Sacred Growth: Economics and the Environment with Marie-Monique Robin

Thursday, April 16, 2015
6:30PM-8:00PM
Assembly Hall

Thursday, April 16, 2015

6:30PM-8:00PM

Assembly Hall

The upcoming 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris has prompted a variety of conversations on the need to change conventions. French documentary-maker Marie Monique Robin has long participated in a worldwide discussion that challenges corporate and governmental practices. In The World According to Monsanto (2008) she commented on the harmful role of the United States’ food industry, and the problems that it causes to domestic farmers, in addition to those abroad. In her most recent documentary, Sacred Growth, she advocates for local heroes and sustainable growth initiatives at home. She questions whether our continued growth is sustainable, or even necessary, and how we can change our way of measuring economic success to promote a more ecologically conscious world.

As a means of continuing this conversation, the University of Chicago French Club proposes to host a conversation featuring a moderator and documentary-maker Marie Monique Robin. The aim of this event would be to provide American audiences with an understanding of the context of environmental policy in the European Union, the United States and the global community. We ultimately hope that this event would create a valuable conversation on sustainable development, and the economic policy changes that must occur at home and abroad to enable this new model.

Marie Monique Robin is an acclaimed French documentary-maker, writer, journalist and activist. She previously worked in freelance journalism in Central and South America. Some of her documentaries include; Organ Snatchers (1993), Death Squads: The French School (2003), The
World According to Monsanto (2008), for which she was awarded the Albert Londres Prize (Organ Snatchers) and Rachel Carson Prize (Monsanto). Her films consistently seek to uncover the truth, to challenge our preconceptions of society in order to improve it in the future.

In The World According to Monsanto, she showed the darker side to the food industry and the big-corporations that dominate it. Her most recent documentary, Sacred Growth (2014), questions the modern assumptions of growth and investigates social and economic alternatives. It will be shown at the United Nations on April 15, 2015.

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the International House Global Voices Lecture Series, the University of Chicago French Club, the France Chicago Center, the Consulate General of France in Chicago, and the Program on the Global Environment.

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