Cornell Cinema, in conjunction with Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning and Ithaca College’s Department of Sociology, present a series examining diverse people’s grassroots movements around the globe, films which highlight efforts and examples of creating alternative social organizations, communities and forums where the principles of equality and justice are being made material.
These films offer a critical perspective into the current moment of economic, political and environmental crises whose global resonances are just becoming clear. By examining concrete examples of the alternatives which have emerged from grassroots movements in response to these threats, these films offer contrasts to the mainstream palliates that all but maintain the status quo.
The series begins in India, with the 2002 documentary Words on Water, a look at the long, non-violent resistance against the massive Narmada Valley dam project. For more than 15 years, the people in the central Indian Valley fought the damming of their river and the flooding of more than 37,000 hectares of farmland and forest, causing the displacement of hundreds of villages and hundreds of thousands of people. While their struggle has not been entirely successful, their dedication to peaceful methods brought them support from all around the world.
The series stays in India for Rumble in Mumbai, a documentary about the World Social Forum held there in January 2004. Over 100,000 attend this annual Forum in search of building solidarity and a better world. Featuring eloquent speeches by Arundhati Roy, Mustafa Barghouti, Jeremy Corbyn, and Irene Khan, Rumble in Mumbai is packed with high-caliber critiques of neo-liberalism gone awry, and indictments of globalization’s ill effects, and gives platform to marginalized voices: Dalit rights, South Asian LGBT issues, handloom weaver unionization, communalism and sectarianism, the plight of Palestinians living in the shadow of a new apartheid wall, and more.
Bishar Blues examines resistance and alternatives from the perspective of religion and spirituality. In Bengal, which is split between India and Bangladesh on historic religious lines, the ecumenical sufi ‘Fakirs’ show that these differences may be transcended in their grassroots spirituality. The Fakirs practice an indigenous form of Islam called Marfat, which holds that there is no higher entity than Man, and they search for Allah in each other. Marfat is passed on in an oral tradition, and Bishar Blues undertakes its journey to understand it, and the Fakirs, through their songs.
The series ends with The Fourth World War, the product of filming inside grassroots movements on five continents. Produced through a network of independent media and activist groups on the front lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, and Korea, the film documents anti-globalization activism from Seattle to Genoa, and reflects on the War on Terror in New York, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Post-screening discussions will follow all of the screenings and be led by Gayatri Menon (Development Sociology, CU), Abdulrazak Karriem (City and Regional Planning, CU), Alicia Swords (Sociology, IC) and Andreas Hernandez (Sociology, IC).
Special thanks to producers/distributors Under Construction and Big Noise Films for their assistance with this series, as well as Andreas Hernandez.
Source: http://cinema.cornell.edu
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To order copies of the films, Words on Water, Rumble in Mumbai, Bishar Blues, write to us : underconstruction@magiclanternfoundation.org
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