At a time when so many feel called to resist the White House’s attacks on numerous fronts, we at the HFA feel compelled to do our part. Cinema has always been a method of examining the world the way it is, in order to understand it, to begin to change it, to imagine it otherwise. So we begin a monthly series of films animated with the spirit of protest, of pointing out oppression and working towards justice. These screenings will be designed to spark discussion, beginning in our theater directly after the screening. Whenever possible, we will have the filmmaker present; at other times, we may have a guest moderator—an activist, a historian or a community organizer.
Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
Lisa Brown 0:00
May 1 2017, the Harvard Film Archive screened Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind. This is the audio recording of the introduction and discussion that followed. Participating are Programmer David Pendleton, and filmmaker John Gianvito. And now David Pendleton.
David Pendleton 0:23
As always, though, I do want to ask you to be sure and turn off any devices that you have on your person while the house lights are down, while we're watching the film for the concentration of those around you.
This is the first of a series that's meant to highlight cinema’s possibilities for resistance, or at least to reflect resistance in the outside world, but also to create a form of resistance. The screening will take place monthly. That's the plan. And this regularity is meant to resist the normalization of a state of exception, it's to be a reminder to myself and to anybody who cares to show up, about what's at stake in the present moment under the present administration. And, to think about what we can do about it, to think about what the present moment is, and what there is to be done at a moment when truth, facts, history—I mean, I'm not even mentioning the usual targets of power in this country—people of color the poor, immigrants, women, Muslims, queer and transgender communities, but the state of emergency goes even deeper than that. And so it seemed like a response was needed. And so we're starting this series. I'm not an activist, myself—if I were maybe I wouldn't have started on May Day, when, of course, there are protests going on. I mean, it’s meant to mark International Workers’ Day. But I know that actual marches and protests are going on already today. But in a way this, this series is to have a space for whoever wants to come together, as I said, to think about the present moment. It's not that different, I guess, from the kinds of screenings that we normally do here, except maybe it's about inverting the ratio of aesthetics to politics a little bit. For me, at least, the films that I present here, I think about them, formally and aesthetically, first and foremost. And that's the kind of thinking that I try to exemplify in the way we present them. But here, I want us to be also thinking about the way these films can help us act politically in the real world. If nothing else, my hope is that these screens can be a source of positivity, a way to channel frustration, or hopelessness or anger towards something more constructive, which is what art is meant to do. In any case, it may be a space for inspiration or solidarity. The idea is that as many screenings as possible—maybe not over the summer, because I'm going ahead and we'll go ahead and continue over the summer—but certainly going forward in the fall to try to have a guest at every screening, either the filmmaker or an activist. And tonight we have both. So it's a very special beginning to the program. And, the idea is also to hopefully have more of a conversation after the film, as opposed to just a Q&A that gets filtered through the filmmaker or through me, although we may start that way, this time, as we sort of like fumble our way towards an open format discussion. I'd be interested in feedback from anybody about the series, what works, what doesn't, what needs improvement, or suggestions for the future, suggestions for films to show or guests to invite. I get so many unsolicited emails about what to show and what to program, but I'll try and look at these. Be sure and put “Cinema of Resistance” in the subject so I know what you're talking about. And you can look up my address on the Archive’s website's contacts page.
Alright, I think I've talked so much already. I won't say too much more. But I do want to introduce John Gianvito, one of the most important contemporary filmmakers and one of the most political—although he's not important just because he's political. In fact, tonight's film is a brilliant example of John's way of working in a way that's very cinematically rich and enriching, but also very politically rich, as well. Most recently we've shown his two massive documentaries, which are themselves a form of activism that come out of his research into pollution, and military waste left behind by US military bases in the Philippines, Wake from 2015 and Vapor Trail from 2010. We also showed the omnibus film that he put together about the war in Afghanistan called Far from Afghanistan from 2012. Tonight's film predates those, 2011’s Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind in some ways, we could say an adaptation of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. It's indeed a film about U.S. history, about moments of upheaval, revolutions, massacres, protests. John reminds us that the U.S. is a nation born out of revolution, resistance and rebellion, and that we have a history of activism. Our hopes in starting the film with this series is to amplify that message, to take hope and inspiration from this history, even if it's filled with setbacks, reactionary violence and disasters, and to take the long view of history. But now, I'll stop talking. I'll turn the podium over to John Gianvito. And then we'll come back up after the film. Please welcome John Gianvito.
