Magnificent7 Diary/ 6
The Riahi Brothers had visited the festival before. Arash presented his ”Exile Family Movie” in 2007 in which his younger brother Arman is an important character as the film (the title says it all) deals with a family that meets in Saudi Arabia after 20 years of separation and without the possibility to get to the Iran most of the family left. Now the two works out of Vienna, Austria.
The inspiration to ”Everyday Rebellion”, that was last night’s screening in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 festival, came naturally from the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 that demonstrated against Ahmadinejad. The actions of the movement, as Arash said it, was violently cracked down but the brothers saw other movements coming up that had no leaders, were non-violent – they saw a pattern and decided to make a film. ”We wanted to make our contribution” and ”help the movements spread through a film that will go in cinemas, on dvd’s, with a website (link below) and an upcoming mobile application”. They saw several movements being connected, when they started filming the Occupy movement in the US, they met with Srdja Popovic, who was part of the Otpor that went against Milosevic, and who is a central character in the film describing the tactics of non-violent movements all over the world.
In the Q&A that I report from in this report – full house, around 70 of the almost 2000 spectators took part – Popovic formulated that ”those movements are the only way to change the world… it’s not facebook. It’s step-by-step actions with a will to change”, he said, and complimented the Riahi Brothers for ”a beautiful and inspirational film”.
Who are financing these actions, was the question that came up in the VIP room of the Sava Centre. And why is this not in the film? ”Our film is about the tactics, we did not look for answers”, and added his frustration that there are always someone that looks for ”the ones behind”.
… and then it became all Serbian in the room with no discussion about the film itself and pretty difficult for me to follow as the moderator Zoran Popovic stopped moderating to have looong interventions related to the subject of the film…as I see it missing the point that this is an informative film with a message and deep respect for young people all over world, who take action in different ways that are outlined in the film…well you can’t have it all.
The film of tonight is ”My Stuff” by Petri Luukkainen. See below.
http://www.everydayrebellion.net/the-project/
http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/Program_eng.html
http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/2007_eng.php?film=1
