[PAA-Discuss] Sixty Cameras Against The War by Julie Talen - Amazing Human Ingenuity in action

[Jessica Wilson]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-537395392629905507

"SIXTY CAMERAS AGAINST THE WAR," a 27-minute film that uses simultaneous
images to chronicle the powerful antiwar rally on Feb. 15, 2003 in New York
City, premiered during the 2004 Republican National Convention in two film
series: the Imagine Festival and the Whitney Museum's 'War! Protest in
America 1965 - 2004." The Imagine Festival version debuted Sunday, Aug. 29th
at 9pm at the Pioneer Theater (155 East 3rd St. Box Office: 212-254-3300). A
longer version of "60 CAMERAS" ran as a work-in-progress for two hours every
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during the Whitney film series, co-curated by
Chrissie Iles and artist Sam Durant, from Aug, 25 - Oct. 24 2004. This
process culminated in a final 2-hour version screening the weekend of Oct.
24th. Award-winning filmmaker Julie Talen (PRETEND, 2003) initially asked
people she encountered with cameras during the rally itself, organized by
United for Peace and Justice, in which NYC joined the world's largest global
peace protest, some 15 million people, against the impending war in Iraq.
After the event, footage was found through alternative media collectives
Indymedia, Paper Tiger TV and Free Speech TV, and groups like New Yorkers
Say No To War and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Cut together in grids
of two, three, five and as many as twenty squares in a technique Talen calls
multichannel narrative, the piece contrasts the peaceful, if chilly, crowds
on First Avenue and 51st St., enjoying speakers like Susan Sarandon, Danny
Glover and Bishop Tutu, with the frustration of thousands trapped on Second
and Third by barricaded cross streets guarded by cops. By 12:30, the NYPD
was using mounted police to push crowds west and north — away from the
rally, where protestors stood in pens that still had room. Ultimately, the
multiple cameras capture protestors shoved onto sidewalks, ridden into by
horses, doused with pepper spray and arrested as the NYPD methodically
cleaved the protest in two, block by block, in clear violation of the
Constitutional right to peaceably assemble. Thousands simply rallied where
they were, filling Second and Third with chanting, beating drums, even
dancing, and shutting down the East Side of Manhattan for much of that day.
On two cross streets, determined antiwar protestors broke through the
barricades after hours of waiting.

-- 
Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new
worlds... to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.

-- Ellison S. Onizuka
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