Grassroots TV

Dissatisfaction with mainstream, corporate media and the widespread availability of media technologies such as video recorders and audio machines have triggered a slew of independent, do-it-yourself media projects across the world in recent years. "Media guerillas" such as Brazil's TV Viva, Germany's AK Kraak, New York's Paper Tiger and the UK's Indymedia produce alternative, grassroots news and documentaries, create their own channels of distribution, and screen their films in outlets - internet, public access TV, cinema cafes - that encourage audience participation rather than passivity.

Tonight at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, we attended an evening of short films and discussion protesting the activities of the World Bank and the IMF in developing countries, to commemorate those institutions' 60th birthday this year. Films included "Sakhalin's Black Tears" about the environmental and social devastation of Billion Shell and Exxon Mobil projects off the coast of Russia, and "Traversing Peoples' Lives" about how the World Bank finances community disruption in Cameroon.

I found three of the films particularly potent. The first was "Voces Argentina/Argentina Voices" by Indymedia's Zoe Young and Dylan Howitt, documenting the rising frustration of a population with their president and government. The second was Biju Toppo's "Development Flows from the Barrel of the Gun", which focussed on the narratives of indigenous and local communities in India's Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh who have been dispossessed by foreign-invested, large-scale development projects - dams, ports, mines - on their land. The third film was Guerillavision's "Capitals Ill - Back on the Barricades", which took a sardonic, street-level look at the anti-globalisation 'Reclaim the Streets' protests in Washington DC, 2000.

Grassroots media at its best.

Other links today:
+ Did the first Americans come from, er, Australia? Evidence suggests that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia.
+ The spectacular rise of the female terrorist