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How to Fight Back!

How to Fight Back!

For the elections, we did DEMOCRACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS, for the inauguration we did EAT THE RICH. And now, in this era of the lawless Trump-Musk power grab and their brazenly cruel and incompetent actions, we ask: how far can civilian resistance and revolt go? These films look at the long game fight against oligarchy and increasingly autocratic governments, and for the protection (or restoration) of democracy across the globe.

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How to Fight Back!
  • Boom Boom

    Directed by Laurie Lassalle • Documentary • 2022 • 110 minutes

    "I meet Pierrot in the fall of 2018. We protest together in the heart of the "Gilets jaunes" movement. The earth trembles and so do our hearts. Our bodies mingle with thousands of others who express their anger in the street every Sa...

  • The Case of the Grinning Cat

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 2004 • 58 minutes

    In his newest film, French documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics, art and culture at the start of the new millennium. In November 2001, the filmmaker became intrigued, as did many ot...

  • Class of Struggle

    Directed by The Medvedkin Group • Documentary • 1969 • 37 minutes

    In 1967, Chris Marker and Mario Marret (under the aegis of SLON) produced A BIENTOT J'ESPERE , which documented a strike and factory occupation-the first in France since 1936-by textile workers at the Rhodiaceta textile plant in B...

  • Be Seeing You

    Directed by Mario Marret, Chris Marker • Documentary • 1968 • 39 minutes

    From 1967 to 1976 Chris Marker was a member of SLON (the 'Company for the Launching of New Works'), a group based on the idea that cinema should not be thought of solely in terms of commerce. 1967 was also the year an impor...

  • Dykes, Camera, Action!

    Directed by Caroline Berler • Documentary • 2019 • 61 minutes

    Lesbians didn't always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers B...

  • And She Could Be Next: Part One - Building the Movement

    Directed by Grace Lee, Marjan Safinia • Documentary • With Stacey Abrams, Rashida Tlaib • 2020 • 111 minutes

    “Episode One: Building The Movement” opens with the powerful reminder that “women of color have been the backbone of our communities forever.” An energetic montage of modern American civi...

  • Stories of A

    Directed by Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel • Documentary • 1973 • 89 minutes

    Shot in Paris in 1973, this feminist film on the fight for abortion rights was banned as soon it was released. A large-scale game of hide-and-seek ensued, as activists created an underground distribution network,...

  • Taking Back the Legislature

    Directed by Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers • Documentary • 2021 • 46 minutes

    TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE unspools over the course of a single day – one that marked a critical moment in the 2019 Hong Kong protests against the new extradition law.

    On July 1, Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversar...

  • Inside the Red Brick Wall

    Directed by Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers • Documentary • 2021 • 88 minutes

    In 2019, the world was captivated by pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Demonstrators, many with colorful umbrellas, faced teargas and rubber bullets for calling to an end to increasing Chinese control of Hong Kong....

  • Myanmar Diaries

    Directed by Myanmar Film Collective • Documentary • 2023 • 70 minutes

    MYANMAR DIARIES is comprised of short films by ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers, combined with emotionally harrowing citizen journalism documenting the junta’s brutality, as well as courageous resistance to it.

    The film...

  • Lost Course

    Directed by Jill Li • Documentary • 2020 • 180 minutes

    Embedding herself in the village of Wukan, southern China for several years starting in 2011, first time documentarian Jill Li witnessed an unprecedented experiment in local democracy. Corrupt officials had illegally sold villagers' land, bu...

  • Blue Island

    Directed by CHAN Tze Woon • Documentary • 2022 • 98 minutes

    BLUE ISLAND documents three people who engaged in rebellions when they were young. Through reconstructing these events, the film dramatizes their scarred memories and experiences by using four young people who participated in the 2019 A...

  • Downstream to Kinshasa

    Directed by Dieudo Hamadi • Documentary • 2021 • 89 minutes

    Over six bloody days in June 2000, the Congolese city of Kisangani was the scene of deadly violence between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies. More than 10,000 shells exploded, killing thousands and injuring thousands more. 

    Since then, v...

  • Come Hell or High Water

    Directed by Leah Mahan • Documentary • 2014 • 56 minutes

    COME HELL OR HIGH WATER follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who returns to his native coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfpor...

  • No Time To Waste

    Directed by Carl Bidleman • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes

    NO TIME TO WASTE celebrates legendary 98-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman...

  • Seeing is Believing

    Directed by Katerina Cizek and Peter Wintonick • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes

    It may be the greatest media technology paradigm shift since TV's advent. From Rodney King to Osama Bin Laden, handicams aren't just for weddings and family vacations anymore. Over the past decade, amateur camcorder...

  • Stonewall

    Directed by Mathilde Fassin • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes

    Whether in NYC or in Paris, every year in June, the Gay Pride parade is a wild party, where music resonates, floats roll by and glitter is thrown every which way. It hasn’t always been like this. While 2020 marks the fiftieth annivers...

  • A Simple Matter of Justice

    Directed by JEB (Joan E. Biren) • Documentary • 1993 • 56 minutes

    A powerful and moving piece documenting the LGBTQ+ movement for equality in the early 1990s, A Simple Matter of Justice: The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation expresses all the emotions o...

  • Power to Heal

    Directed by Charles Burnett and Daniel Loewenthal • Documentary • 2018 • 56 minutes

    POWER TO HEAL tells a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the tale of how a new national program, Medicare, was u...

  • Fight Hate With Love

    Directed by Andrew Michael Ellis • Documentary • 2017 • 79 minutes

    As a young man, Michael Ta'Bon's ex-con father taught him about drugs and crime, and those lessons landed him in prison for 15 years. During his incarceration, Michael promised himself that he would one day start a movement to pr...

  • Last Grave at Dimbaza

    Directed by Chris Curling and Pascoe Macfarlane • Documentary • 1974 • 55 minutes

    In 1969, a small group of South African exiles and British film students formed Morena Films in London to produce films about apartheid. By 1974, they produced one of the first, and certainly the most influential, ...

  • A Tribute to Malcolm X

    Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1967 • 16 minutes

    Made for the William Greaves-produced WNET program Black Journal, A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X includes an interview with Malcolm X’s widow Dr. Betty Shabazz, shortly after his 1965 assassination.

    Courtesy of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS, LLC an...

  • Argentina: Hope in Hard Times

    Directed by Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young • Documentary • 2005 • 74 minutes

    "Que se vayan todos!" Chants echo off the skyscrapers, burst through the plazas, and clamor down the streets of Buenos Aires. "Throw them all out!" shout legions of frustrated Argentine housewives, students and lawyers,...

  • Flower in Otomi

    Directed by Luisa Riley • Documentary • 2012 • 78 minutes

    On February 14th, 1974, 19-year-old Deni Prieto Stock was killed by the Mexican army in the town of Nepantla, along with four of her comrades in the Fuerzas de Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Forces), a forerunner to the Zapatist...