On film and inspiration

Film is an incredible medium, one that over a century at work continues to inspire and amaze humanity. This year I have relied a lot on film. Moments when I needed to escape from my day to day happenings, moments when I needed to feel anguished, and moments when I needed inspiration. I thought it would be fun to inaugurate my blog with a list of the best films of 2007. These are not all new films, just films that I saw in 2007. Some of these films are political, others just inspired me.

Requiem, directed by Hans Christian Schmid

Social, religious and family pressures envelop a young woman who fights a mental illness. The film Requiem follows 21-year-old Michaela, who tries to find her independence knowingly plagued by mental problems. Ultimately, religion and family kills Michaela who is left untreated and subjected to a number of exorcisms.

This film treat’s Michaela’s struggle for independence as a struggle for survival. I identify with the main protagonist’s struggle against guilt, religious traditions and family pressures. This beautiful film reminded me that it is not easy for young woman (and men) to break free from societal pressures and oppression.

Midwinter night’s dream, Directed by Goran Paskaljevic

A man recovers from war and prison with the love of an autistic child and her mother. An ex-convict (Lazar) returns home after 10 years in prison when he finds a young mother and her autistic child living as squatters in his childhood home. He wants to kick them out, but changes his mind after seeing the horrid conditions of the shelter where they must go. They soon form a makeshift family. Lazar soon finds inner peace from his violent self-destructive past through love.

This film gave me hope that lives and destinies can turn around for the better. But it has a tragic end, which reminds us that

Salvador (Puig Antich), Directed by Manuel Huerga

A profile of the life of anarchist and expropriator Salvador Puig Antich who was executed under the dictatorship of Fransico Franco. This is the quintessential political film of this year. This film inspires direct action and struggle against the state with un relentless support of Puig Antich’s actions. Puig Antich became involved in the MIL- clandestine anarchist cell robbing banks to distribute funds to workers’ struggles in the hopes of finally overthrowing the Franco dictatorship. He was a fervent anti-capitalist and grass roots militant.

The films’s photography, music score and script re-invent the passionate story of Salvador Puig Antich who dedicated his life to liberate generations from oppression. This film destroyed me and inspired me at the same time. I loved the film’s unrelenting support of the protagonists’ ideals and decision to raise up arms against the Franco regime. A very important film in conserving the historical memory of resistance and liberation.

Eden, Michael Hofmann

This is a silly tale about a woman who falls in love with a fat man’s gift of cooking. I would fall in love with any man who cooked liked this main character in Garden of Eden. Gregor is a man obsessed with cooking but a little lonely in his inspirational quest for making his restaurant goers squirm in ecstasy. His restaurant would be my quitessential dream – either to work there or to eat there. His aphrodisiac inspired restaurant has only three tables, and clients must wait up to a year to enjoy the delicacies served. From afar he becomes infatuated with a waitress from a local café, Leonie. She is uninspired in her marriage and wants more children. When she meets Gregor they begin an innocent but complicated love based on Gregor’s ability to fill her with happiness and food. But as in most films, the plot thickens as each protagonist must face the bleak realities. Gregor is unattractive. Leonie is trapped in a marriage with a sexist, aggressive but charming guy.

This is the best food movie of the year. It will make you hungry for exquisite food and for someone to share it with. The power of food is profound, so strong the unimaginable can happen over a plate of wonderful food.

Lady Bird Lady Bird, Directed by Ken Loach

Never in my life has one film made me cry so much. Within the first minutes of Lady Bird I began to cry and didn’t stop for two days. This film demonstrates the violence and ineffectiveness of any state to decide what is best for children or mothers.

The title of the film comes from the nursery rhyme, ‘Lady Bird, ladybird, Fly away home, Your house is on fire, And your children all gone,’

Lady Bird begins with the life of Maggie, the troubled mother of four children, all of whom have different fathers. English social service workers have taken away all of her children. In the film’s opening, Maggie meets Jorge, an immigrant from Paraguay. During her introduction to gentle Jorge, she tells him of her past. An abusive father and subsequent abusive partners. She lost her children to social services after she left her children home in government-housing to go out singing. The film doesn’t take sides, simply lets the audience make decisions whether Maggie is a fit mother. The patient and calm Jorge falls in love with Maggie and as they begin their relationship they also begin their fight to get back Maggie’s children. When Maggie and Jorge have their first child, it is taken away. It happens yet again, in a scene of hopelessness and grief. A social service worker comes to remove the newly born from Maggie’s arms in her hospital bed. But Maggie and Jorge continue on in their struggle to get back their children. Years and years of struggle with little results.

Arna’s Children, Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel

Quite possibly the best documentary I have ever seen, because of the film’s complexity, narrative and political commitment.

