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Resistance and Revolution Film Fest continues

Oscar nominated, The Weather Underground, to play at the Salmar Classic
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Okanagan College’s “Resistance and Revolution” Film Festival continues at the Salmar Classic, beginning a program of six similarly themed films. The not-for-profit series is associated with the Salmon Arm campus’s new Associate of Arts Emphasis in “Studies in Resistance and Revolution,” but all of the films are open to the general public.

OC Film Professor Dr. Tim Walters says that instructors in the program selected an intentionally diverse array of films that would give students and members of the local film-loving public the chance to get a sense of the multitude of ways in which individuals have fought back against oppressive elements of their culture.

“We’re showcasing a mixture of feature films and documentaries drawn from a period of over 50 years, including fictional and historical representations of various manifestations of resistance and revolution, from the Cuban revolution, to the counterculture of the 1960s, to contemporary labour and environmental activists/ ‘eco-terrorists’. This is inherently dramatic, ethically murky, material, and makes for some brilliant films that ask provocative questions about our relationship to power.”

The Festival continues on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. with the Oscar nominated The Weather Underground, a remarkable documentary about the 1960s student activist led domestic terrorist organization “The Weatherman,” who launched a protracted bombing campaign on US soil targeting politicians, police, and the military in response to the US government’s involvement in the Vietnam war and civil rights abuses. A week later, on March 5 at 5 p.m., the sixties theme continues with arguably the defining film of the hippy counterculture of that era, Easy Rider, starring Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Fonda.

The screening on March 12 at 5 pm is Migrant Dreams, a powerful recent Canadian documentary exploring the exploitation and struggles of temporary foreign agricultural workers in Ontario. The series concludes on March 26 at 7 p.m. with The East, about an operative (Brit Marling) for a private intelligence firm’s morally complicated attempts to infiltrate and subvert a group of anarchists carrying out acts of terror against powerful corporations.

All screenings will take place at the Salmar Classic and will be briefly introduced by OC professors involved in the program. General admission for each film is $5, and free for students. More information is available on the facebook page “Resistance and Revolution Film Festival.”