"Beer Wars" (5th Annual Anti-Corporate Film Festival)

The 5th Annual Anti-Corporate Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 20, at the Victoria Theatre on 16th Street in San Francisco with a film on how small, local/regional beer companies must fight for their daily survival against the three corporate behemoths that together control 90% of the market.

It's just the first of three drink-related films in a line-up that includes movies about the bottled water industry (which may soon rival the beer industry in sales and influence), and the grand-daddy of all beverage companies, and an international symbol of American culture and commerce: the Coca-Cola Corporation.

Also in the mix is a film about the pharmaceutical industry's effort to sell women drugs and medical treatments that don't work for a disease that doesn't exist (so-called "female sexual dysfunction"), a look at the birth and growth of the Bay Area organic/sustainable food movement as part of the Berkeley counter-cultural politics of 1960s, and a closing night examination of past, current, and future U.S. energy policy as told with distinct drawl by the Texas oilmen who feed the nation's petroleum habit.

The Festival kicks off on Thursday at 7:00pm with BEER WARS, a behind-the-scenes look at the daily battles and all-out wars that determine what kind of beer Americans get to drink. as a growing number of small, independent, and regional "micro-brewers" challenge the corporate behemoths that produce millions of gallons of watered down, flavorless, industrial swill. The screening will be followed by a 9:00 craft brew reception at the SF Media Archive .

At 9:00pm, the opening night film TAPPED is a disturbing look at the bottled water industry, which goes the beer giants one better by pumping millions of gallons of public water — even during a drought — from taxpayer funded municipal systems, and then selling it back to the same people for six times the price.

The Festival opens its second day on Friday, May 21 at 7:15pm with ORGASM, INC, an expose on how the pharmaceutical industry continues to define our notions of what "healthy" is, in its efforts to replicate the success (and profits) of Viagra by developing a similar drug for women. But first it must convince them that the norms of female sexuality actually constitute an illness that can be fixed by taking a drug.

At 9:15pm, the centerpiece film this year is THE COCA-COLA CASE, a taut legal thriller about a court battle by two crusading labor lawyers trying to bring the world's largest beverage company to account for its role in the murders of union organizers in violence-torn Colombia. The film will be followed by a Q&A featuring Ray Rogers of the Stop Killer Coke! campaign, and other experts on the situation in Colombia.

The final day of the Festival begins on Saturday at 7:30pm with FOOD FIGHT, a look at birth and development of the local/organic/sustainable food movement right here in the Bay Area, as an outgrowth of the political upheaval of the 1960s. The film will be followed by a Q&A with local chef and San Francisco Chronicle food writer Eric Gower.

The Festival concludes at 9:30pm with HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM, which looks at the current state of our energy addiction through the eyes (and mouths) of the Texas oilmen who ride the boom and bust cycle like a bucking bronco. Like dealers of any drug, they don't see it as their job to help us kick our oil habit — but they can also see the day coming when we won't need their product any more.

For more information -- including trailers for each of the films, the full Festival schedule, and links to buy tickets online -- visit the CounterCorp website: http://www.countercorp.org/film-festival.