Our last blog entry was a bit pessimistic. As we noted, we ran out of money much sooner than we thought we would and were disappointed at not being able to visit important destinations like France, Spain, Greece and Italy. Heck, North Africa would have been great too!
We left Europe disappointed and – because we are anarchists – reminded once again of how much both capitalism (we had to struggle to find work to earn some survival cash) and states (Aragorn’s Schengen visa expired) screw people over. Since we’ve been back in South Africa, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about a good narrative for the trailer, the documentary itself and what kind of (non-talking head) footage and aesthetic approach we want to use in the film. We’ve also watched and transcribed many of our interviews and received some much needed help from our friends Jonathan, Pina and Johnny, who looked at and partly translated some of the non-English-speaking interviews for us.
From what we have so far we’ve developed a talk which we first presented at Love and Revolution in Johannesburg about a month ago. We gathered 30 or so people together over coffee and wine to tell them about our travels and our experiences and, most importantly, we finally shared some of the filmed interviews with other people. The feedback was great, and gave us a much-needed morale boost. Attendees were excited and inspired by the 20 or so random short clips we showed; they can’t wait to see the film and neither can we!
Now that our optimism has returned, we hope to (finally!) be able to finish a trailer in the next few months. We know we’ve been promising one for ages, but we want to make sure that when it comes out, it’s perfect. We also hope to be able to use the trailer to raise more money so we can pay for some proper editing and post-production to make this documentary as awesome and professional as possible; if all goes well, we might even be able to raise funds for a few final interviews in Europe, and for our travel costs to check out an awesome anarchist project in Zimbabwe (which we want to do last in case our equipment gets confiscated).
We’d also like to put out another call for mutual aid: if any of you out there want to help us in any way, please contact us at us@anarchismdocumentary.net. We especially need help with non-English speaking transcriptions and translations (especially Spanish and Portuguese). We are also looking for people who want to offer designs and animations (for a few statistics we want to use, and to visually depict certain anarchist concepts).
Finally, we have just relocated to Cape Town where we plan to open our own infoshop/cafe some day soon; we hope that some of the wonderful anarchists we met during our travels will come visit us :-)
And now it’s back to work!
Love & anarchy,
Aragorn and Steffi
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The end of our travels, for now…
Posted on 08. Apr, 2011 by admin.
A lot of things went wrong in Europe, especially financially. We were already running low on resources in the US – South African Rands just don’t last very long in the West – and we were also both relying on our individual semi-regular incomes, both of which were unexpectedly cut off in early January.
In Europe, we received another blow; the cheap Eurorail tickets we were hoping for fell through and we thus needed to buy full price plane and train tickets. We also had a car for a bit, but even petrol and tolls add up quickly in the rich countries of the North. Another unexpected frustration was the lack of feedback from European anarchists; French anarchists especially were really hard to get hold of, even when we spoke French with them. Few reliable places to stay and only a handful of potential interviews made it impossible for us to continue along our planned route from Ireland to France and then onwards to Spain and Greece. The long waiting for replies also made it impossible to book flights far enough in advance; with Easter just around the corner, prices started shooting up rapidly. We just couldn’t afford 300 Euro per person flights to Spain and to Greece.
It hasn’t all been financial calamities though – we received a very generous donation of $1500 from Thoughtcrime Ink just when we needed it most. Even though we still ended up having to cut the Europe trip short, the Thoughtcrime money (as well as the other donations that filtered in to our PayPal account through the website at around the same time) helped us considerably with our travels to Germany, Austria, the UK, Ireland and Switzerland, and we conducted some amazing interviews in each of these places.
Finally, and perhaps most unexpectedly of all, we lost both of our grandmothers within just two weeks of each other. Sometimes bad news really does arrive all at the same time!
