Let's make money

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Let's make money
Original title Let's make money
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 2008
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Erwin Wagenhofer
script Erwin Wagenhofer
production Helmut Grasser ( Allegro Film )
music Helmut Neugebauer
camera Erwin Wagenhofer

Let's Make Money is an Austrian documentary film by Erwin Wagenhofer from 2008. The film is about various aspects of the development of the global financial system . In 2009 the film was awarded the German Documentary Film Prize, which was awarded for the first time .

content

structure

The film is divided into 12 chapters:

  1. Put your money to work
  2. Investment country India
  3. Opportunities in the emerging markets
  4. Planned well in advance (via the Mont Pelerin Society )
  5. Growing Balances - Growing Debts
  6. Basis of survival
  2. Expropriation of the community
  3. In the name of freedom
  4. Rising Profits - Falling Wages
  5. Profits for a few - losses for all
  6. How long can we still afford the rich?
  7. Selection mechanisms

people

Rich managers, investors and numerous prominent representatives of the economy and the banks have their say in the film, but also economists and university professors as well as simple homeless people and workers. Some examples:

  • Mark Mobius explains emerging markets in the film . He himself is a fund manager with an estimated $ 50 billion under management. In the film you can see from his statements that he invests money in developing countries in order to make a profit through targeted exploitation.
  • Mirko Kovats , an investor who is one of the 15 richest Austrians, is shown in the film during an inspection of an Indian company. There he makes highly controversial statements about the working conditions of his Indian employees and the workers in India in general.
  • Gerhard Schwarz , former head of the business editorial department of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, speaks about the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society and its influence on politics.
  • Terry le Sueur : The finance minister of Jersey explains the development of the island of Jersey from an agricultural and tourism-heavy economy to an international financial center and one of the largest tax havens .
  • Hermann Scheer , SPD : Member of the German Bundestag, critic of the current financial system.
  • John Perkins : bestselling author critical of globalization, tells of America's intervention in the politics of other countries out of economic interests.

Quotes

Here are some selected quotes from the film:

“There was a famous saying that the best time to buy is when the blood is on the streets. I add: even if it's your own. Because when there is war, revolution, political problems and economic problems, the prices of stocks fall and those people who bought at that low point made a lot of money. "

- Mark Mobius, President Templeton Emerging Markets

“Spain is one of the countries where the property bubble has developed most intensely in the last 5 years. One can speak of a huge urbanization in a cement tsunami that rolled over the coast and the islands. ... 80% of the first kilometer of the coastal strip of the entire coast is already built up. "

- Ramon F. Duran, University of Madrid

“Nobody here calls for the state, self-help is the order of the day. It's all about the economy. "

- Mirko Kovats , Austrian industrialist

Stylistic devices

The plot in the film is driven by interviews and lines of text. In between, artistic stylistic elements clarify what is happening. At the beginning the concentrated eyes of a seamstress are shown, who seem to work well into the night. The next scene shows Mark Mobius reading the business news on the treadmill in a gym. The camera is sometimes in close-up on his wrist and on his expensive watch. In another scene, Mirko Kovats and a university graduate in economics from India describe the economic situation in India in parallel. In between, a large advertising poster for the “Millionaire's Club” is shown, which is set up in the middle of the slums.

There are no direct comments from the filmmakers on what is shown, but the headings and locations are displayed as well as the translated opinions of the interviewed people, and occasionally selected figures. In an opening scene you see e.g. For example, how workers in Ghana load gold into a helicopter that is brought to Switzerland, where it is melted down. A line of text faded in after the scene says: "Distribution: 3% for Africa 97% for the West". In addition, the technique of parallel assembly is used several times in the documentation .

Both in the trailer for the film and in the film itself, a translation error asserts that there are 11.5 trillion dollars in private wealth worldwide in the various tax havens. The English word "trillion" for billion is incorrectly translated here as trillion. Only from the subsequent comparative calculation that with an assumed return of 7% and a taxation of the return of 30% an annual loss of around 250 billion dollars as tax deficit worldwide does the actual order of magnitude emerge.

Production and evaluation

Visits to the cinema in Austria 2008–2009
date Visits Copies
November 2 15,325 28
November 9th 42,220 38
November 16 69,534 38
November 23 91,929 61
30th of November 110.509 59
December 7th 125.114 60
December 14th 135.702 50
21st December 147.801 50
December 28th 153.946 18th
4th January 156.938 k. A.
February 1st 165.351 k. A.
1st March 187.241 k. A.
April 1, 2009 191,526 k. A.