[APPLAUSE]
John Gianvito 6:43
Thank you very much. And thank you, David, for your too-kind words. Even though it's a short film, I'm not going to say too much in advance. Like most filmmakers, one hopes that when you finish a work that it has a voice and can speak for itself without needing much in the way of an introduction. I thought, perhaps it might be interesting, though, to know a little bit about how it came into existence. Prior to making this film, I had spent seven years—not knowing I was gonna spend seven years—but I spent seven years making a fiction film that dealt with America's role in the first Persian Gulf War. And at the conclusion of that enterprise, I released the film to a world in which the situation in Iraq was far more exacerbated than even at the time that I launched the project and was looking to find something. And if I was going to make another film, I thought I wanted to find something in which I could posit some more seeds of hope, and I began rereading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States looking for maybe some idea of one story from that, or something that might provoke a new endeavor. And as I reread the book, I started to have this impulse that perhaps I could make pay homage to the book itself, to a work that has meant so much to so many of us on the left, and a book which continues to sell more copies each year than the year before, which is, as you may know, a very rare thing in contemporary publishing. And, maybe more privately, Howard had not only been a sort of distant mentor, but had actually become somewhat of a friend, and had been very supportive of my previous work, the film on the Gulf War. So that's where I started. And it was initially imagined as a short little ten-minute film that had many other components than the ones that ended up in the film you're about to see. And so, I don't want to say too much. It is a very meditative film. And I often think of this film as a film in which I can honestly say that I've only made fifty percent of this movie. The other fifty percent is made or not made with what you do with that contemplative space that the film affords you. So let's see what happens, and I'm very honored to kick off this this endeavor of David's. And I very much do want it to be a real group conversation and not just a classic Q&A sort of situation, so we can talk about many more things than just your experience through this film, and it was made to engender that kind of reflection, I hope. So, let's see what happens. Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]
Lisa Brown 10:30
And now, David Pendleton.
David Pendleton 10:34
Please welcome back, John Gianvito.
[APPLAUSE]
Is there anybody who wants to start the discussion with a reaction to the film? I think at first at least I'd like to take questions or comments directed to John and/or about the film. I think we should bring the lights up. Yeah, thank you. Or, I could start with one—not more than one or two questions—some questions while you guys are gathering your thoughts, because I know it's hard to be the first to start the discussion. That's why I tend to do it so that you don't have to.
Oh! But there is somebody, some brave person. Thank you for raising your hand. Why don't you wait for... I'm going to experiment. We're going to experiment with using audience mics so that everybody can hear. If that gets to be too cumbersome, then maybe people do without them, and people will have to shout, but there's a mic right there.
Audience 1 11:46
How did you decide which individuals to choose for the film? Was it you? Was it a team? Was it based on what you could find? Was it your own admiration of certain people? Was it the political times? Like how did you decide? What was available in terms of maybe time and money or…?
John Gianvito 12:06
For us, it was a combination of multiple factors and Howard's book was the principal resource for the majority of the names and events that I sought to seek out. And I was saying at the beginning, you know, that this had a different kind of complexion when I first imagined it and gravesites were just maybe going to be one ingredient. There were photographs and quotes and other elements. And as I started to go to some of the gravesites of people who I held in great regard, and found that in many cases, they were tucked away in some remote cemetery where it seemed like no one visited or inversely, I would find that people had in fact made pilgrimages to those places and left interesting objects and, little by little, that became its own allure, and I started letting go of the other things and feeling somehow I could build what I wanted through that trajectory. So probably at least two or three times as many people that I researched that I either couldn't identify where their gravesite was—if it in fact did have a gravesite; many people were cremated. There were some important figures who contributed a lot to the progressive history of the U.S. but who were buried outside the U.S. There were certain cases where there were families that I approached, relatives of a particular individual and didn't get permission. And so it was a combination of those and over three summers of traveling around feeling at a certain point, obviously, I couldn't even endeavor to represent all the people who who might properly comprise this story, but that there was a sufficient number, I thought, to suggest the division that's represented more fully in books such as Howard's book and many other works, but if it inspires one to go learn what those events were or names are, then that's part of its mission.
David Pendleton 14:54
Can you talk a little bit about the wind as a character in the film? Because you mentioned that it's a contemplative film but I find it kind of exhilarating. There is a contemplative episode certainly before we go into the big finale with the march and everything. But I think that a lot of the exhilaration that I feel throughout the film comes from the sorts of nature and particularly “the wind in the trees” as D.W. Griffith, ironically, but also aptly put it.
John Gianvito 15:28
I can try to talk about it. I mean, we all have our own relationship to nature and to such images. For me, just the sensuous sound of the wind in the trees has always been very evocative, and I can say “spiritual.” I am fundamentally a pantheist. and there's an element of that pantheism that's in all my films, regardless of what their overt subject matter is. I feel that a film should be a kind of core sample of who you are as a person. And so that for me, always has to find its way into the work.
I was consciously thinking of it as well as a metaphor for this energy in the spirit that's being represented by the gravesites. And I thought there was some sort of corollary behind even the effort to film the wind; I mean, you're basically filming something that's invisible, that you can see only through its effect on things, and you're not really seeing these people or these events, but just these representations of them. And, yeah, that's probably as much as I'd want to verbalize about it.
David Pendleton 17:15
It’s a good answer as far as I'm concerned. Yes, Claribel in the back.
