LONDON -- First they took back the streets, and now they've taken back the screens. The anti-globalization movement is staging its own alternative film festival on the beaches of Venice, and Canadian activist Naomi Klein has become its star.

Klein, appearing at the Venice Film Festival to promote The Take, her new documentary about political turmoil in Argentina, was one of the main attractions of Global Beach, an alternative to the festival set up by anti-globalization protesters.

Speaking at Global Beach alongside actor and activist Tim Robbins, Klein said: "I couldn't come here just for the . . . rarefied celebrity culture."

Klein, author of the best-selling manifesto No Logo (which sold particularly well in Italy) and a Globe and Mail columnist, added, "It's always important to cross over, this is where our roots are."

U.S. movie director Tim Robbins, sitting second from right, and Canadian writer Naomi Klein, right, speak to global activists in a camp set up on a beach in Venice, northern Italy, a few miles away from the Venice Film Festival compound where the 61st edition of the world's oldest film festival is taking place, Sunday, Sept. 5, 2004. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

Robbins was on hand to promote Code 46, the Michael Winterbottom film in which he stars, and also Embedded - Live, a filmed version of his antiwar play, which is currently on stage in London.

A long-time supporter of progressive causes, Robbins kept up the heat in Venice last week, criticizing fellow celebrities who kept silent over the Iraq war: "Freedom of speech starts with you opening your mouth and people often abdicate that freedom in their mind. They choose not to speak. Once you choose not to speak, you might as well not have it."

The Global Beach anti-festival is stealing the limelight from the established Venice extravaganza, which features big-budget Hollywood fare alongside more modest offerings such as The Merchant of Venice (starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons).

The protesters, who decorated a car as a pirate ship, disrupted the premiere of Steven Spielberg's film The Terminal.

The Venice Film Festival has been attacked this year for pandering to Hollywood by featuring stale-dated U.S. films such as The Terminal. John Travolta and the Toms (Hanks and Cruise) are some of the celebrities in Venice for the gathering.

Before the festival opened, its director Marco Mueller told the Hollywood Reporter: "My pitch was very, very clear. I told them [the Hollywood studios], 'This is going to be a new Venice, a more American-oriented Venice.' . . . We invested over $1-million in Dante Ferretti's design for the Palazzo de Cinema; we did that to prove we were serious, that we meant business when we said it was going to be a 'very big splash.' "

The Global Beach protesters have not only set up camp on the sand and erected a movie screen, but have also staged antiwar protests and reportedly occupied the patio of an exclusive and star-friendly hotel. On the website of sponsor Global Project, the beach is described as "a squatted beach, a space of communicative action, of rights. . . . The Beach of dreams that seemed to be lost and is finally found."

Klein's documentary, which she made with husband and fellow journalist Avi Lewis, describes the breakdown of the Argentinian economy and the attempt by ordinary workers to rebuild their lives. At the time the documentary was shown at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto earlier this year, Lewis told The Globe, "In making this film, we were determined not to preach and not to be didactic, but to get inside the intimate human story, yet, somehow, embody the values and the spirit of what Naomi calls the new impatience. This spirit where people are tired of what I've been doing -- the political debate -- the banging your head against the wall when you know things are wrong."

The Global Beach site has drawn some curious stars as well as the politically inclined. Scarlett Johansson, in town promoting A Love Song for Bobby Long, is reported to have visited the site. The 19-year-old star is having an eventful festival: She was also flummoxed by a Chilean reporter, who said at a press conference, "This is kind of a confession: I can't sleep at night thinking about you. . . . Please, could you choose one of your favourites [movies] to make with me."

© Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc

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