We’ve done our very best and stretched ourselves further than we thought we could, but for the next few months at least, our travels are done. Aragorn’s European Visa expires any day now, meaning he has to return to South Africa and cannot apply for a renewal until the end of July. Never fear though: even though this means we didn’t make it to Barcelona, Athens, Paris 0r Italy (or, indeed, Denmark, Amsterdam, Turkey, Indonesia, Russia or any of the other places that were suggested to us), that doesn’t mean we won’t still try our best to interview anarchists in each of these places!
For now, we’re content with the 101 interviews we have filmed so far in Africa, South America, North America and Europe. We didn’t set out to make a comprehensive ethnographic and representative study of anarchism in every country and every city of the world, but instead wanted to have a suitably diverse, internationalist, non-Euro/US-centric look at anarchism, and even if we don’t manage to raise more funding for further primary filming, we feel that we’ve succeeded in this initial task. We interviewed young and old anarchists, men, women and transgendered folks (even though we always struggled to find enough women who would commit to talking in front of a camera), anarchists from very diverse tendencies (although we had to ignore the emails from the occasional anarcho-capitalists and national anarchists enthusiastically offering themselves up for interviews), regions and ethnic groups. We have footage in English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
So right now it’s time to sit down and transcribe, translate and edit the many hours of footage we have, to research archival footage, shoot more B-roll, write a narrative and – priority #1 – make a trailer! Once we have the trailer out we intend to use it as part of a second call for funding, which will hopefully allow us to at least get to Spain and Greece. Finally, if all goes well, the exciting 90 minute documentary on anarchism we both always wanted to see will slowly begin to emerge over the course of the next year or so!
We’ll keep you posted…expect a trailer soon :-)
PS: We couldn’t end this post without saying another heartfelt, humble thank you to everyone who helped us along on the journey so far. We wouldn’t have been able to get this far without the generosity and solidarity of the beautifully diverse international community of anti-authoritarians we’re just starting to get to know.
With love and hope,
Aragorn and Steffi
A lot of things went wrong in Europe. We were already running low on resources in the US. South African Rands just don’t last very long in the West.
We relied on money that was cut off from both of us at the same time (early January).
In Europe, we received another blow, as an expected travel help fell through and we needed to buy our own plane and train tickets that are incredibly expensive in Europe.
Another thing which was very unexpected is that especially French anarchists are really hard to get hold of, even when you try to speak French. Not knowing where to stay and who to speak to made it impossible for us to continue our journey from Ireland to France, then onwards to Spain and Greece as originally planned. The long waiting for replies made it impossible to book flights well in advance and then Easter shot prices up incredibly. We just couldn’t afford a Euro 300 return flight to Spain and another one to Greece.
Even though we received a generous donation of US 1500 from Thought Crime Ink when we needed it most, we had to cut the Europe trip short and ended up only being able to go to Germany, Austria, UK, Ireland and Switzerland, where we had some amazing interviews.
The remainder of our personal savings we need to survive the next months of editing the documentary and until we have a job again.
In addition to this experience in Europe, we both lost our grandmothers within just 2 weeks of each other. Sometimes bad news come at the some time.
That said, we are happy with the 101 interviews we have of people in Africa, South America, North America and Europe. We didn’t set out to make an ethnographic and representative study of anarchism in every country and every city of the world, rather a diverse look at anarchism. And I think we succeeded at that. We interviewed young and old anarchists, men and women (even though we always struggled to find enough women and to persuade them to being interviewed in front of a camera), anarchists from diverse tendencies (except for the odd anarcho-capitalists and national anarchists that wanted to be interviewed) and regions. We have footage in English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Now it’s time to sit down, transcribe, translate and edit the many hours of footage we have, to make this into the exciting 90 minute documentary on anarchism we always wanted to see.
This is also another thank you to everyone who helped us along this journey. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.
Aragorn and Steffi
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The rest of North America
Posted on 14. Mar, 2011 by admin.
It’s been a while. We did make a promise to update our blog more frequently, but we’ve failed miserably. Sorry for this! We’ve been very active though, traveling all over North America and meeting many more interesting people along the way. We also had a few days of rest in Florida before completing the final part of the US, the North East. We’re now in Europe, for the beginning of the final leg of our tour :-)
We finished our last blog in Seattle. In the few days we were there, some exciting things happened, including a rare snowfall…The city of Seattle doesn’t know how to deal with snow!