Audience 2 17:23
In the beginning of the film, I noticed that– And especially in New England, the history of the placards are really off. And when you put the massacre on the first placard, I was hoping that you would continue that along the film. Even in Harvard Yard, a lot of the placards have a lot of... The history is not true, just like Howard Zinn says. You know, like the word Indian. And I don't know if he mentioned it, but I was reading a book the other day, and the reason we got the word Indian here—or the people were identified—was because Columbus thought that he landed in India. And so I was expecting, from my point of view, my frame, for you to continue that, but you didn't, but I just wanted to make that point.
John Gianvito 18:24
Yeah. Well, I'm pleased that you liked that initial intervention. I had a friend I remember who, when I first started showing this film, who said that for him that moment was the one pimple on an otherwise beautiful film. He didn't like my intervening. But because I did know something about that incident, and the Narragansett tribes... There was no battle, really, they were attacked in the middle of the night when they were sleeping. And they've resented that signage. I did choose to make that correction. And you may know, there's a wonderful book about the very subject you talk about by [James] Loewen called Lies Across America that looks at erroneous signage and distortions of history. Certainly there are other corrections, like you were saying that that could have been made, but generally I didn't find them too prevalent in the signs that I was choosing to include.
But just further on that I mean, I could see why there can be confusion about the very first one that you see which is Anne Hutchinson. Not only the use of the word “Indians'' but because if people don't know anything about her and since the film begins with Indian Ghost Dance, they would think that somehow she fought against the native people, which she, in fact, was a big champion of. She was a woman who believed that you didn't need a male pastor to interpret the Bible, and so she started her own Bible study groups. Men attended as well, but a lot of women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony attended, and as a consequence, she was tried for heresy. There was a religious trial, and a civil trial and at one of the trials, she was pregnant and ill, and she was forced to stand for weeks, and then they finally got a confession from her. But even though she signed it, they said, “It's not in her countenance,” or something, words to that effect. And so she was banished, and she, along with Roger Williams, founded Rhode Island, and many of her supporters traveled with her. And then eventually, she moved to Long Island at a time in which the tribal peoples there had been attacked numerous times by the Dutch and mistook Anne and her family for Dutch settlers, and that's how she died—except for one of her daughters, I guess, who was taken in by the native people. So, there's all that other history behind it, but I never intended– It was an early stage where I had some photographs of massive funerals for certain people whose names are almost forgotten now and other interesting quotes from people. And I thought, if I went that direction, it would become sort of a Cliff Notes version of a proper telling of this history, and I didn't want to do that. And I didn't want to make it a kind of, you know, PBS Ken Burns story—I couldn't if I wanted to—so it became this.
David Pendleton 22:44
But I mean, I think it's interesting, because we often think of political filmmaking as having a pedagogical dimension, or sort of explaining the history, and I think that the choice here to be very fast actually and to leave things out and to leave things up to people to find out later, I think, is a really brave one. And, similarly, I think when we think of political filmmaking, we don't necessarily think of a contemplative affect out of the film. We often think of this sort of exhortation, or like a pep rally thing. And so I'm curious as to the reaction that you've gotten and your own thoughts about going against some of the more standard ways that we might expect this material to be presented, particularly given the spirit in which you're making the film and the kinds of audiences that might be interested.
John Gianvito 23:44
Well, the film has had a very, very unexpected life, and I’m not always comfortable talking about all of that…
David Pendleton
Because it has done well.
John Gianvito
You know it was made very humbly. I think there was a question about the size of the crew and whether that was a consideration or something or discussion among people working on it, and for the most part, I made this film entirely by myself. I made it with a 16 millimeter Bolex windup camera, which can only take a 25-second shot, and so all the sound is actually not actual sync sound. It's close to sync sound. I had a recorder and tried to record quickly after I filmed so that was from the environment, except for the wind sounds; wind is a very hard thing to record properly. And for the nature scenes, until you get to the finale of the film, I didn't want there to be any indication of human presence in the nature scenes. So I didn't want you to hear planes or traffic or what have you. And so it's hard to record the wind cleanly. And it's also hard to not have that. So I would often wait until a night where it was actually windy and go out at two or three in the morning when there was no airline traffic, and knew certain spots where I could get close to foliage, sometimes from inside the car where the the car would keep the wind from buffeting against the mic and other sorts of things, and then try to match the type of leaf movement to the the visuals that I had caught. So a lot of things that a lot of gnashing of teeth to get that just right, but all this to say, you know, it made with modest means and over a period of time. And I was telling David, the other night on the phone, this memory of the very first people who saw the film. When I first finished it the very next day, I sent a copy to Howard Zinn who had I told him the title of the film that I was working on about a year before, but I didn't tell him what it was actually about. And I sent it to my father in New York, and I got a message from my father that there was something wrong with the DVD, some kind of technical problem. So I immediately emailed Howard saying, “If there's a problem with this, let me know, I'll make you a new copy.” And then Howard wrote me right back saying “There's no problem at all. This is an incredible film, and it should be shown in every school in the country,” and “How did you end up making this?” and lots of things and it began many conversations with him about that piece. But so, I called my father and said, “What's the problem?” And he goes, “Well, there's no sound.” And I said, “No sound?” And he goes, “Well, I can hear some birds and things…” [LAUGHTER] And when he found out that there's not gonna be any voiceover or anything, he goes, “John, no one's gonna see this film. What are you thinking?” So to my surprise, the film has had quite a life, and it showed in many, many festivals and premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has won various awards. And I was touched once that Michael Moore, who makes a very different kind of film, but who actually has a lot of breadth in terms of the types of films that he can embrace, gave this film the top prize at his own film festival that he curates in Michigan. And he then told me that before he made his last film—not his last film, but his last film at the time Capitalism: A Love Story—he decided to show this to his whole crew to inspire them about why they were making the film that they were about to make. And yeah, so it has a distributor, if you're attached to a school or institution, it's out on DVD. It is out on DVD also, in London; a company put it out. But I think people are paying too much for it on the internet, because they're sort of out of print, but you can get a hold of me and get it for next to nothing. You don't make films about profit motive and attempt to make money at it.
