Food Chains examines the relationship between the policies of corporate supermarket chains and the working conditions of American farm labourers who pick the produce that is distributed across the nation. Featuring Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and actress and advocate Eva Longoria, this award winning documentary exposes the horrific abuses farmworkers face and reveals the forces behind that exploitation: the $4 trillion global supermarket industry.

The film tracks the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an intrepid and highly lauded group of tomato pickers from Southern Florida, as they battle the giant Floridian grocery chain, Publix. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farmworkers and a more humane and transparent food chain.

Food Chains was nominated for a 2015 James Beard Foundation award for food journalism.

Directed by Sanjay Rawal
Producer: Eric Schlosser
Executive Producer: Eva Longoria
Duration: 86′
Year: 2014

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced on 6 March 1984 that she would close 20 coal mines, there was little clue it would spark the country’s longest strike and leave Britain’s trade unions sorely diminished decades later.

For a year roughly 160,000 coal miners from across the UK walked off the job as the government declared war on the unions. Thirty years on, “there’s a huge battle for interpretation about it,” said Owen Gower, director of Still the Enemy Within, at its Frontline Club screening on Friday 3 October.

With first-hand accounts from members of the National Union of Mineworkers who manned the strike’s front lines, the documentary digs deep into archival footage – much never seen before and shot by the miners themselves – to give voice to the men and women who Thatcher labeled ‘the enemy within’.

“There’s documents that just came out today about Margaret Thatcher’s involvement in the strike,” said Gower, referencing recent revelations about the controversial Ridley Plan to crush the powerful unions and Thatcher’s comments in an interview that the miner’s struck at the heart of democracy.

In Their Own Words
“We felt that the story from the miner’s point of view of the strike hadn’t really been told,” said Gower, sitting in conversation with the film’s producer Mark Lacey. To remain neutral, the two crowd-funded the film after meeting several miners.

“It was meeting the miners themselves and them just being such amazing characters,” Gower said, “that it felt like it was something that had to be a lot bigger and reach a much broader audience.”

To tell the miners’ story without the aid of voice over, their small team waded “through something like 2,000 news clips, and then films on top of that, and then another 2,000 photos,” Gower said. “To introduce any outside voice at all would have felt completely wrong,” he added. “Even when there’s a montage . . . they’re still all based on the interviews of the miners.”

A History Lesson for Today
For the miners, the film isn’t just a history lesson, but an ongoing fight that has shaped Britain and the argument over privatising the NHS – a struggle many of the miners in the film are involved in resisting today. “It’s important to recognise that some of these people are still labeled ‘the enemy within’. That conclusion about crazy militants led by a mad communist leader, if you like, is still there,” said Gower. The argument about it being ordinary people has not been won at all.”

From Victory to Defeat
Cabinet papers that emerged in January 2014 confirm government plans to use the army to break the strike after a vote by the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) to strike in solidarity with the miners pushed them to the edge of victory. “What’s interesting is that when we shot those interviews [with the miners] in August and September last year, and then the cabinet papers came out in January after that,” said Gower, “every single thing the miners had said was then confirmed in those papers.”

Absence of Labour
Tellingly absent in the film is the voice of the Labour Party, Gower said. “It’s a such a complicated and complex issue that you want to manage to tell the story in a way that people can relate to it and access it if they didn’t know a lot about the strike,” Lacey added.

Taking it to the People
Gower and Lacey are embarking on a cross-country, 48-screening tour of the film, which already scooped up the audience award at the 2014 Sheffield Doc Fest. They are working especially with communities in Wales, the North East and Scotland affected by the strike to educate young people about their community’s living history. “It’s something that is dying out around those areas,” said Gower. So I think it’s really important to get it to as many places as possible.”

By Nicole Hunt

The UN Human Rights Committee session opens on Monday in Geneva, with the situation in Iran on the agenda for the first two days.

Meanwhile, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos begins a five day visit to North Korea, which is currently suffering through a major food crisis.

A judge in Courbevoie, France is due to rule on whether L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt should be made a ward of the state following accusations by her daughter Françoise that she is mentally unfit to manage her €17bn fortune.

South African President Jacob Zuma hosts Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Pretoria on Tuesday for a trilateral summit, expected to focus mostly on trade.

The meeting comes on the same day that fellow BRICS country China releases its third quarter GDP figures. 

