The Reverence, Resistance, Resilience film series presents two short films on a Future Worth Winning tonight from 6 to 7:30 at the library.
“The Economics of Happiness” (20 minutes) and “Joanna Macy and the Great Turning (26 minutes) will be shown. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments, courtesy of Friends of the Athol Public Library, will be served, and a discussion will follow. Seating is limited, so call to reserve a seat.
“The Economics of Happiness” describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance. And, far from the old institutions of power, communities are coming together to build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm — an economics of localization. We hear from a chorus of voices from six continents that tell us that climate change and inequality give us little choice: we need to localize, to bring the economy home.
“Joanna Macy and the Great Turning” is about the opportunity we have to come alive to our truest power, to “look straight into the face of our time, which is the biggest gift we can give,” and to participate in the Great Turning. What is the Great Turning? It is, as Macy describes it, the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. It is, she believes, the third major revolution of human existence, after the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
The conversation that follows will be led by Anna Gyorgy, who has long been active in ecological and peace work: writing, editing, organizing — and gardening — with hope for the future.
Gyorgy coordinates the Women & Life on Earth Internet Project (wloe.org) with the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice (traprock.org). She is on the Wendell Energy Committee and the coordinating committee of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution (fccpr.us), a progressive organization based in Franklin County.
This film screening is a collaboration between the Athol Public Library and North Quabbin Energy, an informal network in north-central Massachusetts started in 2005 that supports and facilitates communication among people and town energy committees to share ideas and projects related to energy use.
Members educate themselves and their neighbors about the true social and environmental costs of current energy consumption patterns and work to find ways of changing individual and collective habits of energy use through conservation, use of renewable fuels, and support for local and regional enterprises that reduce dependence on imported resources. Visit: www.northquabbinenergy.org.
“The Time Machine” (2002) Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Based on the classic sci-fi novel by H.G. Wells, scientist and inventor, Alexander Hartdegen, is determined to prove that time travel is possible. His determination is turned to desperation by a personal tragedy that now drives him to want to change the past. Testing his theories with a time machine of his own invention, Hartdegen is hurtled 800,000 years into the future, where he discovers that mankind has divided into the hunter and the hunted.
There will be a short half-hour film before the movie, an episode of “Tales Of Tomorrow: What We Need.”
This is the next in the monthly series of science fiction/fantasy and horror/monster movies at the library. Free and open to the public.
Upcoming films:
April 14: I Married a Witch” starring Fredric March, Veronica Lake and Robert Benchley.
May 12: “Millenium” starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.
June 16: “The Last Witch Hunter” starring Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie and Elijah Wood.
July 14: “Slaughterhouse-Five” starring Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman and Eugene Roche.