David Pendleton 28:40
[LAUGHS] Are there any other things that people are curious about, or…? Yeah, there's a question in the back.
Audience 3 28:45
Thank you. So what's the purpose behind those animations?
John Gianvito 28:52
Well, I can tell you how it came into being. Whether that works for you or not, it's up to each person. As I said, I had many other ingredients initially that kind of fell to the wayside as I started just focusing on markers and gravesites. And then I had this other ingredient of the wind in the trees, and that seemed to be working fairly well, but I felt the need for a third element. I felt like—sometimes related to the three legs of a tripod or something—just maybe a little too facile, just having those two ingredients going back and forth.
David Pendleton 29:36
But the first one is the wind and the other one is the markers...
John Gianvito 29:41
Right. And so I thought, well, in a sense, the wind aligns with the sites themselves. So what is not being represented? And I thought, well, what's not being represented is what they're working against. And while it's a number of things, if you had to put it under one umbrella, I’m comfortable with saying that it's capitalism, and it's the impact of greed and money and so how do you represent that? And I thought, well, I could represent it just very simply with physical gestures around commerce. And I had always been fascinated with—and I don't even know if they still do this at this time, but when I was doing this, they were still doing it—I was always fascinated with, for me, the kind of hieroglyphics of these gestures that are made on the floor of the stock exchanges that I don't understand, but I know that businesses rise and fall based on those hand gestures. But post-September 11, 2001, photographers couldn't get... At that point, when I looked into it, you weren't allowed to get onto the floor of the stock exchange to film. You could film from the galleys, but I knew that wouldn't get quite the images I wanted, so I had this idea. I had never done any animation; my partner's an animator, and she got me started. And I thought even if these are crude, it's my hand drawing these other hands, so I started with that. And it's not that anyone needs to know this, but the images are taken from other films. So The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Eclipse by Antonioni, and Greed by von Stroheim. It's not true in every case, but where I could find a historical connection to lay them in—like 1848 with the California Gold Rush was one of the gold shots and 1928 for the stock market crash—I put that in. So I started doing this, and I generally don't show my work until it's finished, but I usually let two or three people see it while I was working on it. And without exception, every single one of them said it was too weird. It had to go. It was hurting the film, they thought and I understood what was happening was that it was puncturing this reverie that was very thick and seductive in the film. And, I was aware of that myself. But I was also cognizant of the fact of how different the film would be in the finale of the film. Visually different. And I thought that puncturing that just a little bit would in some way subliminally suggest, allow for this formally different thing to enter into the film. And so I stuck with it. And it may work for you, it may not but that was my behind-the-scenes’ reasoning.
David Pendleton 33:12
Yes, there's a question back there in the corner. And then did you have your hand up too? Okay, then we'll come to you.
Audience 4
Yeah. Hi. I enjoyed the production. I was just wondering about something. I was curious about something. I learned in grade school, in high school, that Crispus Attucks was actually the first person killed in the American Revolution. But you had it, I think you presented a twelve-year-old boy named Nathaniel? Is there any, I guess, source for that information there?
David Pendleton
You're asking about Crispus Attucks being one of the victims of the Boston Massacre?
Audience 4
Being the first victim. Versus a twelve-year-old boy, I think, named Nathaniel if I’m not mistaken.
David Pendleton
So yeah, I don't know if that marker lists what order they're in. He's asking about the victims of the massacre. And by the way, there is something there now. I didn't realize that was that new because I'm fairly new to the area myself, but anyway.
John Gianvito 34:10
So the exact question about the–
David Pendleton 34:12
Was Crispus Attucks the first victim or not of the Boston Massacre? Like I said, we may not know that exactly.
