From Zeitgeist Films and director Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) comes a documentary “adaptation” of Margaret Atwood’s non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth — abbreviated to, simply, Payback for the film — a rumination on the various ideas and forms of debt in the world.
As both a pinko and an enormous fan of Margaret Atwood (she is the namesake for Jason Atwood, after all), I’m definitely in, and I hope the film turns out to be more than a superficial glance at so many very deep and troubling subjects. The film will hit a handful of theaters on April 25, 2012, but most of us will have to wait for video, I expect.
The official synopsis follows:
Margaret Atwood’s visionary work Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on “debt” in its various forms–societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) strikingly interweaves these (sometimes surprising) debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth; mistreated Florida tomato farm workers and their bosses; imprisoned media mogul Conrad Black and the U.S. justice system. With stunning cinematography and insightful commentary from renowned thinkers Raj Patel, Louise Arbour and Atwood herself, Payback is a brilliant, game-changing rumination on the subject.