Right away the movie grabs you with the filmmaker's description of the dream that inspired the movie, in which he is forced on to a cattle car with many others and is being taken to a concentration camp. Velcrow realized that it this is the sort of thing he always thought only happened to "them," but is now happening to him. Following this dream he decided to stop hiding from his growing sense of fear at the events of the world, and instead to look deeply into them, to seek out the places where terrible things have happened or are happening and see what he can learn.
It is an exciting and hopeful movie with many touching and inspiring moments. As it was an opening weekend presentation, there were speeches by various individuals before and after, and Velcrow Ripper did a Q&A session after the movie. He seems like a bright, sensitive man. He revealed that the movie is the first part of a trilogy. The second one will be called "Fierce Light" and the final film will be deliciously titled "Evolve or Dissolve" and will make the case that our current worldwide crisis is pushing us to a point of potential transformation or catastrophic failure.
I was also quite impressed by the kind of "viral marketing" being organized to promote this film, similar to what was done with The Corporation, another local documentary I loved, which also has an important message for the world. This sort of film and the movement in support of it help me stay hopeful for the growing potential for transformation around the world. And hope is what this movie is all about. At the end of the Q&A session Velcrow left us with the following quote by Cornell West:
Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown, and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane – and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.
3 comments:
I've watched this movie for religion class, but we've only gotten to the first story, which was about a woman in India who had lost her family to this deadly gas leak. She even had to watch her own child die in her arms.
Your blog gave me an idea that this woman is somehow going to find some hope, and try to live a better life.
I'm watching this movie in religion class, but we still haven't finished it yet. It is a very sad, and thoguthful story. It makes me feel so bad for all of those people who lost their lives or their family members due to the gas leak. They have been through something that no one should have to go through. I am proud of the people who stayed strong and fought through the hard times, never losing hope. If i were them, i probably would have given up after seeing so many die around me.
Your blog helped me understand more about the hardtimes that the people in this movie had to go through, and how horrible it muct have been for them. You helped me undertsnad how it must have been so near impossible for them to not to lose hope, but somehow they managed their way thorugh this horrible event.
I currently am watching this movie in my world religion class. I find it a very very sad story. When I read your blog and as I was watching the film, it made me feel so bad for those people. I know that I cant say i know what they have been through.. nobody really can. Because nobody has really experienced anything like that before. But, watching or let alone just hearing about this disaster is a look at how badly some people have to suffer. And it helps you realize how fortunate we are.
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