The Maribor Uprisings: Interactive Film Screening

The Maribor Uprisings takes up urgent questions raised by these events, and by uprisings elsewhere, from the Arab Spring, through Paris, to Black Lives Matter. What sparks such popular outrage? How are participants swept up in—and then changed by—confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city?

The directors invite audiences to engage these questions through an unusual and participatory form. Drawing on the dramatic frontline footage of a video activist collective embedded within the uprisings, this film places viewers amidst the jostling crowds. It requires them to make their own choices about which cameras they will follow and therefore how they will participate. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, audiences in the theater must decide whether to listen to organizers and remain with those committed to nonviolent protest on Freedom Square or to follow rowdy crowds toward City Hall and almost certain conflict.

Co-director Maple Razsa (Colby College) will facilitate the screening.

‘‘Using organizational tactics such as the ones implemented during the Occupy Wall Street protests—the human microphone, call and response, etc—the audience works together to form a unit of politically and ideologically motivated action.’’

For more information, read the Portland Phoenix interview with Maple Razsa from July 2017: http://www.portlandphoenix.me/news/cover-story/item/6838-the-maribor-uprisings