From Liverpool Echo: An anti-austerity film in which Liverpool, its people and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn play starring roles is to receive its Merseyside premiere this Friday.

The screening of Austerity Fight by Liverpool based Phil Maxwell and Hazuan Hashim at the Plaza Community Cinema in Waterloo – which is a sell-out – will be followed by a question and answer session and a speech by shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Phil Maxwell says: “The film features many activists from Liverpool and the anti-austerity campaigns they are involved in. The campaigns to save Liverpool Women’s Hospital and keep guards on Merseyrail trains are covered, as well as a Boot Out Austerity march from Birmingham to Liverpool.

“Jeremy Corbyn talks about the NHS and we are delighted that the shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who is also in the film, is coming to his hometown to speak to the audience after the screening.

“It will be a great night for celebrating Liverpool’s fighting spirit. The film took 18 months to make and we had a budget of £4,700 which was raised mainly through crowd funding and support from unions. The Plaza is a great venue for the film as it collects food for a food bank and the Liverpool and Everton fans’ food bank is in the film.

[Read full article on Liverpool Echo website…]

Check out the trailer here:

Austerity Fight – trailer from Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell on Vimeo.

The austerity policies of the Tories have targeted young and old. The NHS is chronically under funded and is being privatised. Students are leaving college with huge debts. Children, pensioners and the disabled are living in poverty and millions live precarious lives on ‘zero hour contracts’. Austerity Fight challenges the notion that we have to live in a world where public services are cut, worker’s rights removed and poverty is a daily reality for millions, while championing equality, practical alternatives to Austerity and a vision of a world based on co-operation rather than the greed of a global super elite.

[Read full article on People’s Assembly website…]

From The Economist: With its overt political message, I, Daniel Blake is an anomaly. Despite a six-year “age of austerity”—and an eightfold increase in the number of local authorities operating foodbanks—the reaction in film has been muted.

[Read full article on The Economist website…]

From The Observer: Daniel Blake, 59, is a skilled craftsman. He has assets, but not the kind that the market rates highly since they have little monetary value: qualities such as integrity, honesty and compassion. In Ken Loach’s new film, I, Daniel Blake, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, Blake’s attributes carry little weight in a system designed to pitch one human being (the bureaucrat) against another (the citizen temporarily in need of state support) at a time of “necessary” austerity.

In a meticulously researched script written by Paul Laverty, Loach’s collaborator for 20 years, Blake, a widower, has had a serious heart attack. What follows are his struggles with the benefits system and his growing friendship with a single parent, Katie, and her two children. After two years in a London hostel, Katie has been moved 300 miles to Newcastle because, allegedly, there is no housing in the capital – a city with 10,000 empty homes.

Katie has her benefits frozen, leaving her penniless, while Daniel, a man whose doctor says he is too ill to work, has to spend 35 hours a week applying for jobs he can’t take, on the orders of the jobcentre “work coach”. It is a surreal, dehumanised world in which empathy has little place and no allowance is made for the chaos of everyday life.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

From Metro: Acclaimed British director Ken Loach has won the esteemed Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. And he decided to use his platform during his awards speech to speak out against austerity measures that have affected the British people.

[Read article on Metro website…]