Three-Day Film Fest for the Flying Squirrel!
Oct. 24, 6:30PM – 9:00PM (granito de arena)
Oct. 25, 6:30PM – 9:00PM (un poquito de tanta verdad)
Oct. 27, 3:00PM – 5:30PM (Brad)
$2 / film, no one turned away for lack of funds.
All proceeds to benefit the Flying Squirrel Community Space (285 Clarissa St.).
Rochester Indymedia and the Flying Squirrel Community Space are hosting a three-day film fest highlighting neoliberal trade policy in Mexico, its effect on public education, and resistance to these policies culminating in the documentary screening of “Brad” about independent media center journalist Brad Will who captured his own murder on tape by Mexican paramilitaries on Oct. 27, 2006.
The other two films, Granito de Arena and Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, are about the privatization of education in Mexico as well as the revolt of the masses in 2006 when Oaxaqueños rose up against their governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, and nonviolently blockaded Oaxaca after he authorized brutality and murder to break the 25-year teachers’ strike.
Description of films:
Thursday, Oct. 24, 6:30PM – 9:00PM
Granito de Arena: For over 20 years, global economic forces have been dismantling public education in Mexico, but always in the constant shadow of popular resistance… Granito de Arena is the story of that resistance – the story of hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers whose grassroots, non-violent movement took Mexico by surprise, and who have endured brutal repression in their 25-year struggle for social and economic justice in Mexico’s public schools. Completed in 2005, Granito de Arena provides context and background to the unprecedented popular uprising that exploded in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006.
Friday, Oct. 25, 6:30PM – 9:00PM:
Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad: When the people of Oaxaca decided they’d had enough of bad government, they didn’t take their story to the media. They took the media. In the summer of 2006, a broad-based, non-violent, popular uprising exploded in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Some compared it to the Paris Commune, while others called it the first Latin American revolution of the 21st century. But it was the people’s use of the media that truly made history in Oaxaca. A 90-minute documentary, A Little Bit of So Much Truth captures the unprecedented media phenomenon that emerged when tens of thousands of school teachers, housewives, indigenous communities, health workers, farmers, and students took 14 radio stations and one TV station into their own hands, using them to organize, mobilize, and ultimately defend their grassroots struggle for social, cultural, and economic justice.
Sunday, Oct. 27, 3:00PM – 5:30PM:
Brad: When Mexican paramilitary forces shot Brad Will in the chest, killing him, his camera fell from his hands. But it didn’t stop recording. It continued moving from hand to hand, telling Brad’s story, as well as the story of the movement of movements that he was a part of. From the squats of New York to the forests of Oregon, from the anti-globalization protests in Seattle, Prague, Quebec to the popular uprising in Oaxaca, Brad’s camera paints us a picture of what his life was about, and what so many of his friends continue to struggle for.