John Gianvito 34:23
I don't know if that's completely accurate but David's right. When I was filming the site where the Boston Massacre happened, I did read and find that those rocks indicate where it was but there was no signage to be found that would let anyone know that and today there it there is but–
David Pendleton 34:54
And still the actually, the markers that are there, the information that's there, you could go through the site and come away not realizing that Crispus Attucks was African, was Black—which is, I think, an important fact about the massacre.
John Gianvito 35:11
Yeah. I mean, it's what I was saying before, if it provokes you to desire to want to know more, I mean, generally I find that wherever the film is shown, many people feel some sort of frustration in the fact that many of these names and events are not familiar to them. And that's part of Howard's whole project was to make a place beyond what we're normally taught—the names of the generals and the industrialists and robber barons and presidents and what have you—that the majority of the rights that we have been able to secure, however fragily, happened not in those hands, by and large, but because of the efforts of a lot of people beyond these people. And minimally, some part of that needs to be remembered and passed along. And, to quote another great friend of Howard's, Noam Chomsky—I'm very fond of his quote— “Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomena, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity, but because it paves the way for crimes yet to come,” and it sort of resonates with the opening quote of the film to about the importance of why it's important to know any of these things, and remember any of these things. Howard was always saying that the study of history is not a neutral act, that it's all about selection and emphasis and about who gets to write that history and that it's interesting to him only insofar as it helps us move forward and understand how to move forward. And and maybe that's a good pivot to how we can talk about some of what this film offers, in terms of where we're at today,
David Pendleton 37:13
Right. Well, yeah, because I mean, for me, one of the great things about the film is that it's a reminder of the kinds of challenges that people have faced before, which in many cases are actually greater challenges than we have yet to face—at least from the presidential administration so far. And that those challenges were met. And also that the path of history isn't linear, and that it involves also defeats and reversals and massacres and disasters. And so that's why I find the film sustaining, actually, in this present moment. I don't know if anybody else has a reaction to that, or has any thoughts about the version of history that we get from the film. And there was also a comment up here that you wanted to make. I don't know if...
Audience 5 38:10
I love the film. I was wondering if you had brought it to schools, or if it has been shown in any schools, because I know that there are a lot of really destructive people that are interfering in schools now. I just heard the Heartland Institute is sending out to 200,000 science teachers— kindergarten to 12—books about how there's no such thing as climate change, so they are actively interfering in schools. And I know that with A People's History, that there were students that started reading it in school, and I think this is a wonderful film to show to students. [INAUDIBLE]
John Gianvito 39:03
Thank you. I wish I had brought this article with me. There was just an article a few weeks ago about, I think it was in Texas, some legislators are trying to pass state provision to ban Howard's book from use in the schools. So that still goes on. It's still seen as dangerous to have these ideas. He did make a young person's version of A People's History which is used in many schools. And he also made his own film, which he shot at Emerson College where I teach, just before he died, called, The People Speak, that you can also find, and it has many famous actors and musicians recounting some of the words of many of these people that you see in the film. I've shown it here and there, but I'm not aware of who, who shows it or what have you. And certainly you're welcome if you've got access to other eyes, young eyes or older eyes, who'd like to see it, that can easily happen.
But what you were saying, David about–
David Pendleton 40:28
About the film being sustaining, or actually giving hope. I mean, hope from learning this history. That's for me, one of the main values of the film in the present day.
John Gianvito 40:49
That was the key ingredient for me in the book itself, that I wanted to insert into the next film I was making, that I could not just see our nation's history as one of imperial conquest and rampant capitalism, but that there was another America inside this America from which I could still draw a sustenance from—and even in dark times. One of the stories that Howard would frequently tell is about when he first became a teacher, in 1950, I believe, 1949, he taught at Spelman College in Georgia, an all-girls African American school, and he said that if he would, at that time, and in the U.S., in his experience, if you would ask any black man or woman if they could even envision an end to segregation, that generally the sponsor would come back, “Well, maybe my grandchildren, hopefully, will see that,” or there's always this kind of distant deferred dream. And he said that just within a couple of years, a few key sparks of the Brown versus Board of Education decision, the Rosa Parks action leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, gave birth to this huge social movement that you might not have seen coming and might have thought was impossible. And he thought that was really important to hold on to the memory of how quickly those things can happen. And I tend to feel that there's a lot of unsettled energy that's looking for a way forward. And occasionally, as with the onset of the occupy movement, you see this surge come up or with the energy that came around and still is perhaps even stronger now around Bernie Sanders. That just needs channeling and needs to find a way to actually accomplish the things that that energy desires. And so in that sense, I'm hopeful, and I was just also reading, I'm sure some of you know, the book by Rebecca Solnit called Hope in the Dark. She starts with an anecdote of something that Virginia Woolf wrote in her diaries after the six months into the start of World War One. And she writes, “The future is dark, and that's perhaps the best thing you can say about it.” Meaning that, yes, it's dark, but dark is also sort of inscrutable. It's not necessarily disastrous, you know? We don't know. And Howard said, that unpredictability of what can happen is part of what can keep giving us hope. And so, yeah, it's important to have that those affirmations and you were telling me and I started looking up about it, here at Harvard, this resistance school that has has been launched at the Kennedy School by one professor. It's an webinar that anybody can sign in or watch giving advice by people who worked on Bernie's campaign and Hillary's campaign, and so forth about how to actually do some tangible things to shift the direction and then you know, you have things like Indivisible, which also if you haven't visited their website has lots of very practical things and have had millions of viewers at this point. And then there's just whatever one can do in one's own realm. I mean, as a filmmaker, this is one of the ways I tried to make a difference. I was also telling David about a friend of mine who some people here may even know ‘cause she used to be a Bostonian, Peg Aloi, who is a so-called White Witch. And apparently witches have started this secret binding ritual that they're now doing a couple of times a year, and the intention is to bind Donald Trump from being able to accomplish anything, and so who knows what's working right now? But you know, you all have to use what you've got, and that's one of the things that's happening.
