Cultures Of Resistance: A Review

Conn Hallinan
July 25, 2012
Dispatches From The Edge
Submitted to Portside by the Author


"Cultures Of Resistance"
Directed by Iara Lee
73-minute documentary
Caipirinha Productions

When we think of "resistance," what mostly comes to mind
is guerrilla warfare: Vietnamese closing in on the
besieged French at Dien Bien Phu; Angolans ambushing
Portuguese troops outside of Luanda; Salvadorans waging a
war of attrition against their military oligarchy. But
resistance doesn't always involve roadside bombs or
military operations. Sometimes it is sprayed on a Teheran
wall, or rapped in a hip-hop song in Gaza. It can be a
poem in Medellin, Colombia--arguably one of the most
dangerous cities in the world--or come from a guitar shaped
like an AK-47. In short, there are few boundaries or
strictures when it comes to the imagination and creativity
that people bring to the act of defiance.

That art can be powerful stuff is the central message that
Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee brings to her award-winning
documentary "Cultures of Resistance." Her previous films
include "Synthetic Pleasures," about the impact of
technology on mass culture, and "Modulations," on the
evolution of electronic music. Her most recent film is
"The Suffering Grasses," about the civil war in Syria.

Lee began "Cultures" in 2003, just before the Bush
administration invaded Iraq, and her six-year odyssey
takes her through five continents and 35 countries: Burma,
Brazil, Rwanda, Iran, Burundi, Israel, Nigeria, the Congo,
and Liberia, to name a few. In each case she profiles a
grassroots movement that embodies the philosophy of
non-violent resistance to everything from political
oppression to occupation.

Lee, a co-founder of the Cultures of Resistance Network,
is a social activist in her own country, where she has
aided Amazonian Indians resisting the destruction of their
lands and organized against the reign of violence--from
both criminals and the police--in Brazil's slums or
Favelas. She is also a member of the Greenpeace
Foundation, a member of the advisory board of the National
Geographic Society, and a part of the world-wide campaign
to ban cluster munitions.

She was also on the MV Mavi Marmara in 2010, the
Gaza-bound Turkish ship boarded by Israeli commandos. Nine
human rights campaigners were killed in the confrontation,
and Lee and her crew managed to smuggle out video footage
of the incident. However, U.S. media outlets refused to
air it. Lee's view of the world is not the sometimes
distant lens of many documentarians, but the prism of an
activist.

"Cultures" is a surprising film. Lee is a strong supporter
of non-violence, but "Cultures of Resistance" is hardly
about how hugs will free us all. She recognizes that
resistance in the face of oppression--or indifference--can
spark anger. The film begins with a remarkable segment on
the Amazon's Kayapo tribe resisting the construction of
the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River. At one point the
Indians' frustration boils over and they attack an
Eletrobras official--the company is the largest utility
company in Latin America--with clubs and fists, tearing off
some of his clothes and sending him off in bloody retreat.
The unspoken point of the segment is that if non-violent
resistance is ignored, things can turn ugly.

This is a lovely film, but there is darkness in it as
well, some of it quite disturbing. Racks of skulls line a
hut in Rwanda, where some 800,000 people were massacred in
1994, and a deserted church in that country is filled with
piles of clothes, invoking the memory of Auschwitz and
Buchenwald. But the message of the segment is not death,
but life, and how post-genocide communities are coming
together to rebuild.

Many of the profiles come from Africa: Nigeria, where
local people are up against international oil cartels and
their own corrupt government; The Congo, where a civil war
over minerals has killed more than five million people;
Liberia, where former child soldiers are being integrated
back into post-civil war society.

But Lee casts her nets widely. The "Teheran Rats" are
graffiti artists who wage clandestine war with spray cans
in Iran. Hip-hop artists in Israel say they "sing rap for
people who don't listen to rap." Poets from around the
world gather in Colombia: "Poetry does not overthrow
governments, but it does open consciousness and hearts,"
one poet says.

Lee has an eye for beauty and drama. "Cultures" has a
clear point of view, but it is not overly didactic,
preferring to use juxtaposition and interviews--and lots
and lots of good music--to make its points. A simple black
and white shot of a very young child holding a
semi-automatic pistol does a much better job of
highlighting the problems of violence in the favelas than
would some expert pumping out numbers. Not that the
numbers are not there, just that Lee first gets the
viewers attention through the art: information follows.

One of the films messages is that cultures of
resistance--those that have the audacity to say "no"--have
things in common. Leadership is not something that resides
in one group of people or in a given country, but is
everywhere that people dig their heels in and fight back.
The Buddhist monks that challenged the military
dictatorship in Burma share common ground with the Occupy
Wall Street movement. Israelis opposed to the occupation
of Palestinian lands, and Palestinians resisting the
spread of Israeli settlements, meet in the medium of rap.

"We don't have planes, missiles or white phosphorous" Lee
told journalist Lisa Mullenneaux, "but we have our freedom
to resist oppression. To sing, dance, and express how we
feel about world politics. Global solidarity is the only
thing that can promote real change."

In a sense, Lee turns Emma Goldman's slogan "If I can't
dance, I don't want to be in your revolution" into
"dancing can be revolution."

Conn Hallinan can be read at
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and
middleempireseries.wordpress.com

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