ARNA'S CHILDREN tells the story of a theatre group that was established by Arna Mer Khamis. Arna comes from a Zionist family and in the 1950s married a Palestinian Arab, Saliba Khamis. On the West Bank, she opened an alternative education system for children whose regular life was disrupted by the Israeli occupation. The theatre group that she started engaged children from Jenin, helping them to express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear. Arna's son Juliano, director of this film, was also one of the directors of Jenin's theatre. With his camera, he filmed the children during rehearsal periods from 1989 to 1996. Now, he goes back to see what happened to them. Yussef committed a suicide attack in Hadera in 2001, Ashraf was killed in the battle of Jenin, Alla leads a resistance group. Juliano, who today is one of the leading actors in the region, looks back in time in Jenin, trying to understand the choices made by the children he loved and worked with. Eight years ago, the theatre was closed and life became static and paralysed. Shifting back and forth in time, the film reveals the tragedy and horror of lives trapped by the circumstances of the Israeli occupation.

New films from Grupo Alavío

Buy a DVD and support Grupo Alavío!

Grupo Alavío would like to send a special holiday greeting and give a special fund raising appeal. Keep the group’s video production and website Ágora TV up and running by purchasing a DVD. We are completely viewer-funded and volunteer based: your contributions help us to produce ground breaking videos from the Third World. Ágora TV provides a radical space for cutting edge video activists all over Latin America.

Ágora TV is a community television production collective that currently broadcasts over the internet. The project reaches a global audience of grassroots activists and citizens tired of status quo media. We work on issues including Argentina’s recovered factory movement, labor conflicts,social movements, indigenous struggles, and gender equality. The Buenos Aires-based video collective Grupo Alavío built the website (www.agoratv.org) in 2006 as an organizing tool and alternative media space for groups that would not otherwise have access to the airwaves.

For more than 15 years, Grupo Alavío has participated in working-class struggles and dedicated efforts to supporting them with social and political documentaries. Making technologies and skills accessible and available to exploited sectors by democratizing audiovisual production is a priority of Grupo Alavío. Through Ágora TV, Grupo Alavío is radically changing how media is created, managed, and distributed.

All films have English subtitles and are in U.S. DVD format. Shipped from the US.

Cost: $15 plus shipping for individuals, $30 plus shipping for universities

Contact: Marie Trigona

mtrigona@msn.com

FILMS available for purchase:

1. Chilavert Recovered, 38 minutes, 2004 Newly released withENGLISH SUBTITLES

Chilavert is a leading member of the 'recovered factories' movement which developed during the collapse in 2001 when many factories in Argentina were taken over by the workers. As the owner of a printing plant began to shut it down and turn it over to his creditors, the workers seized control and formed the Chilavert Cooperative. The documentary gives a realistic overview of the recuperation movement and workers’ self-management.

2. Obreras en lucha (The struggle of Brukman workers).Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

This documentary tells the story of the' recuperation' of Brukman textile factory in Buenos Aires by its workers, after its owners decided to close it down in December 2001. Workers (most of them women) decided to occupy the plant on December 18, 2001to protest their reducing and delayed salaries. Only two days after, the economic and political crisis exploded in Argentina.This documentary contains impressive images of the expulsion of the workers from the factory by the police in 2003, the massive popular protests which followed and the brutal repression with which Duhalde's government replied. it contains as well interviews with workers and images from the assemblies at the factory.

3. Hotel BAUEN: Workers’ Cooperative

20min, 2004 Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

The Hotel BAUEN was an emblematic symbol of neoliberalism in Argentina.The hotel was constructed in 1978, in the glory of the military dictatorship, with government loans and subsidies. In the height of Argentina’s economic meltdown, the owners ransacked the hotel and closed the hotel’s doors,leaving the workers in the streets. In March 21, 2003the workers decided to occupy the hotel. The workers cleaned up the hotel and slowly began to rent out services. With over 150workersemployed at the hotel, BAUEN hotel has become a symbol for the working class.

4. Zanon (Constructing resistance)

18min, 2003, Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Argentina’sPatagonian province of Neuquén,is home of the Zanon ceramics factory.In 2001 Zanon’s owner fired the workers and abandoned the factory forgreener pastures. After resisting outside the plant, the group ofworkers decide collectively to recuperate and put the plant to produce.Since 2001, the workers at Zanon have occupied and managed the plant,which is Latin America’s largest ceramics factory. In the film, Zanonceramists narrate their day-to-day work, struggles and hopes tocontinue production under worker control.

5. La Foresta belongs to the workers

52min, 2005 Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

The film tells the story of a group of workers who are fighting to recuperate La Foresta meatpacking plant in La Matanza, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires city. Most of the factory’s employees have worked their for decades, through the good times and bad times. In 1999, the plant went bust, a series of businessmen rented the facilities, making quick profits and then abandoning the factory for greener pastures. Grupo Alavío’s film follows the 70 workers who’ve put up a legal fight to keep their factory and start up production without a boss or owner,under worker-self management.