David Pendleton 45:54
Right? Well, I mean, so far, it's been the courts that have been very helpful. And so now, of course, there's the threat of breaking up the courts. I mean, it's a moment where anything can happen. I mean, in a way, I think the resistance can borrow and is borrowing, maybe some of the unpredictable energy of Trump, you know, what I mean? I think that just as the right has seized the ability to react, I mean, so much of what's happened, I think, is a reaction to the Obama years, that there's a possibility, I think of a counter reaction, if that phrase means anything. And if anybody here is in touch with the– I mean, I've got contacts with people here, but I need to contact the people who are doing that online webinar. Yeah. It looks really interesting.
John Gianvito 46:56
I heard that Cornel West may be coming back to–
David Pendleton
He's teaching here.
John Gianvito
And, you know, he just wrote a piece in The Guardian about that sort of call to create a third party, a People's Party. And I think that's an idea that may finally be able to get some traction.
David Pendleton 47:18
But then don't you worry that that then just splits the vote and ensures government by the right...?
John Gianvito 47:25
Well, I mean, we're about to see what's going to happen in France, and there, both major parties were eviscerated. And, I personally thought as, as shocked as I was about Trump's victory, that had Hillary won, from my point of view, that the kinds of deep profound systemic changes in the way the world works and the way the U.S. works would still not likely come to pass and that if we can survive this period and the planet can survive this period, perhaps it has the potential to lead us more rapidly to the kind of vision of future that I'd like to live in.
David Pendleton 48:21
One of the Soviet films that we should have these dicta from Mao's Red Book. I forget the name of the filmmaker that was the retrospective. But I guess, in the Little Red Book, Mao says “The worse, the better,” which I think is the attitude of some on the left, about this.
John Gianvito 48:43
Yeah, but you know, it's nice to say that, but then the people who are really feeling the pain, it’s no consolation. And the pain only deepens.
David Pendleton 48:53
Yeah. Somebody had a hand up. Go ahead.
Audience 6 49:02
I was getting really angry, about, you know, like, why are all of these great people on the left dying? But then I was feeling really inspired. Because you see all these people were willing to die for the cause that they believed in or in the struggle against capitalism or against slavery, or whatever it is. And I wonder what you think we can do to push or activate that sense of willingness to sort of sacrifice wealth or respectability in people—particularly, you know, in Boston, where we are, where there's so much wealth, and at Harvard, where we are, here and these institutions. A question and could be a question for the audience as well.
John Gianvito 50:02
Well, I'd love to be able to get at Harvard's wealth and distribute it more freely. [LAUGHTER]
David Pendleton 50:09
Redistribute it? Right, we could just start with the Business School. But I think part of that comes with time, too. I mean, yeah, go ahead.
Audience 7 50:19
[INAUDBILE] ...and the way Trump is not just Trump, an individual; he is supported by a mass system that supports anyone. So just your reaction to the film, I was wondering, in some ways, these people are to be honored, but the lack of narrative or lack of content, do you feel like you [INAUDIBLE] these individuals are so... unlike me, because [INAUDIBLE] whereas I have the capacity to think that I was part of that [INAUDIBLE]
John Gianvito 51:29
Yeah. So there's a real risk in doing this, of making a kind of hagiography that does create that kind of them-and-me feeling. There's a writer, [Marita] Stirken—I've met her—who does a lot of writing about the distinction between memorials and monuments. And in most cases, I think what you're seeing are just memorials to remember someone rather than to make the sort of declarative, big ideological statement. And I often think of this line of Bertolt Brecht’s, “Unhappy the land that needs heroes.” But that said, we all need reminders that change is possible, that often many of these people were former slaves, or were, you know, Thomas Paine came over here, he’d only been in the U.S. for two years when he wrote Common Sense. And, it remains apparently the most sold book in the history of American publishing. Just one person with a pen and a clear idea could spark a movement.
