Calling The Shots (2002)

Calling the Shots (2002) is about the anti-globalization movement. It is also about media. The media is one of the battlefields of globalization. While the anti-globalization protests have now become anti-war protests the media still plays a central role. Protests are staged for the media as much as the media reconstructs them as spectacles of ‘violence’. And the ‘violence’ of protest is contrasted to the ‘sacrifices’ of miltary ‘intervention’.

Calling the Shots is a long zoom that moves out from an anti-globalization protest march into a television production studio and a world trade press conference. The characters all represent different struggles and interests: from the Maquilladora worker to the politician and corporate media executive. It portrays the play between democracy and the media; the citizen and the consumer; appropriation and suppression.