Protesters began their occupation of Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011, nearly two year ago. Participant Media and two filmmakers have commemorated the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement with a new documentary film that was released Sept. 6.
As if there aren’t enough Occupy-themed films [1], now there is the documentary, “99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film [2].” It is supposed to be from an isolationist perspective, at least according to the filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites, who said in a recent interview “we were never part of Occupy.” [3] In that Red Carpet Crash interview with Jimmy Ryan, Ewell described the media coverage of the OWS as “condescending.” Ryan praised the film repeatedly and claimed “it doesn’t polarize in any way.”
The filmmakers must not have been watching the evening news or reading any major newspaper [4] when they claimed the media coverage was negative. The Media Research Center found the networks fawned over OWS, giving it 19-1 positive coverage [5] back in 2011. Print media similarly avoided speaking about the vandalism, violence [6], and anti-Semitism [7] of the protesters.
However, the trailer [8] for the film presented the protesters as patriotic, with the words, “created for the people, by the people,” onscreen with shots of smiling protesters with fists raised in the air. It is clear this film is anything but neutral.
The Hollywood Reporter even called it a “populist puff” piece [9] in a Feb. 1 article, which, as a Sundance favorite, is basically, “a neo-’68 bleating of ‘power to the people.’” They went on to criticize the movie saying “there’s not much substance to their protests or articulation of the source of the problem” and the “visual images are manipulative and simplistic; like the verbal ranting, they are devoid of depth.”
The occupiers, despite claiming to represent 99% of the population, were mostly white, upper class, highly educated and employed people, according to a study [10] published earlier this year.
Another clue to the liberal bent of this documentary, is to look at who’s producing it. The Sundance film was picked up by Participant Media, the same company that’s made several left-wing agenda films [11] like “Food, Inc.” and “An Inconvenient Truth” and the anti-fracking fictional drama “Promised Land.”
The film is only showing in select Los Angeles and New York City theatres currently, but have no fear. Participant Media, also conveniently will be premiering the film on their documentary channel called “Pivot,” Wednesday Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. Eastern.