David Pendleton 53:20
But I think it's also worth pointing out that a lot of the people who died young in the film were actually part of a union and were working in a group and were working to better their own basic living conditions. And I think part of the problem of the left today is to figure out what goes in the place where those unions were—either strengthening the unions that still exist, or supporting new unions. I mean, there's been a big shift in labor to service, the service industry, which also shifts the gender of labor, which also shifts the dynamics around organizing, etc. So, I mean, I think that's part of the work that is being done. And I find comforting the fact that we're not at the moment now where strikers need fear being shot. Of course, I think for one thing, capitalism does other things now to marginalize people, and who knows what's coming in the future.
John Gianvito 54:43
Though a lot of workers just today were—I don't know if they were shot—but there was a lot of violence that I was hearing on the radio in May Day protests in Venezuela and in Paris and other places. And that's another little irony in the film is the representation of the Haymarket martyrs monument, which for those who don't know that particular story… This is in 1886 in Chicago and the Federation of Labor was the early version of the AFL—about six months later, they called themselves the American Federation of Labor—but they called for, in Chicago, a strike, a citywide strike to support the idea of an eight-hour workday. And they called that on May 1, and on May 3, there were strikers and strikebreakers at this place called McCormick Farm, I believe, and the police ended up shooting, supposedly, four individuals, and that caused enormous ire in the community, particularly within a very fertile anarchist community. And they called for another rally the very next day on May 4 at Haymarket, and apparently about 3000 people showed up and it was peaceful, it went on for hours, the weather got bad, people started leaving, there was like one more speech to go. And I think just about 200 people there or 300 people, and about as many police officers showed up, and insisted that they shut the rally down. And the last speaker said, “I'm wrapping up” or whatever. And as the police stormed them, and—to this day unclear—someone threw a bomb and a number of people were rallying and a number of the police officers were killed. It's also speculated that some of the police officers were killed because so many police guns were going off, that there was friendly fire from the police officers. But they immediately within a few days rounded up eight anarchists and seven of them had never been at the rally that day. And the one who was, was on the stage speaking. It was clear that it was just because of their ideas that they were put on trial and they were all sentenced to death. Four of them were eventually hung. One killed himself before he could be hung. And then eventually, a few others, their sentences were commuted. But it became an international rallying cry about what was done to those men. And that sparked the first May Day events. And now it's as I think many of us know, it's celebrated almost all over the planet except here in the U.S. We don't even know what May Day is. But it started here.
David Pendleton 58:28
Other questions or comments? I mean, we've been going on for a little while, we could start to to wrap it up although I'm willing to keep going if there are people who have other things to say. But also if people are getting tired, don't feel like you're being held captive. And also we could also decentralize this a little bit and you guys can talk amongst yourselves.
John Gianvito 58:56
I'm sure some of you have some clearer thoughts about how we how we shift things right now than–
David Pendleton 59:05
Clearer than I have.
Audience 8 59:15
[INAUDIBLE] –and I loved it that it got punctuated by the music provided in the film. I just want to let you know, the soundtrack was “Blowing in the Wind” and also “Winter in America,” a piece by Gil Scott Heron which speaks to they’ve all been killed or sent away, but thank you.
John Gianvito 59:50
I also like the song—do you know the song “The Partisan'' by Leonard Cohen? “The wind, the wind is blowing / through the graves the wind is blowing.”
[INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE COMMENT AND LAUGHTER]
John Gianvito 1:00:05
There was a Gil Scott Heron orgy this morning on WHRB. Did you know that? They're playing like a whole bunch of his music.
David Pendleton 1:00:12
Oh, in time for May Day presumably. The revolution might be broadcast if it's not televised.
Audience 9 1:00:22
I guess I just wanted to talk about my reaction to the massacred posted sticker. I kind of had a different reaction. When I saw the rest of the signs, the rest of the placards, that were giving historical information, I kind of felt like I was being suggested or recommended to insert my own sticker and try and like figure out like—or take everything with a grain of salt about the history because like when that sticker massacred came up, I thought, “Oh, I should be skeptical about every information that's being presented from here on out.” But yeah, that was my reaction to the...
John Gianvito 1:01:16
Well, I always think it's healthy to have a questioning mind and to not take things at face value. But I also think there is actual truth to be found at the end of some of that exploration and new facts about the past and about our story continue to emerge. Even in the making of this film, there were things that suddenly found their way that couldn't have happened earlier. You see the grave of this young Italian immigrant woman, Anna LoPizzo. She was the first person shot at the Bread and Roses strike, which was in the textile mills here in Lawrence Mass and lawfully; they had a permit to protest the working conditions in the mills and the pay conditions. And after she was killed. She was put in a pauper's grave and no one knew where it was for eighty some odd years. And it was just while I was making it that some scholar did some some research and found that and then during the course of that strike, which went on for for quite a long period, the families in the mills sent their children out of town, many of them to Vermont and to New York, to basically strangers, but people who felt solidarity for them, so that the strike could continue. And the stonemasons in Barre, Vermont, apparently remembered that was part of their own history that they took in those children. So they donated that stone, had that made, so things like that can happen that we wouldn't have known about.
