Much will - justifiably - be made of the premiere of the documentary, Anthrax War, which publicly launches the 2009 Tri-Continental film festival at the Maponya Mall in Soweto tonight. It should be seen by everyone concerned about the future of humanity.
But trade unionists should make a point of seeing another festival offering, Made in LA. At a preview screening I saw a stark lesson for organised labour the world over: globalise or possibly perish.
The film should have resonance for the local garment industry, where the union this week was counting strike ballots in a fight over pay and conditions. It is a story of how ultimate defeat can be snatched from the jaws of hard-fought victory in the demand for decent work and wages.
This demand is the cornerstone of labour's campaign internationally but, with a globally fragmented workforce, victory in one region is invariably stalked by the spectre of unemployment as sweatshop production moves across continents.
Until recently, many brands of clothing sold in the US were made in Los Angeles by a small army of mainly Latino women, many of them illegal immigrants. They suffered appalling conditions and wages.
Made in LA is the story of the long struggle by these workers to organise and win such basic rights as an eight-hour day, humane working conditions and a minimum wage. A classic case of union building it has lessons for every unionist on how to educate, organise and agitate to victory.
But the film ends with a message that is all too familiar in South Africa: having won the battle the workers realise they may have lost the war as capital, unlike labour, observes no borders.
A sequel would tell a tale that is also all too familiar to many South African workers: having won decent wages at last, credit becomes readily available for everything from homes and cars to furniture. Then jobs migrate and unemployment arrives, followed closely by the credit crunch.
I know of no documentary illustrating this, but the credit crunch is being played out in real life in cities and townships around the world as debt defaults and repossessions rise alongside job losses.
Despite the National Credit Act coming into effect in June 2007 the position of lower paid workers who are most vulnerable to retrenchment does not seem to have improved. The act, intended to curb irresponsible lending, did make credit more difficult to get, but it has kept the township loan sharks - the mashonisas - in business.
In any event, the cost of credit in the microloan market remains punitive: with permitted additional fees, interest can legally be as high as 385 percent a year.
Jonathan Campbell, the dean of Rhodes University's law faculty, notes that the 2007 rules set the maximum interest rate on microloans (loans below R8 000) at 5 percent a month, or 60 percent a year.
Many workers still lack a clear understanding of interest rates and, as the unions continue to stress, it is they who bear the brunt of the economic crisis.
Reader Eric Bolt points out that it still seems tempting to pay just R173 a month, with a deposit of R270, to own a new fridge, but interest and fees can mean a hire purchase like this will nearly double the price.
This has led to a high debt to disposable income ratio, which stood at 76.3 percent by the end of June, even as household income declined by an annualised rate of 5.7 percent in the first half.
However, there is some good news: at the very basic pap, cooking oil and chicken level, food prices seem to have stabilised or even marginally declined.