The Signs of Change Weekend of Screenings and Discussion brings together films and videos from the past 40 years that raise questions about what it means to participate in both cultural production and political action. The goal of the weekend is to provide a forum for sustained discussion of political documentary, its history, its uses, its aesthetics and politics. Taking as its focus the relation between moving images and social movements, we hope this weekend will prompt participants to think about the form and function of documentary images used in conjunction with left-wing movement building. Unlike a festival, each session is organized with equal emphasis on the screening and the discussion and analysis. Rather than have question and answer sessions with individual media makers after each screening, we have invited a number of mediamakers, scholars, and activists to engage with the issues and questions that the various programs raise in an effort to facilitate a discussion that will build over the course of this three day event. The weekend is open to all who are interested in the social use and impact of film and video and we hope that all who can will join us for films, food and excellent conversation.

Saturday, Oct 11th at EXIT ART 475 Tenth ave between 36th and 37th street, NY, NY
There will be a $5 admission charge for 7:30 screening

4 -5:30  Revolutionary Worker's Struggles on Film
Finally Got the News, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1970, rt 55   (Shown on 16mm)
McStrike-Paris Victor Muh, 2005, rt 4min

A Very Big Train Called The Other Campaign / Un tren muy grande que se llama: La Otra Campaña 
(2006, 39:00 minutes, Chiapas Media Project, Spanish with English subtitles, courtesy of Chiapas Media Project/Promedios)
This video was produced by indigenous video makers from four of the five Zapatista Caracoles in Chiapas, Mexico. It documents the 2006 planning and organizing of the Other Campaign. This was a campaign by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to build a self-governing national infrastructure. For over a decade, the Chiapas Media Project has partnered with indigenous and campesino (farm worker) communities in Chiapas and Guerrero, Mexico to provide video production and computer equipment and training.

Crowd Bites Wolf
(2001, 22:00 minutes, Guerillavision, NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0)
Part fictive-narrative, part protest-documentary, Crowd Bites Wolf tells the story of the protest against the 2001 meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Prague, Czech Republic.

Finally Got the New
(1970, 55:00 minutes, 16mm, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner, courtesy of the American Friends’ Service Committee)
A Newsreel crew heads to Detroit to document the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The League decides to take the means of production into their own hands to represent themselves and their struggle. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers came out of the autonomous organizing of Black unions in Detroit-based automotive plants which included DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) and CRUM (Chrysler Revolutionary Union Movement). The League critiqued the racist practices of the United Auto Workers and called for an analysis of the role of the Black working class in revolutionary struggles in the United States.

Five Days for Peace (US Premiere)*
(1973, 37:00 minutes, Nils Vest, courtesy of Christiania, Copenhagen)
In Five Days for Peace, the members of SOLVOGNEN — the theater collective from the squatted free town of Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark — dress as North American Treaty Organization (NATO) troops and perform “military” operations in Copenhagen during the NATO Summit.
*FILMMAKER WILL BE PRESENT

Fourth World War
(2003, 76:00 minutes, Big Noise Films, courtesy of Big Noise Films)
This documentary takes viewers around the world--Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, Italy, Afghanistan, and Iraq--to reveal people fighting against war and corporate domination. Big Noise Films is a volunteer media collective that was first established to document the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico and has continued making social movement media ever since.

Happy Anniversary, San Francisco, March 20-21, 2003*
(2004, 4:30 min, 2004, Benj Gerdes)
This  video was shot part of a collective effort to videotape anti-war direct action protests in San Francisco during the first two days of the war on Iraq.  Most of the video shot over this two day period was initially used as documentation for legal rather than media/documentary purposes.  In this edit, every clip is the same length.  They are shown in the order they were recorded in order to challenge more common activist editing techniques that imitate mainstream television pacing, and thus ask something different of the audience.
*FILMMAKER WILL BE PRESENT

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
(1993, 01:59:00 minutes, Alanis Obomsawin, courtesy of Bullfrog Films)
This documentary covers the two and half month armed stand-off between members of the Mohawk Nation, the Québec police, and the Canadian army. The Mohawks are fighting to keep their land as a commons against the development interests of a private golf course.

McStrike-Paris
(4:05 min, 2005, Victor Muh Precarity DVD -Magazine Made  In collaboration with: P2Pfightsharing Crew www.fightsharing.net, Greenpepper Project, Amsterdam wwww.greenpeppermagazine.org, and Candida TV, Roma www.candidatv.tv)
McDonald's workers go on strike in Paris, occupying their workplace (a McDonald's restaurant) for six months.

Movement Media: Radical Form/Radical Politics
The Movement Media program will include selections from:
Solanas and Getino  Hour of The Furnaces
Adam Curtis             The Power of Nightmares
Chris Marker            Grin without a Cat
DIVATV

Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress / Sanrizuka: Dainitoride No Hitobito
(1971, 02:23:00 minutes, Shinsuke Ogawa/Ogawa Productions, Japanese with English subtitles, courtesy of the Athénée Français Cultural Center)
Introduced by Sabu Kohso, Japan-born writer and activist, and Barbara Hammer, filmmaker.
'In Japan, guerilla film activity reached high intensity during the war (Vietnam).The use made of Japan as a conduit for Vietnam war supplies generated strong anti-government feelings and many 'protest films.'...It now saw such powerful films as the Sanrizuka series- three feature length films. The heavy air traffic through Japan-swollen by the war-hap prompted a 1966 decision to build a new international airport for Tokyo.The area chosen, Sanrizuka, was occupied by farmers who were determined to block seizures of their lands. For four years, the film maker Shinsuke Ogawa documented their struggle, which reached its climax in the third film, The Peasants of the Second Fortress. Here we see resistance turning into a pitched battle with riot police as farm women chain themselves to impoverished stockades, and students join the struggle for anti-government, anti-war motives. Ogawa, patiently recording the growth of resistance...achieved an extraordinary social document, and one of the most potent of protest films' - Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, (Oxford University Press, 1974)
Ogawa Productions was a Japanese filmmaking collective that was founded in the 1960’s, It was directed by Ogawa Shinsuke. After making films about the student movement, the collective moved to Sanrizuka to cover the struggle against the building of the Narita Airport. While there, they made eight films covering the struggle.