The Take (2004)

The film in not about auto-parts workers in suburban Buenos Aires, but about workers of a ceramic floors factory in Neuquen, several hundred miles southward, in Argentinian Patagonia.

Director:

Avi Lewis

Writer:

Naomi Klein

Stars:

Matilde Adorno, Michel Camadessus, Bill Clinton

1 win & 5 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Matilde Adorno	...	Herself - Worker
Michel Camadessus	...	Himself
Bill Clinton	...	Himself (archive footage)
Gustavo Cordera	...	Himself (singer) (as Bersuit)
Freddy Espinoza	...	Himself (president of La Forja)
Raul Godoy	...	Himself
Néstor Kirchner	...	Himself
Naomi Klein	...	Herself (also narrator)
Avi Lewis	...	Himself (also narrator)
Celia Martinez	...	Herself
Carlos Saúl Menem	...	Himself (as Carlos Menem)
Lalo Paret	...	Himself (activist)
Juan Domingo Perón	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jorge Rimondi	...	Himself (Judge)
Anoop Singh	...	Himself (Director of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department)

Storyline

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century

---

Plot Keywords:

worker | take | democracy | system | manifesto | 

---

Taglines:

Occupy. Resist. Produce.

---

Genres:

Documentary

---

Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Official Sites:

2-1-0 Films [gr] Official site

Country:

Canada Argentina

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

18 March 2005 (Italy)

Also Known As:

Die Übernahme

Filming Locations:

Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina

Company Credits

Production Co:

Barna-Alper Productions, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Klein Lewis Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Color:

Black and White (archive footage) Color

User Reviews

Sixteen lefties in search of a dream

No one is more rad-chic than Naomi Klein, with her cool war-resister parents, alternative doctor father and militant feminist mother. She crossed Canada at 16 years old campaigning against nuclear power and wrote a hit book attacking globalisation in her 20s.

Now she has made a feel-good movie out of the economic catastrophe that hit Argentina, by following the weary campaign of unemployed steel workers to join a couple of hundred other factory occupations and take control of their abandoned steel works.

Klein and spouse Avi Lewis were in Argentina for some six months, with a crew of 16 and a budget of about C$1m, so we could certainly expect results. Whether this resounding endorsement of worker co-ops (slogan: Fire The Boss) is quite what the NFB had in mind is not clear.

At a couple of points, I felt the film ruined Argentina offered was about the repulsive imp Carlos Menem and the murderous bourgeois traitors he represented. Who is going to purge those secret policemen who rubbed out some 30,000 lefties? When are those generals going to face a court? Why was Menem not in prison instead of running for president? But the survival tactics of the workers on the ground was a more humane story, and that is to Klein's credit.