the myriad problems facing the world today, from climate change to dwindling workers’ rights to the rising cost of education.

Its opening film is sure to get plenty of the audience’s blood boiling. Harold Crooks’s documentary The Price We Pay explores the manipulation of tax laws by global corporations to keep them from paying anything back into the countries in which they operate. Crooks is on familiar territory: his previous film, Surviving Progress, screened at TOA back in 2012, and he was one of the writers behind 2003's The Corporation, one of the most powerful cinematic indictments of uncontrolled capitalism in recent memory. The Price We Pay looks similarly scalding.

Other highlights on the impressive menu of screenings and events looks to be the UK premiere of Food Chains, a doc investigating the working conditions of US farm workers, narrated by Forest Whitaker; the Scottish premiere of The Divide, based on The Spirit Level, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s bestselling book on social inequality; and Landfill Harmonic, the inspiring story of a group of kids living in a slum in Paraguay who have formed a full orchestra with all their musical instruments made from rubbish collected from a neighbouring landfill.

Taking place in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the festival covers a wide range of venues, from GFT, CCA and Filmhouse to restaurant Out of the Blue and Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens. At the latter, the audience will literally be powering the event, using static bikes to peddle power two screenings of documentary Bikes vs Cars on 22 September – which is, aptly, International Car Free Day.

In general, Take One Action is characterised with this people power notion. The festival encourages you, the audience, to get involved and continue the discussions that the films in the festival spark. “We want people to feel empowered to help make the world a fairer, more sustainable place by taking practical action alongside others in Scotland,” says festival director Simon Bateson. “We want audiences to organise their own Take One Action film seasons in their own communities.”


Take One Action! Film Festival takes place at various venues in Glasgow and Edinburgh from 16 to 27 September

For full programme details, go to takeoneaction.org.uk

And keep your eye on theskinny.co.uk/festivals/uk-festivals/film for further Take One Action! coverage