McLibel

Again back at my Mum’s for Christmas I wandered into the local branch of Blockbuster, where they were selling a shed load of ex-rental DVDs for a few pounds.

In my haul I picked up McLibel for £1. It tells the story of what became known as McLibel trial, where two protesters Helen Steel and Dave Morris were taken to court for libel by McDonald’s over a handful of leaflets they had distributed in London.

It was originally released in 1997, but this version takes the story right up to 2005, when they took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Denied legal aid the pair defended themselves against McDonald’s and their team of big fuck-off lawyers. It’s a very interesting story filmed over ten years, which shows the pair throughout the trial with occasional dramatic re-enactments of what went on in the courtroom.

Since Super Size Me I literally haven’t set foot inside a McDonald’s but when I saw inside the McDonald’s chicken farm during McLibel it started to put me off meat completely.

Here are a couple of interviews with the films’ director Franny Armstrong. First from the BBC’s Storyville site then from Shooting People.

You can read the whole story on McSpotlight the website Dave and Helen set up to highlight their battle.

As a footnote the courtroom scenes were directed by Ken Loach, who in the 1980s, when he couldn’t get work as a filmmaker, directed an advert for McDonalds.