Money

A documentary by Isaac Isitan
2003, 65 minutes

''If people really knew the process through which money is created, the system would not hold more than 24 hours''.
- Henry Ford

Two years ago, Turkish-born Canadien director Isaac Isitan watched from the comfort of his living room as thousands of people in Turkey and in Argentina took to the street, attacking the banks when their life savings evaporated overnight. Middle-class people who once lined up at the bank were now lining up at food banks. How could these relatively wealthy countries possibly go bankrupt in less than a decade? With this question in mind, Isitan takes us to Turkey, Argentina and the U.S. in a moving portrait of citizens who have lost everything. Interwoven with these stories, a lucid essay dissects the the macro-economic policies, demanded by the World Bank and the IMF, that have plunged entire nations into economic crisis. Faced with a lack of money, the people have begun to reinvent it, initiating credit and barter systems and inventing local parallel economies. An essentiel and incisive look into the hidden side of money.