PUSHBACK Talks
Landlords without faces, apartments without tenants. In 2019, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten released Push, an award-winning documentary that explores the unaffordable, unlivable city, and the growing global housing crisis. Following the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, the film sought to understand why cities around the world are becoming increasingly expensive.
In June of 2020, Fredrik and Leilani teamed up again to continue the conversation they began with the film, and PUSHBACK Talks was born. Since then, PUSHBACK Talks has grown into an exploration of the social, political, and economic forces that shape our world, and of the actions people are taking to push back against inequality, corruption, authoritarian systems, poverty, war, and the shift towards far-right conservatism.
Join the Filmmaker (Gertten) and the Advocate (Farha) as they dissect these topics, uncover the connections between them, and search for solutions. How can we, as individuals, movements, and communities, fight back – push back – to build societies where every human being has the right to live equally, freely, and with dignity?
Listen to PUSHBACK Talks and join the conversation for a better, fairer world.
For more about PUSH and to view it: www.pushthefilm.com
For more about Leilani Farha and her organization, The Shift: www.make-the-shift.org
For more about Fredrik Gertten and his other films: www.wgfilm.com
If you are interested in watching his newest documentary: www.breakingsocialfilm.com
PUSHBACK Talks
Evergrande - Can China's Communist Party Save Capitalism?
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Did you know that real estate constitutes a whopping one-third of China’s massive economy? The property sector has been used to drive growth and most household wealth is held in real estate. As a result, for years developers like Evergrande have had access to cheap money, enabling them to become small Empires.
Recognizing that the situation was out of control, President Xi Jinping has used his "common prosperity" to establish new policies to limit the use of property as a financial tool. This latest round of policies has landed China’s second-largest property developer in a world of trouble. Now the world’s most indebted property developer, Evergrande is in debt to the tune of $310 billion and has yet to build over a million flats that have already been paid for.
Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism and former China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek sits down with Fredrik and Leilani to delve into how Evergrande got to this point. Will the government bail the company out to prevent broader economic downturn? Or will Xi Jinping make an example of Evergrande to show that houses are for living in, not for speculation?