In London, judges reveal the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction; nominees include Julian Barnes, Carol Birch, Patrick deWitt, Esi Edugyan and Stephen Kelman.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh begin a 10-day trip to Australia on Wednesday, heading first to Canberra. During their visit, the royal couple will also take in Brisbane and Melbourne before heading to Perth for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on 28 October.

Greek public and private sector unions hold a 24-hour strike to protest what they say are ‘barbaric’ austerity measures being introduced as part of the Government’s efforts to meet the conditions of its €110bn bailout from the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank.

EU Commissioner for Internal Markets Michel Bernier holds a press conference in Brussels on Thursday to present the Commission’s proposals for reforms to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and the Market Abuse Directive. The reforms are aimed at strengthening the EU regulatory system and increasing oversight in the wake of the financial crisis.

The European Space Agency is having a more exciting day in Kourou, French Guiana, where the first two Galileo satellites are being test-launched at 12:34pm. The full satellite project is expected to be operational by 2014.

News Corporation holds its annual general meeting in Los Angeles on Friday, amid calls from some shareholder groups to vote against the re-election of CEO Rupert Murdoch’s sons James and Lachlan to the company’s board in the wake of the UK phone hacking scandal.

In Abu Dhabi, Finance Ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council begin a two-day meeting where they discuss proposals for a single Gulf currency. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde attends on the second day.

Remember the apocalypse hysteria back in May? When the world failed to end, preacher Harold Camping revised his prediction, and is now confident that the world will in fact end on 21 October.

Assuming we’re still here, attention turns to Cairo on Saturday where the court hearing resumes for two police officers charged over the death of Khaled Said. The verdict in the case, which prompted widespread protests against police impunity last year, has been delayed twice, most recently from 24 September after new evidence emerged.

Unusually, there’s quite a lot going on on Sunday, beginning with the delayed European Council and Eurogroup meetings in Brussels. Predictably, Greece and the euro debt crisis are at the top of the agenda, with leaders focusing on economic governance and financial regulation.

Following an international uproar over five to 15 year sentences for Bahraini medical staff convicted of inciting hatred against the regime and attempting to topple the monarchy during anti-government protests earlier this year, a civil re-trial ordered by the country’s Attorney General begins in Manama.

There are also four elections taking place across the world: parliamentary polls in Tunisia, which were scheduled in the wake of President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali’s resignation back in January; a general election in Argentina, where incumbent Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is expected to win a second term; a presidential election in Bulgaria, where current President Georgi Parvanov is not eligible for a third term; and federal elections in Switzerland, where 13 parties are currently represented in parliament.

To top it off, the Rugby World Cup final takes place in Auckland.

By Allan Williams

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega has until Monday to appeal against his extradition to Panama. The 77-year-old is currently serving a prison sentence in France after being convicted of money laundering in July 2010.

On Tuesday attention turns to Japan when the Parliament elects its sixth Prime Minister in five years. Incumbent Naoto Kan announced he was stepping down over plummeting approval ratings, following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.

Wednesday sees Canada release its second quarter GDP figures. Fears of the economy contracting grew following an announcement earlier this month that manufacturing sales declined 1.5per cent in June, to their lowest level since November 2010.

Also on Wednesday South African President Jacob Zuma makes a state visit to Norway at the invitation of King Harald V. The two-day trip includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Monument and a meeting with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

In the UK, on Thursday, repatriations of deceased British troops move from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton. RAF Lyneham and the parade through the nearby town of Wootton Bassett have made the headlines with the dignified way locals have mourned the fallen.

In Thailand that same day, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the liberal news website Prachatai, has her trial for lese majeste offences recommence. It is alleged that Premchaiporn failed to screen comments on her website that were critical of the Thai royal family, and if convicted faces up to 20 years in prison.

Attention turns stateside on Friday, when a US district court decides whether to order a retrial of former baseball star Roger Clemens, who was accused of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using anabolic steroids. The original trial was declared a mistrial on 14 July.

In London on Saturday the far-right English Defence League are expected to demonstrate in the borough of Tower Hamlets, against what it sees as militant Islam. The march is expected to be banned by the Home Secretary, but the action group Unite Against Fascism has arranged a counter-protest against the EDL.

On Sunday the UN Special Representative on Somalia Augustine Mahiga convenes a conference in the east African nation to provide clear timelines and benchmarks for the Transitional Federal Institutions.

And in Germany there’s a test for Chancellor Merkel’s coalition when state elections take place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with local elections coming under increasing scrutiny as a gauge of popularity for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.