The film was shot in spring 2007 in Austria , Germany , Great Britain , Spain , Singapore , India , Burkina Faso , the USA and Switzerland .

The cinema release was on World Savings Day , which was celebrated in Germany on October 30, 2008, and in Austria on October 31. The film opened in German-speaking Switzerland on January 22, 2009. It is distributed in Austria by Filmladen , in Germany by DELPHI Filmverleih and in Switzerland by Frenetic Films . Celluloid Dreams holds the world distribution rights .

In Austria, the film started with 28 copies and reached 15,325 visitors on the opening weekend (Friday, October 31, up to and including Sunday, November 2) as the third most successful film of the weekend. 155,409 people had seen the film by the end of the year. The number of film copies in circulation at the same time peaked after three weeks at 61 copies.

In Germany the film had received 179,480 admissions by the end of January.

Reviews

The reviews of the film range from positive to negative, depending on the expectations of the critics. The film received positive reviews above all from those who approve of the simplified and high-contrast representation of the financial world and its injustices. On the one hand, negative voices criticize precisely this simplification, which does not do justice to the complexity of the financial world. On the other hand, it is criticized that the film does not provide any answers to the questions that Wagenhofer raises in this film. Some critics also recognize the message to the viewer through the simplified presentation of the content that “always the others”, “those up there”, are to blame and that the “little man”, in contrast to We Feed the World, does not feel out of it Kino goes, even with his “modest stock portfolio” he could change something about it.

“Of course it would be mean to call Erwin Wagenhofer one of the big beneficiaries of the current stock market mange. The Austrian finally started his documentary 'Let's make money' three years ago with the declared aim of exposing the perversions of global money flows. In the meantime, these flows of money have exposed themselves all by themselves. And so Wagenhofer is now on time for World Savings Day with a documentary in the cinemas that could be something like the film about the financial crisis. [...] Wagenhofer documents what he calls the modern gold theft with a visual language that is strongly reminiscent of the program with the mouse. However, this childlike perspective is by no means a weakness, but the great strength of this film. In that swarm of offshore markets , cross-border leasing and private equity funds that is no longer manageable - even for interested people - it is the simple, one might say, the naive questions that bring illuminating things to light. Wagenhofer explains the world in a monumental educational film. "

- Boris Herrmann
  • The daily newspaper, on the other hand, saw precisely this simplicity as the greatest weakness of the film, which in their opinion owes background and answers and therefore does not bring any new knowledge:

“[...] Wagenhofer is still based on the premise of unbroken self-confidence among fund managers and major investors, for whom there can be no doubt about the beneficial forces of neoliberalism. [...] The fact that in times of crisis the state that has been vilified in this way can be popular again as the last safety net before bankruptcy, even among Hayek supporters , is a realization that the film no longer catches up with. [...] In surrendering to the sheer abundance of material, he reduces his concern to always the same message: The West is increasing its wealth at the expense of the so-called Third World, the neoliberal profiteers privatize their profits and socialize their losses. Both are certainly true, only as a finding not particularly original. What is more, the really crucial questions remain hidden: How did it come to this and what role we - Western society - play in the whole. [...] 'To blame', the film suggests, is always only the other, never the little man or the little woman with her modest stock portfolio. "

- Dietmar Kammerer
  • The weekly newspaper Freitag submitted similar criticism . This criticized, for example, that the film does not go into depth or analyze its examples. He is content with “spreading a diffuse critical mood that mobilizes neither investigative nor polemical energy”. The episodes are "almost anecdotal and somewhat disconnected". Another criticism from the same newspaper criticized the fact that the film never “went beyond the critical stage” and that the “gain in political knowledge” therefore remained small. Because that the world was unjust, "we already knew before Let's Make Money". The film raises "a lot of questions, but it does not answer".
  • Die Zeit countered the accusation that Wagenhofer's examples were “arbitrary” - such as the accusation of the daily newspaper (see above) - by stating that Let's Make Money like We Feed the World has a “closed argumentation system”: “Without demagogic overwhelming , but with the sure feeling for sometimes almost unbelievable punchlines. Their price is the simplification of complex relationships, without which the political education cinema, if it wants to be successful, nowadays apparently no longer manages. The analytical gaps fill in large bundles of additional material or discussion events with organizations such as Attac or Fairtrade ”. As a result, today's popular populist style of documentary films is questioned and reference is made to Michael Moore , "who shaped the genre into a blockbuster", "climate protection preacher" Al Gore and Hubert Sauper's "prepared" Viktoriabarsch, only to be determined in the words of Georg Seeßlen : "'The most beautiful documentaries come from people who have a desire, the ugliest from people who have a belief, and the most sincere from people who approach the world with nothing but taste, curiosity and method." Erwin Wagenhofer fulfills all three criteria. After all, that's what sets him apart from most other political filmmakers these days. "
  • The daily newspaper also devoted another article to the question of differentiating Wagenhofer's documentary style using Michael Moore as an example, and in this context also praised Wagenhofer for its sober style compared to the polemic Moore:

