TORONTO - Corporate Welfare Bums was the slogan that former NDP leader David Lewis memorably employed on a federal election campaign three decades ago.

Today his grandson, broadcaster and self-described "journalist-activist" Avi Lewis, is fighting the same anti-corporate fight, but in the media, not the political arena. Hoping to ride a wave of successful theatrical documentaries this year, Lewis and his wife and like-minded partner Naomi Klein (author of the anti-globalization bestseller No Logo) are releasing The Take, a film they call "a political thriller" and the results of 2½ years of effort, including seven months of sometimes-dangerous on-location photography in Argentina.

The Take opens in Toronto on Friday, and wider across Canada in the weeks to follow.

Director Avi Lewis on the set of The Take. (CP)

It graphically chronicles events in the South American country in the wake of its spectacular economic collapse in 2001, after which unemployed workers decided to take over the factories abandoned by the multinationals and actually got them running again. They're still operating and if many of them aren't turning a profit, at least they're breaking even and creating jobs, says Lewis.

"I've been thinking about my grandpa a lot these days," he says. "Because I've been looking at communities in Canada where corporations have received massive public subsidies, produced massive profits and are now bailing."

He says a read of the elder Lewis's speeches from those days in the early 1970s are "hauntingly accurate" now.

And he hopes audiences will see The Take, not as a story about Argentina, but rather a universal story with relevance here in Canada, complete with heroes, villains and suspense.

Coming from such a politically active family, Lewis admits there have been some lively discussions about where the energy should be spent - within the "family business", the electoral system where his grandfather and father Stephen Lewis have fought, or in grassroots activism.

"In my family, the political system was always seen as the only way to effect change," he says. "Naomi and I and my parents have had many the dinner debate over this."

And while he is by no means abandoning the electoral system, Lewis sees less frustration in more direct action these days, such as that taken by those unemployed factory workers in Argentina. And he believes he's convinced his dad of the limits of electoral change and of the value in grassroots activity.

Lewis served as a first-time film director and editor, while Klein was writer and co-producer.

For two people used to getting their own way, he says they worked well together on their shared political mission. But did they always sing from the same page of their hymn book or was there creative friction?

"Oh my god, it's impossible not to have friction! Why would you do it otherwise? No, it was extremely difficult."

But Lewis says it's something the power couple wanted to do for a long time. He says he often edits Klein's columns and she was the best uncredited producer that CBC's CounterSpin, which he hosted, ever had.

In a year when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is such a hit, and with lesser successes like The Corporation, Super Size Me and Control Room, Lewis is hoping, if not to make a (dare he say it?) profit, at least to break even, not unlike those Argentinian factories, so that his backers get their money back and he can go on to produce another documentary.

But why are documentaries succeeding with material that would normally seem to be a hard sell to movie ticket-buyers?

"People don't feel that they're getting the whole story in the mainstream media," he replies. "They know people are dying. They're not seeing bodies. Something's not adding up. The war has been too tightly scripted and managed, despite the fact that it's been a disaster in Iraq."

Lewis says, too, that moviegoers want to be taken to a world they've never seen before and they are tired of the predictable car crashes and things blowing up in Hollywood action movies.

"Control Room is a great example of that and in a way I hope The Take can strike that same note," he says. "We saw Argentinians flash across our TV screens in 2001. . .but what really happened there after that finished? What was growing in the rubble?"

The Take was screened at the Venice International Film Festival and Lewis says the standing ovation was so exhilarating that he will remember it for the rest of his life. But he was also delighted to screen his film at an alternative festival held down the beach from the main festival site.

"To be able to show it to a thousand activists outdoors was surreal and Fellini-esque and totally beautiful."

© Copyright The Canadian Press 2004

###