The first weekend of December saw Amanda head to our highly-anticipated second SUSY film festival packed with prize-winning films about the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE).  Held in partnership with Calderdale Bootstrap, the evening also included local food and performance!

The films...

The afternoon kicked off with a screening of ‘Vivre Dignement De Sa Terre’ (Live with Dignity on your own Land) where we meet some Senegalese farmers who share their experiences and the path they have followed to create a competitive and economically stable enterprise, producing food of a high quality. They have achieved this by keeping their supply chain short and by using agro-ecological techniques for dealing with the types of problems that today’s family farm has to face in Senegal. They are keen to demonstrate that living on your own land with dignity is still possible even whilst pressures on the land climate change are ever present issues.

The second film ‘Extraordinary People’ is a joyful and uplifting tale about the people living in Turkey’s eastern Black Sea region, showing their traditions, unique lifestyle and uncommonly practical solutions for life. The film is both philosophical, focusing on what really matters such as family and community, but is also comical as we see these people enjoying life, preserving their old traditions and adapting some of these traditions for some modern fun, such as where they race traditional hand-made wooden carts at break-neck speeds down winding mountain roads.

The screenings ended with Palmas, a SUSY documentary about how a community currency and development bank formed in 1989 in the suburb of Fortaleza in north-eastern Brazil. This pioneered the way for the creation of 52 community development banks across Brazil, with the film demonstrating how this had made a remarkable difference to the resilience of this local economy and to the spirit of the community. 

For afters...

Following on from a locally-made wholesome curry, the evening proceeded merrily with a performance of ‘Three Acres and a Cow’, a history of housing and land rights through folk song and story.

Whilst the story was recounted with humour and energy, it nevertheless covers a millennium’s worth of the struggle and resistance of ordinary people fighting to live meaningful, community-focused lives on their own land. This is very much echoed in the current movement to promote the SSE today.