Bring academics into view – followthethings.com

“Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork“
A documentary film dirercted by Eyal Sivan for Trabelsi Productions.
Trailer embedded above, search online for streaming options here.

Imagine visiting your local supermarket and popping a bag of Jaffa branded oranges in your basket. Then imagine browsing your favourite news site on your phone in the checkout queue and reading the latest story about deaths in Gaza, war in the Middle East. Maybe you’ve read a lot about this conflict, or have some first hand experience. And maybe you don’t understand why it’s happening, how it all started. That bag of oranges – and this documentary film – could help you. Jaffa is an ancient Palestinian city. It’s also where Jaffa oranges have been grown by Arab andJewish labourers since the 1800s. They would wrap each individual fruit in tissue paper, pack them in wooden boxes. load them onto boats and ship them wordwide. A year after the birth of ‘practical photography’ in 1839, Palestinian photographer Khalil Khaed visited Jaffa to document everyday life and work, including the work being done by Arab and Jewish people in its plentiful orange groves. Photography, film, art work and advertising has documented the connection between Jaffa and oranges ever since. But, this film argues, as the Israeli state began to take shape in the 20th Century, there was a concerted attempt to remove Palestinians from this Jaffa orange story and to rebrand them emblems of Israeli civilisation. The story of the Jaffa orange is ‘Settler Colonialism 101.’ To piece this together, Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan spends five years searching through the archives for Jaffa-orange photographs, films, advertising and resistance in the region. He then shows what he’s found to Israeli and Palestinian people- academics, poets, retired orange workers, advertising executives, others – and films their reactions. What he creates from these screenings is a profoundly insightful and moving documentary. In response to Sivan’s anti-Zionist politics, his films have struggled to get funding and screenings in Israel and have generated criticisms of anti-semitism. But, the film has generated considerable critical and public acclaim from its audiences around the world. First screened in 2009, it has become a go-to documentary to spark debate about the Palestine-Israel conflict today. And Sivan continues to attend screenings to answer questions about the film and the futures that might be possible in the region. The main argument in Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork is that, if Arab and Jewish people could work together harmoniously in the past – like they did historically in Jaffa’s orange groves – they can do so in the future. Watch the film, read the comments below, and see what you think.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork. followthethings.com/jaffa-the-oranges-clockwork.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

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Money & Finance

EXPERIENCED WORLDWIDE

DOCUMENTARY FILM

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

FOLLOW THE MONEY

FIND THE CHARACTERS

INCLUDE EMOTION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

JOIN THE DOTS

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

BLAME, SHAME & GUILT

“Inside Job“
A documentary film directed by Charles Ferguson, produced by Charles Ferguson, Audrey Marrs & Jeffrey Lurie & narrated by Matt Damon for Mongrel Media & Sony Pictures Classic.
Official trailer embedded above. Search online to watch the full movie here.

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, filmmaker Charles Ferguson sets out to find out how and by whom it was caused. This involves understanding and explaining complex financial instruments (like sub-prime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations), the governance of international finance and its deregulation (and its consequences), eye-watering banking losses (over $20 trillion), the organisations and individuals responsible for this happening (in financial services, government, academia) and the people plunged into poverty and homelessness after defaulting on their mortgages. The complexity is explained clearly in the film by narrator Matt Damon. And by the talking heads who Ferguson recruits to talk about what happened, their role in it, how they see their responsibilities, why so much public money was spent bailing them out, and why none of them went to jail. For many audience members, it’s shocking to see executives explaining how business works on camera. The logics and passions that drive their work, and the values that they express, can seem removed from the world, callous and dehumanising. But the experts who come out of this film looking worst are the academic economists. One of the biggest impacts of this film is the way that it encourages university business schools to look more closely at their ethics. Who are economists working for, and how responsible is their education of new generations of economists if their ideas remain unchanged after the Crisis? This is another example showing how important and how difficult it is to ‘follow the money’. But like any following study, it’s also about the ways that responsibility – in this case, for a colossal economic injustice – is understood, shared, taken. And where it isn’t. The solution sees obvious to many – regulation! But it’s not happening. If one film was going to cause a revolution, one commentor states, it would be this one. And this is just a taster page for this film. We’ll add much more detail later…

Page reference: Dom Ebbetts, Dave Simpson, Michael Brent, Mickey Franklin, Tommy Sadler & Charlie Timms (2024) Inside Job (taster). followthethings.com/inside-job.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.