RESISTANCE CINEMA
in collaboration with
ACTION FOR JUSTICE
Presents
“SURVIVING PROGRESS”
Cinemaginaire and Big Picture Meda Corporation in coproduction with The National Film Board Of Canada A film by MATHIEU ROY & HAROLD CROOKS, Executive Producers MARTIN SCORSESE, MARK ACHBAR, BETSY CARSON, EMMA TILLINGER KOSKOFF, Inspire by the best seller “A Short History Of Progress” by RONALD WRIGHT, (2011, 86min)
WHEN: Sunday June 16th 1:00 pm
WHERE: Community Church NY, Assembly Hall, 40 East 35th St. btwn Park & Madison Aves.
ADMISSION: Free, donations appreciated
Once again this year we have collaboration between RESISTANCEC CINEMA and ACTION FOR JUSTICE, two of the social justice committees of Community Church NY UU. Please note that we will be in the Assembly Hall at 40 E. 35th St. instead of the Gallery Room and we will try to start as close to 1pm as possible. . This time we step back, look at the “big picture” and focus on a broader view of the challenges facing human existence. Featuring powerful arguments from an extraordinary range of visionaries, this enlightening and visually spectacular film uncovers the “progress traps” that destroyed past civilizations and brings to light those that lie treacherously embedded in our own.
“Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.”
SURVIVING PROGRESS presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged.
It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers.
Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired this film, reveals how civilizations are repeatedly destroyed by “progress traps” — alluring technologies serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. With intersecting stories from a Chinese car-driving club, a Wall Street insider who exposes an out-of-control, environmentally rapacious financial elite, and eco-cops defending a scorched Amazon, the film lays stark evidence before us. In the past, we could use up a region’s resources and move on. But if today’s global civilization collapses from over-consumption, that’s it. We have no back-up planet.
SURVIVING PROGRESS brings us thinkers who have probed our primate past, our brains, and our societies. Some amplify Wright’s urgent warning, while others have faith that the very progress which has put us in jeopardy is also the key to our salvation. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking looks to homes on other planets. Biologist Craig Venter, whose team decoded the human genome, designs synthetic organisms he hopes will create artificial food and fuel for all.
Distinguished Professor of Environment Vaclav Smil counters that five billion “have-nots” aspire to our affluent lifestyle and, without limits on the energy and resource-consumption of the “haves”, we face certain catastrophe. Others — including prim
atologist Jane Goodall, author Margaret Atwood, and activists from the Congo, Canada, and USA — place their hope in our ingenuity and moral evolution.
SURVIVING PROGRESS leaves us with a challenge: To prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.