ABOUT THE BANK JOB FILM

A community driven feature film, participatory bank and playful act of economic education and change.

An unlikely team, seemingly insurmountable odds, even explosions… taking steps towards a future in which money works for us all.

This mischievous feature documentary led by artist/filmmaker team Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell, instigates and follows a community coming together to make their own currency, opening a bank in order to examine how money and debt is created in our economy and to ask important questions about how the system of money creation might be altered in their favour.

Debt is an integral component of our current system of inequality. 97% of all money is conjured into reality at the moment when banks make loans. This means our money supply is effectively on lease from private banks – giving them inordinate power determine the course of our economic, social and common good. Yet we, the public, do not yet fully understand the way money comes into existence – and while we remain in the dark, there will be no way to change course.

Our act of citizen money creation is both a way of raising real money for specific causes in the community and a way of fundraising to buy and destroy £1million of local predatory debts.

Through the film we argue that widespread debt is the natural – though unwelcome companion to the money system we currently have and, like money, another widely misunderstood phenomena subject to myth and moralising.

From both talking to economists and our local community we discover that debt is tied to even the most basic provisions, education, healthcare, housing – as all these are being accessed through credit in one way or another. We argue that these debts are a result of a monetary system which is impoverishing multitudes by design, and which could be changed.