Resist

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About the Project

Marc’s thoughts on ‘Resist’?

For me, there is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more crucial than the subject of resistance.

In today’s globalised world we are all interconnected. All of our futures depend on the successes or failures of resistance movements.

We’re exploring the moment where people declare ‘there is a limit’, where they are defending the line. But we also want to make films that express that people can’t exist in a constant state of resistance but need to simultaneously create alternatives to what they are resisting. When these positive alternatives are achieved, will ‘resist’ actually cease to encapsulate the project?

When I began thinking about the project, I was really setting out to solve something that was a bit of a mystery.

In a world that is clearly in a state, what real power does one person actually have to be able to do anything about it?

Whilst we think of ourselves here as free and progressive, our political power has really been relegated to the choices we make as consumers.

Knowing that the world is in such a state, why is it that we’re not really very angry with the people who cause the mess?

The answer is depressingly simple. It’s mainly us, or ‘the system’ that we live under, that is responsible for a lot of that mess! Being from the rich part of the world, we think that when things go bad we can just build higher walls, protect ourselves from the chaos, and leave behind the others who can’t afford to survive. We don’t have enough of an incentive to actually change the way things are, because really, living in the rich part of the world, things are quite nice. The suffering goes on somewhere else – it’s hard to see how we’re connected to it in any way.

But of course when you break it down, we’re deeply connected. From trade to climate change to migration to land rights to wars to oil – the list is endless.

In our part of the world, on our side of the wall, a massive shift in mindset would be needed to understand that it is actually our system that is the problem.

But in other parts of the world, this is really very obvious!

So to answer my initial question of how much power do people really have to change things, I realised I had to look for people who are actually fighting our system. Who literally resist to exist.

Resistance is their primary way of moving forward. It’s the only way they’ll get fundamental human rights, or any social or economic justice. Really, it is a fight to be free of us, a fight to live with dignity.

So in the first of our films, Gael seeks out these life affirming people who are making change happen, who are transforming things for themselves, who see humanity and nature as something more meaningful than just a commodity. The power of the project is that the complexity and enormity of peoples’ struggles will be expressed through highly intimate personalised stories. It will reveal that seemingly disconnected people are in fact bound by their conviction that what is happening on the world today is wrong.

Resist challenges the assumption that positive change will ever come from the top down. It offers a different set of lenses through which to see that as individuals, we do have power to change things.

About the Film

Why Gael Garcia Bernal?

I instinctively thought he would be interested in the idea and we have discussed the journey he wants to make in great detail over the last year. The film won’t be Gael telling us what to do ‘about things’ because he doesn’t pretend to have any answers. Our journey will be one of questioning and learning, rather than telling.

Gael wants to explore what lies beyond the traditional discourse of confrontation. People can’t exist in a constant state of resistance but need to simultaneously creative alternatives to what they are resisting.

Marc, as director, what led you to make a films about resistance?

My early films were about so-called ‘outsiders’. The first for Channel 4 was about the people who first set up the Burning Man festival, whose roots and inspirations came from the Beat generation, the Hippies, the Situationists, the Internet pioneers. I was fortunate enough to interview Stewart Brand, Howard Rheingold and journalists from Wired magazine. I was reading Guy Debord, Ken Kessey, Hunter S Thompson, Hakim Bey, John Berger, Naomi Klein, Adbusters.

At the same time the Zapatistas and the anti-globalisation movement were making headlines and i started seeing connections, timelines, between all these things. This was in 1999 – i was involved with the Indymedia network, interested in how to broadcast beyond the mainstream, and of course the internet was growing exponentially. All these issues just became one for me – history, culture, technology and of course, resistance.

All this led to a film for the BBC on the global protest movement in 2000. It was then that I met the musician Nitin Sawhney and we embarked on a journey to make an audio visual album about what ‘development’ meant to different people around the world which led to concert tours as a VJ with his band. VJing with all this political material was liberating. It broke the conventions of ‘balance’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘linear narrative’ and was dependent on digital and smaller equipment that could be taken ‘on the road’.