The night of the snowfall, we went to see a talk by a friend of ours from Anarchists Against the Wall from Israel/Palestine. It was held at the local university and we met a bunch of awesome anarchists there; we sought refuge from the cold in a local bar after the talk and shared stories of our travels.
The last day in Seattle was filled with interviews – most of the people we wanted to interview were only free on that one day. We are, however, technically limited to three interviews per day, so we had to miss out on some interesting people. We ended up interviewing the awesome Jen Rogue from WSA and former Common Action. We also interviewed Matt and Tephra from Seattle Solidarity Network, a new but very active group in Seattle (http://seattlesolidarity.net).
The next day was a traveling day: getting up at 3am, taking a plane to Chicago, then Buffalo, then a bus to Toronto to attend the North American Anarchist Studies Network conference.
In Toronto we stayed with Mick from Common Cause (http://linchpin.ca) and interviewed Alex, another Common Cause member. We attended the first social of the NAASN conference – an informal get together and film screening. We watched a new documentary on the G20 and a non-political movie shot during the Spanish Revolution (with novel ‘live’ subtitling by Jesse Cohn).
The next day, braving the snowstorm and freezing temperatures, we made our way to the NAASN conference in central Toronto. The venue was packed with people! In fact, every panel over the two days of the conference was packed and it was extremely hot inside. We’re sure you don’t see people wearing t-shirts during Toronto winters very often.
It was an interesting weekend in many ways. The conference itself was fantastic; we sat through some really inspiring presentations, including a surprisingly good and self-critical workshop by the oft-maligned CrimethInc. You can read more about the conference here: http://naasn.org/news/naasn-toronto-2011-schedule. We met amazing people and had some great discussions about anarchism and about our documentary. We also spoke to some other filmmakers who were using very similar equipment and techniques, and exchanged a lot of ideas. We interviewed Jesse Cohn on the evening of the first day, just before the social gathering at a local gallery, which also served as the launch for the new issue of Upping the Anti (http://uppingtheanti.org). The day after the conference we spoke to Jasmin and Ryan – two of the main organisers of the conference – as well as well known anarchist author and art history professor, Allan Antliff (http://allanantliff.ca).
From the frozen wastelands of Canada, we made our way to the much sunnier city of Phoenix, Arizona, where we stayed with and interviewed Drew from Phoenix Class War Council. We also spoke with Stacy, who runs the big anarcha-feminist website http://anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/, and Kevin, an O’odham anarchist. It soon became very clear to us that indigenous struggle is the main focus for anarchists in this area. Kevin told us about the new struggles indigenous people are facing, especially along the border between the US and Mexico.
From Phoenix we went to Flagstaff – where it was cold again – to interview two anarchists: the tireless Klee Benally, a Navajo anarchist who helps run the multi-faceted Taala Hooghan infoshop (www.taalahooghan.org), and Joel Olson from Bring back the Ruckus, and the old Love and Rage.
We left Flagstaff for Tucson, where we stayed with an old friend and interviewed Stormy Staats. Stormy, who hails from Northern California, told us about the struggles on the Klamath River and how the environmental destruction affects indigenous people there.
From Tucson we took a really shitty Greyhound bus to El Paso, Texas, where we interviewed the inimitable Steve Best (http://www.drstevebest.org). We stayed with Steve and his five cats for two nights and then spent twelve hours onboard a bus to Austin, Texas.
In Austin we interviewed only two people: Carlos Perez de Alejo, who we met up with at the Monkeywrench Infoshop and who told us about Cuban anarchism, and Abraham DeLeon. Unfortunately we had to cancel two more interviews for personal reasons.
We then took a bus to Dallas (for which we were made to pay twice – fuck you, Greyound!) to meet with and interview Kenyon Zimmer, who shared a fantastic historical overview of North American anarchism. He spoke extensively about Yiddish and Italian immigrant anarchism, about the Haymarket and about Sacco and Vanzetti.
