WTO/99

Hyperreal Film Club is screening WTO/99 on Monday, September 21, with director Alex Megaro in attendance. The film is a documentary on the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and Megaro will be there for the screening. It's part of the Discovery Zone Roadshow, and Hyperreal is an Austin collective that stages cinema in unusual, immersive pop-up environments while amplifying local artists.

WTO/99 reanimates those protests by editing over 1,000 hours of archive into a visceral, chronological experience. Around 40,000 anti-globalization protesters overshadowed the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference over four days—a confrontation that forced the resignation of the Seattle police chief and shaped the strategy of leftist social movements to come. The film frames those days as a watershed moment in modern history and tracks the experimental weapons and tactics that have since become commonplace in American policing.

It's structured in chapters that cover the rise of the billionaire class, multinational corporations, fake news, and the militarization of the police, drawing parallels to today's anti-genocide and ICE protests. If you've never heard of the Seattle protests, this is a good place to start; if you have, it's a chance to see them built from the actual footage of the time.

The screening is at Hyperreal Film Club, 301 Chicon Street, Austin, TX 78702. It runs from 7:30 PM to 11:00 PM, with doors opening at 7:00 PM. Tickets are on a sliding scale.