(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
This year's Film from the South festival has created The critical room, a new forum for current documentaries that wants to focus on conflict lines and problem areas through seminars, debates and films. This is a political room and a space that festival manager Lasse Skagen will also exist after the festival. On Tuesday, this project could embellish its launch with the world premiere on The Fourth World War, a film that bears witness to the worldwide and boundless struggle against global capitalism.
A lot of sound
At the Park Theater I meet director Richard Rowley and Ståle Sandberg, the two fiery souls who through the media collective Big Noise have released films that Zapatista, Habana Libre and now The Fourth World War. Rowley and Sandberg met at United World College in New Mexico, the international school that has now received a Norwegian diploma in Fjaler in Sogn.
- We were searching for snipe cubs who wanted to save the world, says Sandberg, and explains how they met the Zapatistas on their way home from outdoor toilet construction in Nicaragua. Here they laid the foundation for the Big Noise Films that were formed to distribute the film Zapatista which was recorded in Chiapas province of Mexico in 1995.
- This became our own version of Paris 68 where we found a kind of answer to the question of what we as white middle class boys could accomplish. The movie Zapatista became an underground classic when we toured the United States, and it drew full houses through several performances at the Cinemateket in Oslo, says Sandberg proudly.
Opposite to CNN
With The Fourth World War however, his gaze is raised beyond the specific situation in Mexico and Rowley gesticulates enthusiastically as he tries to explain that the Fourth World War is a war without fronts and without a defined battlefield. This is the total war in which even the enemy is difficult to give a concrete face, but Rowley has fallen down Corporate Globalization as a key concept for what forces are being fought against. Regardless, there are no enemy pictures Rowely is keen on painting. This film is more of an insight into the struggle that is being waged in the streets, in the towns and villages.
- It's not about them, but about us, says Rowley, and continue.
- This film is an attempt to combat fragmentation and isolation. We want to make connections and show connections. It is not a distant objective portrayal, it is a weapon. More than a documentary, this film is meant to be a connection-forming machine.
Rowley's camera takes us on a journey through five continents where he has been able to observe the war up close over the last couple of years. We are among Zapatists in Mexico, homeless in South Africa, unemployed in South Korea. We are walking with protesters in the streets of Genoa during the mass demonstration in 2001, in Quebec during the FTAA summit that same year, and among furious crowds in economically distressed Argentina. We become eyewitnesses to the invasion of Jenin and throw stones at the intifada in occupied Palestine.
All the way is Rowley with the camera in the center and participating in the events.
- The subjective and participatory is important as an alternative to the objective and distant media coverage that is the others utensils, Rowley explains.
- This film is the opposite of the CNN wars as films from planes, and the nose tips of bombs. I film where the bombs fall and want to convey the feeling of being on the spot.
Belongs to the fight
In South Africa, we see Rowley being lifted up against the police as a shield for protesters who know they are not going to punch a white man with a camera. In Palestine, the shots seem to almost penetrate a camera that was often used as a weapon. Regardless of where Rowley is, he creates a sense of closeness to the situation, while at the same time the different scenes and scenes show an equality and context that will tell us that this is a global war being fought everywhere.
- This film does not belong to me, Rowley emphasizes.
- it is the result of a network and a collaboration that is global. These are the ones this movie belongs to and these are the ones it's made for.
Propaganda?
Rowley has no trouble seeing his new film as a kind of propaganda and hopes the film can have some recruiting effect. In the United States, however, it is difficult to come up with this kind of radical expression after 11. September.
- The worst thing is not the institutionalized terror against dissenting expressions and positions, but the general cooling of the political climate. Just walking around the streets of New York feels depressed by a violent mental atmosphere that creates fear and paralysis of action. People withdraw and avoid any form of confrontation, says Rowley and confirms that he and Sandberg suddenly receive a type of attention from the authorities that feels oppressive.
- We are clearly on one or another list. We are stopped at airports and held back. In addition, we and Big Noise have now got the tax authorities on their necks with a bill of 35.000 dollars, which is ridiculously oversized in relation to our income, a bill that seems more politically than economically motivated.
The Fourth World War is shown last time during Film from the South Saturday 18. October at 15.15 at the Film House.
