The Belmont Library is pleased to show the much-lauded documentary film The Corporation which explores the results of the Supreme Court ruling that states a corporation must be considered a person rather than an entity, granting them unprecedented rights. Filmmakers Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and author Joel Bakan, delve into that legal standard, essentially asking: if corporations were people what kind of people would they be? Variety praised the film's "surprisingly cogent, entertaining, even rabble-rousing indictment of perhaps the most influential institutional model for our era." The film won the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, 2004, along with a Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2003 and 2004.
A book was written concurrent with the filming of the documentary by Joel Bakan. Bakan will appear at the library later in the month to read from his latest book, Childhood Under Siege.