“Wagenhofer presents some particularly absurd and for the states concerned catastrophic excesses of neoliberalism. [...] Wagenhofer often assembles to extreme contrasts. [...] Wagenhofer works without commentary off-screen and therefore inevitably has to call in many experts who analyze the extremely complex relationships. That is certainly a few speaking heads too many in the 110 minutes [...] His sober basic tone, which conveys the devastating diagnosis much more impressively than other recent political documentaries that polemicize in the style of Michael Moore, is pleasant. Here, on the other hand, John Perkins speaks very calmly about the fact that as a so-called economic killer he corrupted countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and that the jackals came after him. The gentleman chatting so friendly about it is much more impressive than the montage of news images from the aforementioned trouble spots, which a documentary filmmaker would have used who does not trust his own material. "

- Wilfried Hippen

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ letsmakemoney.at
  2. ↑ Quotations. ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. letsmakemoney.at; Retrieved November 5, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.letsmakemoney.at
  3. ↑ The subject. ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. letsmakemoney.at; Retrieved November 6, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / letsmakemoney.at
  4. ↑ a b The Standard : Cinema hits in Austria. Status: October 31–2 November 11 , 2008, p. 12.
  5. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Status: 07.11–09 November 11 , 2008, p. 12.
  6. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Stand: 11. 11. – 16. November 11, 19, 2008, p. 12.
  7. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Stand: 21. 11. – 23. November 11 , 2008, p. 12.
  8. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Status: November 28th – 30th December 11 , 2008, p. 12.
  9. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Status: December 5–7 December 12 , 2008, p. 12.
  10. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Stand: 12. 12. – 14. December 12th , 2008, p. 12.
  11. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Stand: 19. 12. – 21. 12. 24./25./26. December 2008, p. 29.
  12. ↑ The Standard: Cinema hits in Austria. Stand: 26. 12. – 28. December 12th , 2008/1. January 2009, p. 29.
  13. ↑ Austrian Film Institute : 2009 in the cinema. Status: January 4, 2009 (accessed on January 7, 2009)
  14. ↑ Austrian Film Institute: 2009 in the cinema. ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filminstitut.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Status: February 2, 2009 (accessed February 6, 2009)
  15. ↑ Austrian Film Institute: 2009 in the cinema. ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filminstitut.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Status: March 2, 2009 (accessed March 3, 2009)
  16. ↑ Austrian Film Institute: 2009 in the cinema. ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filminstitut.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Status: April 1, 2009 (accessed April 2, 2009)
  17. ^ Austrian Film Institute : Let's Make Money (accessed November 5, 2008)
  18. ^ Austrian Film Institute: 2008 in the cinema. ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filminstitut.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Status: February 18, 2009 (accessed February 18, 2009)
  19. ↑ Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA): Film hit list: January 2009, accessed on March 13, 2009
  20. ↑ a b Dietmar Kammerer: Conquer the regulars' table . the daily newspaper , October 30, 2008; Retrieved November 5, 2008
  21. ↑ Boris Herrmann: The film about the crisis . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 30, 2008
  22. ↑ Simon Rothöhler: How do you transfer locusts?  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Friday - Die Ost-West-Wochenzeitung , October 30, 2008; Retrieved December 7, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.freitag.de  
  23. ↑ Volker Wissing: Where are the answers? Friday - Die Ost-West-Wochenzeitung, October 30, 2008; Retrieved December 7, 2012
  24. ↑ Mark Stör: No air to think . Zeit Online , October 30, 2008; Retrieved November 5, 2008
  25. ↑ Wilfried Hippen: Buy, when there's blood on the streets . In: taz , October 30, 2008; Retrieved November 5, 2008
  26. ↑ meeting . In: SWR2 Book of the Week on July 11, 2011
  27. ↑ Talk to the authors