Hacker Cinema
How to Start a Revolution
2012 · Film · documentary · 85 min
Directed by Ruaridh Arrow
HOW TO START A REVOLUTION is the remarkable untold story of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gene Sharp, the world's leading expert on non-violent revolution. This new film (from first time director Ruaridh Arrow) reveals how Gene's work has given a new generation of revolutionary leaders the weapons needed to overthrow dictators. It shows how his 198 steps to non-violent regime change have inspired uprisings from Serbia to Ukraine and from Egypt to Syria and how his work has spread across the globe in an unstoppable wave of profound democratic change. How To Start A Revolution is the story of the power of people to change their world, the modern revolution and the man behind it all.
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Great question!
Patricio Guzman: La batalla de chile, Nostalgia de la luz, El boton de nacar (i.e. everything I've seen so far)
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson - First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbours, Black Harvest (Trilogy about a half-white, half-native New Guinean farmer)
Werner Herzog - (apart from those already mentioned) Lessons of Darkness, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams
Everything by Scott Noble - watch on metanoia-films.org/
Bus 174, Harlan Country USA, How To Start A Revolution, Silenced (2014), War on Whistleblowers, The Century of the Self
Man with a Movie Camera, Man on Wire, Dark Days, Kumaré, Dear Zachary, Children Full of Life (2003)
All documentaries by: Scott Noble (available free at his site http://metanoia-films.org/), Patricio Guzman, Werner Herzog, Adam Curtis, The Yes Men.
Other great documentaries: Man with a Movie Camera, Sherman's March, Burden of Dreams, Bus 174, My Winnipeg, How to Start a Revolution, Merchants of Doubt, Silenced (2014), the Corporation (2003), Man on Wire, The Parking Lot Movie, Land of Look Behind, Intangible Asset No. 82, Brasileirinho, Jodorowsky's Dune, Revolution OS, Facebookistan, The King of Kong, Kumaré, McLibel, Harlan County USA
Why? Because they're amazing, important, will change your life etc. Sorry I don't have hours to go into detail. Enjoy!
ps I found a lot of these by googling best documentaries lists, IMDb lists etc. I judge whether to watch movies/docos by reading 2 or 3 pages of user reviews on IMDb, occasionally Ebert or Urban Cinefile etc also.
There's a lot to what you say, but your "Only violence does anything" position seems quite vague and shifting, unarguable-against (unfalsifiable), and fortunately not borne out by the facts. I get a feeling of blood-lust masquerading as wisdom, but I think the world's not quite as bad or hopeless as you say.
A "fierce underlying movement"...you mean, without violent people in the same movement? No-one's saying "Gandhi was the full movement", whatever that would mean exactly. And sure, peaceful protests, civil disobedience and hunger strikes wouldn't have worked against the Nazis, but it worked against the British. (Although it doesn't sound like you would think that's right) You seem to be sweeping all situations into one basket. And in that basket, only violence works, peace never achieves anything. I don't think that's reality.
And I can prove it, I think: Watch the documentary on Gene Sharp, "How To Start A Revolution". I hadn't heard of him, which is pretty damning comment on the modern media (considering some of the people who are mega-famous). It seems he and his methods and writings were (in part) responsible for most of these peaceful revolutions sweeping the world in the last few decades, dozens of them. I'd be surprised if you can watch that (and read the associated literature) and not change your view. I found it super-inspiring. And without it, I might have been more convinced by your arguments. Although I think you in no way recognize Gandhi's actual importance in existing-order-subversion.