From November 30th to December 3rd 1999, tens of thousands of people occupied the streets of downtown Seattle to make known their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization and its impacts on the environment, human rights, and labor in the largest protests against economic globalization the US has ever seen.
The protests brought together people from divergent sections of society—anarchists, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer protection advocates, pro-democracy groups, and even religious organizations—gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and striving to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.
Building from a thousand-hour archive, WTO/99 is an immersive visual artifact of a week that brought 40,000 people together to warn of environmental collapse, the vanishing middle class, and what the full inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization would mean for our collective future. The protesters—seen as a rabble-rousing nuisance at the time, yet appearing prophetic today—were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force, an all-too-fitting way to usher in a new century; one that is now defined by US failure to address climate change and increasing state aggression.
Director Bio: Seattle native Ian Bell is the creator of VICE’s “Source Material,” a first of its kind found footage news series. His short documentary “808: How We Respond,” premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest, was in competition at AFI Docs, and won "Best Documentary Short" at Tallgrass Film Festival. As a supervising producer at VICE News he contributed to the Emmy-nominated “VICE on Showtime”, “VICE News Tonight,”and “VICE Special Report” to which he contributed a real-time reconstruction of January 6th U.S. Capital attack. Ian is an alumnus of Washington Filmworks’ Innovation Lab, Champs-Elysees US in Progress, Gotham’s Spotlight on Documentaries and No Borders Film Market.
More info on the film: https://www.wto99doc.com/
