Activized

Four years later, Hong Kong’s 2014 democratic Umbrella Movement has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet political backlash against protesters has intensified. Repeatedly the target of censorship*, Raise the Umbrellas traces the lineage of the massive Hong Kong protest to the global Occupy movement, 1989 Tiananmen, and its democratic struggles since British colonial days. Highlights range from the Umbrella Movement’s eco-awareness and its burgeoning aspiration for independence, to its empowerment of women -- “umbrella mothers” -- and the rainbow-bridging activism of LGBTQ iconic artists. Incisive and intimate, driven by stirring on-site footage in a major Asian metropolis riven by protest, Umbrellas includes anti-Occupy views that lay bare the sheer political risk for post-colonial Hong Kong’s universal-suffragist striving to define its autonomy within China.

Due to the increasing privatization of basic public services in Spain, companies such as BB Serveis are accused of misappropriating several million euros of public money intended to finance care for the elderly and other dependent persons.

Clarissa is a driven, straight-talking single Black mother and social warrior in Oakland, California. Becoming unhoused with an infant inspired her to champion childcare and preschool as a human right. Funny and irreverent, Clarissa's infectious energy pulls us along as she presses forward, with fortitude gained through effort and loss. But juggling this work with raising a young son pushes Clarissa into a personal healthcare crisis far too common among stressed, working mothers, especially women of color. Clarissa's Battle follows her journey as a community leader, political candidate and time-stretched mother as she fights for the health and dignity of children and their parents nationwide. This isn't just Clarissa's battle - it's our battle, too.

They are frozen in place, stagnating without any direction. Around them, things change rapidly.

Hong Kong's high-speed rail link, the demolition of Choi Yuen Village, the impending budget and the influence of the global Occupy movement are at the centre of independent filmmaker Lo's timely measure of the city's pulse. Ostensibly the third entry in a trilogy that began with 21 years after. (2010) and to be continued (2010), which also captured public reaction to watershed moments in Hong Kong's political life since 2009. The documentary was built upon the material used in its previous installment (to be continued, 46 minutes). It disproves the notion of a passive Hong Kong in a chronicle of a generation poised for massive social change.

A feature-length documentary about the Free Kevin movement and the hacker world.

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Les Champs de la colère

This Anti-ELAB (Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill) Movement documentary short takes us back to the airport occupation on 12 August 2019. Although this new form of protest soon turned into a crisis, it became an important lesson for the protesters. Compared to the tension inside the airport terminal, the long walk home at sunset on the Lantau highway, which connects the Hong Kong International Airport to the residential areas, felt like a reminiscence of a school field trip.

Activist-pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano pull the rug out from under mega-corporations, government officials and a complacent media in a series of outrageous stunts designed to draw awareness to the issue of climate change.

Three college students start a social experiment to prove that reality changes according to the words we use to describe it. Through research, activist actions, and artistic interventions, they analyze the importance of language in the way we understand the world. The documentary includes analysis from more than 20 international experts and leaders in the fields of political communication and information.

The story of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, told through a series of demonstrations by local protestors that escalate into conflict when highly armed police appear on the scene.

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

Obsessively referring to the traumas and wounds that the Spanish civil war (1936-39) and Franco's dictatorship (1939-75) caused in their day no longer serves to explain the impassable abyss of incomprehension and hatred that the abject policies and radical positions adopted by both the right and the left in recent decades have opened up before the citizens of a country that is barely known beyond hackneyed cultural clichés.

An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.

The ongoing relationship between the worlds of punk rock and animal rights and how the music became a breeding ground for vegan activism.

Throughout Hong Kong’s history, Hongkongers have fought for freedom and democracy but have yet to succeed. In 2019, a controversial extradition bill was introduced that would allow Hongkongers to be tried in mainland China. This decision spurred massive protests, riots, and resistance against heavy-handed Chinese rule over the City-State. Award-winning director Kiwi Chow documents the events to tell the story of the movement, with both a macro view of its historical context and footage and interviews from protestors on the front lines.

On the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, activists joined at the Lincoln Memorial for the 2020 March on Washington event.

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

The Umbrella Movement of 2014, also known as the Occupy Movement, paved the way for Hong Kong’s current upheavals, but unfolded in significantly different ways. This creative documentary focuses on the intellectual, political, and discursive underpinnings of the social and political actions of 2014, before fast-forwarding to 2019. A range of thoughtful and engaged intellectuals, students, scholars, activists, and artists including Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, Ray Wong, and Agnes Chow (many of whom are facing imprisonment for their democratic activism) articulate a range of philosophies, viewpoints and emotions, set against Hong Kong’s spectacular urban background of skyscrapers, night lights, and street-occupying mass movements.