Product Description

{WINNER! Best Documentary, 2005 Cleveland International Film Festival}
{WINNER! Grand Jury Prize, 2004 AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival}
{WINNER! Best Justice and Human Rights Film, 2004 Vermont International Film Festival}

In the wake of Argentina's spectacular economic collapse, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. Thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory in Buenos Aires, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

Filmmakers Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein take viewers inside the lives of the workers and their families, who must fight for jobs and their dignity by confronting factory owners, politicians and judges. The result is a real-life political thriller that pits ordinary workers against the local ruling elite and the powerful forces of global capitalism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31377 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-02-21
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Review
Vitally important...a deeply moving and informative film. Its purpose is to inspire further battles just like the one it portrays-not violent revolution, but small-scale, incremental political progress, the kind that doesn't make news, but does make real change. --Cinema Scope

Review
Excellent! A classic victory for the little guy... If it were shown in U.S. cities hit by factory closures, it might give unemployed Americans ideas. --New York Daily News

Review
EDITOR'S CHOICE! Highly Recommended! Unfolds like a genuine thriller in the Costa-Gavras vein. Compelling! --Video Librarian

Customer Reviews

A Moving Film With a Few Serious Oversights
Overall, this is a moving film. As an anthropology instructor, I've shown it several times and evoking a largely sympathetic audience. Currently I'm writing a paper on the process of recuperacion, and this seems to be potentially one alternative model to the destructive policies of transnational corporations, their agencies, and the neoliberal ideology they espouse.

That said, there is one serious problem in their choice of a case study that runs throughout the film; the auto parts manufacturer Forja San Martin (Forja). It's a very moving portrait of Freddy Espinoza, one of the leaders of the cooperative taking over the shutdown factory. Lalo, the coordnator representing the national organization for recovered factories, seems to be a likable guy. We see the leaders trying to work out a deal with a tractor factory.

This image breaks down, however, when we learn from Andres Ruggeri in his "Worker Recovered Enterprises in Argentina" that the backslider depicted in the film, the one who supports Menem in the 2003 election, has taken over the leadership of Forja San Martin, that the others portrayed in the film have been expelled from the factory and cooperative, and that the deal with the tractor factory--Zanello by name--has fallen through.

Even worse, we find from Zachary Fields in his unpublished paper "A Conservative, Middle Aged Revolution," that Forja is producing way below capacity, that it cannot add new technology because banks refuse them credit (private lenders hate all recovered factory cooperatives), and that it cannot make any investments until they deliver to their customers, who often furnish Forja the raw materials. Forja, in short, is not doing well.

Zanon and Brukman seem to fare better when it comes to accurate representation. One thing that they seem to be doing right is maintaining strong bonds with their neighborhoods and community, a deficit of Forja according to Ruggeri, and of many other recovered organizations.

Another issue is worker commitment to change. According to Andres Gaudin, many, if most, workers of recovered factories lack a sense of political ideology or commitment; they just want to get their wages and go home. In fact, says Ruggeri, many workers are in the enterprises because they have nowhere else to go.

Despite these reservations, The Take is on to something interesting. For one, Ruggeri points out that despite the miniscule number of recovered factories (0.08% of all such operations) and low number of workers, they have stabilized. In an hostile environment--no credit, stringent legal constraints, competitive economy, constant threats of evictions, and uncertain policies of the Kirchner government--this is an accomplishment in its own right.

The movement has spread to Brazil, Uruguay, Panama--and Venezuela, where the first conference on recovered facories was held. Venezuela is looking at 700 factories for possible recovery, and a paper mill, an aluminum company, and a valve manufacturer were featured at the conference.

Let's hope that the factory recovery movement is embryonic of the future; and I hope the couple comes back to film or otherwise provide an update of the situation in Argentina. It would also be nice to know how the rcovery movement is doing in other countries--especially Venezuela.

El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!
Using the recuperated Forja factory as a microcosm of the larger Argentine piquetero movement, author Naomi Klein and director Avi Lewis have done a brilliant job documenting the grassroots activism of marginalized workers in the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse caused by years of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and the corrupt presidency of Carlos Menem. Faced with abject poverty and state repression, the unemployed auto-parts workers of the Forja factory have occupied their abandoned workplace and transformed it into a successful cooperative, proving thus the power of labor solidarity. As such, the Forja factory, like all the recuperated factories, neighborhood assemblies, and independent media collectives in Argentina, provides an inspirational example of direct democracy, participatory economics, and horizontal social organizing. Besides being an important film politically, as a work of art it is simply exquisite. Fans of Mercedes Sosa will especially be moved by the protest scenes that were put to her music!

Interested - "The Take" (La Toma)
I'm a sociologist writting an MA Thesis about cooperatives and capitalist-to-worker owned companies. I was also born and raised in Argentina. I need to add more? This is the film that explains to you the phenomenon of closing capitalist firms converted into cooperatives that not only survive, but thrive! This could be the beggining of something new, of the possibility of Market Socialism (a form of Economic Democracy). The DVD contains an excellent 'behind-the-scenes' feature and a short about one of the young men murdered by the police during the popular uprising of December 2001. If you're interested in social movements, root initiatives and other of the kind, you must see this film.