6. Music in Solidarity with Zanon,

90min, 2005 Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

This film was produced as part of a video work shop for the workers. Musicin solidarity with Zanon: musicians León Gieco, Rally Barrionuevo, Ciro(Ataque 77) and other artists performed a concert in December, 2004. The workers organized the super event, with more than 10,000 supporters from the community of Neuquén.

7. Argentina:30 years after the military dictatorship (compilation of short films)

Letter to the Military Junta, 6min, 1996

Rodolfo Walsh wrote the “Open Letter to the Military Junta”on the first anniversary of the military coup in 1977 reporting the tortures,mass killings, and thousands of disappearances. The political writer was disappeared just one day after the letter was distributed. This 6minute video essay reconstructs Walsh’s powerful report, imagery from the bloody dictatorship and the writer’s disappearance.

Escrache a Videla, 12min, 2006

Events to mark the 30 years since Argentina's military junta kicked off with an escrache or “exposure” protest against the coup's first dictator,Jorge Rafael Videla. Over 10,000 people participated in the protest in front of Videla's home, where he is under house arrest in connection with numerous charges of human rights abuse. Human rights group H.I.J.O.S. brought a crane and gave the ending remarks directly in front of Videla's fifth floor apartment.

Memories of Struggle and Resistance: Rio Santiago Ship Yard, 10min, 2006

The dictatorship attempted wiped out an entire generation of working-class resistance, which the nation decades later is still recovering.This year for the first time, over 1,500 workers from the Rio Santiago ShipYard in Buenos Aires commemorated the ship yard's 48 disappeared.

8. Compañeras

45min, 2005, Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Compañeras brings together four working women who give testimony of their lives and daily struggles. MAGDALENA,works on a small farm in the province of San Juan. KARINA is a train conductor. REGINA lives n VillaFiorito, she collects cardboard from the streets, classifies and then sells it. NINA is a militant from the 70’s, during which she exiled from Argentina to Nicaragua and participated in the Sandanista revolution. Stories that mix with other history, women who revindicate their identity as workers, but without easing to be mothers, without giving up the struggle, continuing to be compañeras.

9. The Face of Dignity, Memories of MTD Solano

58 minutes, 2002, Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

In the shambles of an economically ruined Argentina,a new practice of protest emerged, blockading roads. Since 1997, what is now known as the unemployed workers movement has taken root. Without access to the factory and utility of tools for liberation—strike,sabotage, and occupying the factory, unemployed workers sought out new practices for struggle. Unemployed confronted globalization by fighting for jobs. One of the most important experiences that emerged in these years was Unemployed Workers Movement-MTD (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados) in Solano (inside Quilmes, a city in the province of Buenos Aires). MTD's formation was based on the principles of horizontalism, direct democracy, autonomy from the state and power, and the integral political formation among members. Work, popular education, democratic debate of ideas, sharing life in the struggle for work, dignity and social change are some of this memory's content.

10. For a 6 hour workday

20min, 2004, Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reducing the workday to six hours with a salary increase for all workers would create jobs for more than 3 million unemployed and lift many out o poverty. Subway workers who have been organizing wildcat strikes for salary increases have spearheaded Argentina's movement for a six-hour workday. In 2003, subway workers (in all sectors from ticket office to train drivers) won a six-hour workday.Since this victory,subway workers, other labor conflicts, economists and unemployed workers organizations have formed a movement for a6-hour workday for all workers, with increased salaries.

11. Organizing Resistance (Chronicles of Freedom, Martin,Recuperating Our Work) Spanish with ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Chronicles of Freedom (organizing resistance) , 45min, 2002

June26, 2002two activists Darío Santillán-22 and Maximiliano Kosteki-25from Argentina’s unemployed workers’ movement were killed during a road blockade of Pueyrredón Bridge in police repression. The repression was part of a known and announced government plan to control growing social protest. 33 were wounded from lead bullets, 160detained and hundreds injured from rubber bullets. Unquestionably,the deaths and repression have left an unforgettable mark on the movement—generating internal debates and self-criticisms. Chronicles of Freedom includes interviews on the right to identity, self-defense and organizing to confront state repression.

Martín, 2002, 7 minutes

Synopsis: Martín, 27 years old, Argentine, brother, compañero from the barrio Floridai n Solano was killed during a fight with a neighbor. The experimental narration explores inner-violence and questions the absurdity of the system’s violence that is imposed on us.

Recuperando nuestro trabajo, 2003, 18min

Argentina's worker occupied factory movement has been an example of resistance for workers all over the world. In response to the process of deindustrialization and flexible labor markets, thousands of workers have said enough to exploitation of the working class by bosses and owners.