Dialogue with director Ian Bell
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. These protestors gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and strived to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.
Building from more than 400 hours of never-before-seen footage, WTO/99 reanimates the ideological conflicts that drew thousands to the streets of Seattle in hopes for a better future. The film 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.