We spent the night in some godforsaken dingy Motel near the Dallas airport, expecting to take a plane to Florida the next morning, but were held up because of an overnight icestorm. Our flight was cancelled and we had to stay another night in Dallas. Dallas really drained our money – first the bus, then the hotel :-(
Anyway, we finally arrived in Florida, the mid-way point of the journey and time to relax. We really needed this break and ended up only having the energy for one interview: Frank Fernandez, a 73 year old Cuban anarchist and author of Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement (http://libcom.org/library/cuba-anarchism-history-of-movement-fernandez).
After 11 days in Florida we took a plane to Baltimore, where we stayed with Flint Arthur and his partner Rebecca, both of whom were really welcoming and helpful. Baltimore is home to a number of cool projects, perhaps the most notable being the Red Emma’s bookstore and coffeeshop. We interviewed John Duda and Kate Khatib from Red Emma’s. Kate is also part of the AK Press collective (http://www.akpress.org) and she gave us a guided tour of the warehouse. We filmed her in a very liberal Methodist church that works together with the anarchists there. Quite a surprise, as was the fact that their former pastor was transsexual.
We were particularly excited about meeting the venerable Howard J. Ehrlich, editor of the long-running journal “Social Anarchism” and author of numerous books on anarchism (including Reinventing Anarchy and, oddly enough, a book on baking bread – Howard gave us a signed copy of this latter work). We also interviewed our host Flint Arthur, a founding member of NEFAC, the North East Federation of Anarchist Communists (http://nefac.net).
Our final interview in Baltimore was with Kevin Tucker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Tucker), an anarcho-primitivist author and activist; we filmed Kevin in a beautiful park on a warm winter’s day in Baltimore, who spoke to us about green anarchy and the wild while squirrels cavorted in the background.
We then took a bus to New York - our final US destination – where we stayed with an awesome anarchist woman, who wants to remain anonymous (although her vegan cooking deserves wide recognition!) We interviewed her, but it remains to be seen whether we can use the footage, given her desire to remain anonymous.
We met up with Suzy Subways, a member of Love and Rage. Suzy generously travelled all the way from Philadelphia to meet with us and spoke to us about anarchism in a wonderfully clear and common-sense way.
The next day we interviewed Cindy Milstein again (our first interview in the Bay Area got cut short), in between their IAS (Institute for Anarchist Studies – http://www.anarchist-studies.org) congress. Poor Cindy was very tired after a long weekend full of meetings, but she still managed to give another great interview :-)
We also stopped in on Jim Fleming from long-time anarchist / counterculture publisher Autonomedia (http://www.autonomedia.org), and spent some time speaking to him in his amazing apartment in Brooklyn that looks over the Manhattan skyline.
The next evening we drove to the Bronx to interview two members of NEFAC: Christine Karatnytsky and Wayne Price. Both were amazing interviews and we can’t wait to share them!
The morning after, we interviewed Joshua Stephens from the IAS in a quiet healthfood cafe, before taking a bus to Hartford, Connecticut. In Hartford we stayed with and interviewed Deric Shannon and his friend Chris Spannos. Deric and Chris shared their compelling critiques of capitalism and talked to us at length about anarchist economics, intersectionality and queer theory.
We returned to NY on the 24th; we were hoping to interview the post-structuralist anarchist Todd May, but time simply wasn’t on our side. Early on the morning of the 25th, we boarded our plane at JFK airport and said farewell to the US. We were both really sad to leave – we had a great time there, met many amazing people – lots of anarchists from every possible anarchist tendency – and saw some inspiring projects. We definitely hope to return there one day!
Right now, we’re wrapping up some interviews in the UK, before embarking on the final leg of our tour: mainland Europe…we’ll tell you all about it in our next blog entry!
PS: If you’d like to see some interview photos from this blog entry, visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=113880171992624&aid=25839
