The Corporation – A provocative film documentary

In February this year, I encouraged people through my blog, to watch a documentary I had seen during my studies abroad. Well, HOME, wasn’t the only documentary I saw during this time of my life. While doing research for a paper about multinationals (“About the Marketing Activities of Multinational Corporations”; posted February 18^th 2010), my attention was drawn to an even more provocative documentary: The Corporation.

This documentary portrays one of the most predominant and influent institution of our time by scrutinizing its unparalleled essence. The Corporation is a Canadian documentary which was written by Joel Bakan, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. It was released in the year 2003, and since has been nominated for, and awarded with several international prizes, including best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, and the Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in both, 2003 and 2004. Nowadays, the film is available to the public on DVD, via file sharing, and free download.

Through numerous examples, the film takes a critical and detailed stance at modern-day corporations, by analysing its behaviour towards society and the world, just like a therapist would analyse one of its patients. The focus of this documentary lies in defining, as a corporation is considered a “legal” person, what kind of person a corporations really is. The film concentrates mainly on North American corporations, by examining and criticizing their corporate business practices.

Several interviews are included in the film, by well known corporate critics, such as Naomi Klein, Michael Moore and Vandana Shiva, as well as prominent advocates of capitalism, like Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman.

The message of this documentary is that corporate practices and rules need to be challenged by modern societies, and that balance as well as values of democracy, equality and social justice must imperatively gain centre stage in today’s corporate business practices.

Watch the trailer of documentary here.