We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, March 29, 2013

Portraits of Greece in Crisis: a new documentary project

Click here to access article by Tamara van der Putten from Reflections on a Revolution.

The article provides a preview of a film documentary in process that gives us a view of current living conditions in Greece. We see in crisis-ridden Greece the same phenomenon we always see when the capitalist system breaks down and causes the disintegration of entire societies: the rise of fascist parties espousing racist, xenophobic ideas to distract attention away from the real sources of the crisis. However, as this preview shows, the people are engaged in self-organizing projects to insure their survival and to counter ruling class propaganda, the hooliganism of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, and the austerity policies of Europe's financial elites.
Portraits of Greece in Crisis is a series of independent and self-funded mini-documentaries about the Greek crisis. An ongoing project that was created in order to fulfill the need for an alternative crisis narrative, against an unprecedented big media propaganda.
Portraits of people through the daily routine of which the Greek crisis is being described, portraits of institutions that are collapsing and of conceptions that are being distorted during a crisis that is economic, political, cultural, moral and social.