Audience 10 1:03:31
[INAUDBILE] –I think it's a good exercise to see what happened with each of those struggles that people did. Like I'm thinking about the Bread and Roses, for example.
John Gianvito 1:03:57
A Harvard students were encouraged to break the strike?
Audience 10 1:04:00
They got academic credit for it. But when they had the cafeteria workers go out, all these Harvard students went and supported them, and I thought that was so wonderful and that that was a real development. And I think it would be a good exercise to go back to these struggles and see what's happened to them. I'm an old woman, and when I see a bunch of old men saying “Sorry, we’re going to defund Planned Parenthood,” I remember when I was young, I went to hear Bill Baird, who was talking about birth control, and he was arrested on the stage. And I feel like you know, here I am again—although it's not an issue for me anymore. But I think it's a good exercise to do that.
John Gianvito 1:05:02
I mean, I'm heartened to agree with how much pushback the Congress has been getting on many of these issues. And just today, the budget that's been ostensibly passed that keeps the government open till September, doesn't defund Planned Parenthood and many other initiatives that Trump and Mitch McConnell—who I really think is the one we should be looking at more often than Trump—are trying to make happen. I mean, none of these things are secure, and it's up to us to keep finding ways to make sure that people know that we're not happy, and that's been happening, quite a good amount right now.
David Pendleton 1:05:59
Well, and y you know the tactics are working when they get discounted, when people bring them up only to discount them in terms of like, protest marches and things like that.
John Gianvito 1:06:12
I used to always say the word I hated most in the English language was “capitalism,” and now I can replace it, I think, with another C word, which is “complacency.”
David Pendleton 1:06:26
But I think also, breaking out of that complacency, to go back to your comment. it goes one step at a time. And actually, was there somebody who had something to say about the Harvard students or the strikebreakers? Or was that just an internal comment? Okay, that's fine.
John Gianvito 1:06:42
There's Pacho Velez’s film Occupation, that might be a good thing to bring to your cinema.
David Pendleton 1:06:47
Yes. Yeah, we showed it a couple of years ago, but maybe it's time to bring it back. Yeah. Yeah. And, in the fall, there's people who are doing research on Boston Newsreel. There was a Boston Newsreel as my colleague Jeremy discovered, and some other people who are doing research on like, New York Newsreel, and the various Newsreels, and we hope to bring some of those things to keep it, in part, very local, and remind us of what's happened here too.
John Gianvito 1:07:19
People may not know what Newsreel was, but it was an indie movement before there was video and so forth, of 16 millimeter filmmakers working in collectives trying to tell an alternative version of what was happening in the country and [INAUDIBLE] from it was Robert Kramer. But, there were different factions in different cities. And I didn't know that there was a Boston faction.
David Pendleton 1:07:45
I don't know if it was extremely active, but apparently, in the New York office– Well, we’ll get into that at a future time.
John Gianvito 1:07:57
As you may know, I have this predilection for quotes and to honor David's gesture to actually do a series like this here at Harvard. I used to run this joint many years ago, and I remember getting reprimanded or attempted to be reprimanded by a bigwig at Harvard, because of some of the political programming I was doing here. And he pounded on his desk and said, “Ideology has no place in the archive!” And I calmly said, “Well, you tell me how to get it out of there, because almost anything I put up on that screen is gonna be imbued with one form of ideology or another.” But having the courage to do this and to commit to doing this potentially up until 2020, I think, is a great thing that David should be thanked for. And I end with them the motto of Emma Goldman, which was, “To the daring belongs the future.”
David Pendleton 1:08:53
Thank you, guys. Thank you, John.
[APPLAUSE]
©Harvard Film Archive
This deceptively quiet documentary is a history of 20th century activism via a look at what remains of the activists and some of their famous events. Inspired by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, John Gianvito undertook a pilgrimage to the memorials and tombstones of inspiring activists and to the commemorative statuary marking the location of important labor strikes and other uprisings. Some of these names and events are still remembered; many are all but forgotten. Yet Gianvito’s camera and microphone capture the evidence of what once existed and what lives on. This look at the past reminds us that struggles for justice are long and often entail defeat; the success is in persisting. – David Pendleton
As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments or about the future, I have no difficulty understanding from whence the pessimism and cynicism springs. However, what’s critical for me is that regardless of one’s thoughts, one’s actions must be those of an optimist. Otherwise one is only further assuring that the status quo remains unchanged.
