Educational Media Reviews Online

Curators Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner describe Disruptive Film: Everyday Resistance to Power, Vol.1 as an “alternative history of non-fiction film.” Noting (in the booklet that accompanies the two-DVD set) that the collection has an explicitly political and educational function, they have grouped the “unaccountably under-appreciated” 26 experimental short films it includes into four programs. Program 1: “Globalized Resistances” consists of seven films from seven different countries depicting local struggles against state authority which the curators argue demonstrate “that the actual scope of localized resistance has now become global.” Program 2: “Live Like a Refugee: Borders, Visible & Invisible” examines “the unsettled and unsettling status of those typically excluded by civil society,” including immigrants, migrant workers, and refugees. Program 3: “Over the Edge: Cultural Displacements” is more of a hodgepodge than the other programs, but ostensibly features films which are “therapeutic” because they depict the “therapeutic bedrock of culture.” Finally, Program 4: “Performative Provocations” is comprised of “politically and aesthetically radical” performances, although the films themselves generally employ conventional documentary filmmaking techniques.

One of the chief virtues of this collection is its variety. The wide range of time periods (although the back of box’s claim that the films on the collection “span from 1914 up to the early 21st century” is misleading: the only entry from before 1961 is a 90-second excerpt from a 1914 film about the Paris Commune which is included as a prologue), nations of origin, subjects, and styles represented make it likely that anyone sympathetic to Larsen and Millner’s overall goals will find at least one standout on each program. Highlights for this reviewer include Requiem for M, a beautiful testament to sorrow and tragedy which memorializes the massacre of 58 people (including 34 journalists) in the Philippines in 2009; Inventory, a German film from 1972 which uses deceptively simple filmmaking techniques to put a human face on immigration to such good effect that it seems virtually timeless; and Queen Mother Moore Speech at Green Haven Prison, a truly remarkable recording of a shockingly incendiary speech about race given at an American prison in the 1970s.

Unfortunately for casual viewers, many of the films in the collection (especially some of the shorter works) feel like they were created to be one part of a larger work and aren’t effective standing alone. As a related issue, while it is occasionally interesting to see the affinity films made in such different times and places have for one another, something vital seems to be missing when they are removed from the context of the “walls or lofts or funky theaters on the Lower East Side of New York City” where Larsen and Millner discovered them. For many viewers, as a result, the collection will fall disappointingly short of justifying the lofty claims (“[w]hat you are holding in your hand is cinematic ammunition”) its curators make for it.

This will not necessarily be a problem for film and media makers, scholars, and activists, though. Disruptive Film is an excellent resource for college and university (and possibly some high school) instructors teaching in a number of disciplines, issues-based student groups that want to incorporate film screenings into their events (public performance rights are available through Facets at additional cost), and socially-conscious filmmakers seeking inspiration for their own work. All of these groups should be able to identify whether or not the contents of this set will be useful to them from the names of the programs and brief descriptions of them included in this review.