Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: WTO 99 [DOC NYC 2025 - New York, New York - Virtual]

The aspect of change and the perspective of government intervention and monopolization have always been a cornerstone for American civil unrest. With the context of the tariff wars coming into play with the current administration, the parallels of an earlier generation always permeates the idea of history repeating itself (although the circumstances, technology and players are different). With "WTO/99" [Fight The Power], Director Ian Bell uses archival footage (both from TV news and VHS/Hi8 footage on the ground) to paint a picture of the American worker trying to fight against losing their jobs to globalization. This is also just the time when smaller camcorders were being more affordable. The addition of the idea of the turn of the century and the new concept of the internet was obviously in play with the local mentality, especially in Seattle in 1999 in the breast of the dot-com boom. The idea of the crowd and the police being both civic minded but also maybe ill prepared is an interesting word of caution. Even though the protests that did get out of control happened in a concentrated area, just because of one or two acts, perpetrated by a few individuals, that snowballed, it made the protests swing out of the control in an era where the 24-hour news cycle was in its heyday and still focused in broadcast.

We have had more recent protests that have happened in a similar realm but this idea, when Amazon and e-commerce had not integrated into the national consciousness in any way shape or form, that this is something we could control or reign. But progress doesn't work that way. It almost seems simple but at the time, the aspect of the World Trade Organization making decisions about American jobs was a big threat and Big Tech was part of though they obviously didn't know how far it would go. Now with artificial intelligence now taking away jobs from the entire planet, it is something that people in 1999, barely over a quarter of a century ago, couldn't fathom. Ultimately it is more integrated in the idea of social activism in this instance gone awry. Seattle wanted to be known as a mecca for piece so it was ironic that it would happen in this way and in this location. Most of the delegates likely weren't aware of the breath of it and life continued on, even as President Clinton came into town to talk about the importance of trade just a year and a half before 9/11 which changed the USA's perception of its strength in terms of security on their own soil. "WTO/99" is interesting in the new forms of archival documentaries because unlike the film context of the 1960s, the 90s is really when the proliferation (of video) and not what we see now in the meta of social media allowed us to reflect in different ways. B

By Tim Wassberg