The next film i made was about indigenous peoples’ views on genetic engineering and this opened my mind to a world view i knew very little about. Produced by a Native American, i was welcomed into the homes and lives of people who’s ways of seeing solidified my connection to resistance and gave me a deeper understanding of the injustices and exploitation that have been imposed by ‘the west’ for centuries. The connections between colonialism, globalisation and power structures were crystalised.

And ‘in the background’ to all this was the twin towers, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the non stop discussions on empire building, oil, insurgents, voter apathy, making poverty history, Palestine, Chavez, Bush … the list is endless. It seemed that anyone who resisted neoliberalism was being cast as a terrorist.

Social Justice is not something that is just delivered or produced. I want to make a film that really explores resistance – not casting people as victims, but rather that shows that ‘it is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees’. For millions of people worldwide the system will not change in their lifetime, yet they do not concede defeat. Real people at the risk of being alienated, hurt and killed, still fight back. To me, resistance is the human spirit expressing itself at its most creative, at its most instinctive.

How do you envisage directing the film with Gael?

Essentially this is a road movie, a journey of discovery for Gael, and hence the audience.
We don’t intend for it to be a political campaign film or a film about victims, but rather an exploration of the universal spirit of resistance.
After oppression and resistance, what comes next?
It is a search for people who best exemplify this spirit, who we can learn from, who are redefining the social issues of our time. Will people feel a sense of attachment to the stories in the film because they are sharing in something that is fundamentally human, that is universal.
Inevitably the film will reveal that oppression and resistance are in fact 2 sides of the same coin.

Because my creative career has been in directing documentaries, working closely with musicians as a VJ, as well as creating immersive multi screen art installations, i imagine the film to be a very rich aural and visual experience. The sound design and music will be as integral as the picture.

The film will be shot slowly with consideration like a good photo, the composition of each frame will ‘say something’, visual juxtapositions will sometimes speak louder than words, and rich colours and close up textures will enhance the dignity, binding the people to their ‘place’.

The visual direction of the film will be inspired by a deeper feeling we have. That we have forgotten the need to dream, the need to take risks, the need to sacrifice. We are comfortable with being comfortable, with being passive, wanting to live protected behind walls utilising CCTV to see what is going on beyond those walls.

We think the capability to resist lies dormant in all of us and it is this that we’ll be thinking about ‘in the background’ when directing the film.

About this Website

Why have you set up a website before the film has even been made?

The website is the core of the project, and the film is just one element. We see the website as a place for all types of creative ideas to resonate. It allows us to be inclusive rather than paternalistic in the development of the project.

We really wanted to ‘open source’ our research. Of course we have a professional researcher on board and we are beginning a process of looking at stories from all over the world. But we have set up the multilingual website at this research stage in the hope that people around the globe will be able to help us.

People can anonymously send us stories of resistance, or make them publicly available for others to add further information. We also have forums on the issues, struggles and locations.

It’s not a traditional way of gathering research for a film, but we’re really excited to see what comes of it. It feels much more interesting than just having one researcher on their own journey of discovery! Normally discussions and opinions come after the film has been made, at screenings, on blogs and forums, but why not hear what people have to contribute at the research stage?

The challenge will be filtering through these contributions and working out which stories best interconnect.

Why have you decided to spread the site worldwide?

We really want to show that resistance, that the human spirit, transcends borders, nationalities, religions and gender. When push comes to shove, all humans are capable of resistance.

If the leaders of the world perceive the whole planet as a place from which they can extract natural resources and use as a marketplace, then the story of resistance is inevitably a global story too.

The power of this project is that the complexity and enormity of peoples’ struggles and hopes will be expressed through highly intimate personalised tales, that seemingly disconnected people are in fact bound by their conviction that what is happening in the world today is wrong. Whilst the struggles are distant geographically, they are connected in that the needs for dignity, for justice, for survival, are natural instincts.

What is the ‘Interviews’ section on the website about?

The interviews are edited parts of our research. We are asking many writers and political thinkers about their views on power structures, resistance and the future, and rather than keep this private, we wanted to share what we’re learning.

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