As mentioned in our last blog entry, we moved to Cape Town at the beginning of September where we gave another very successful talk about our film. We also met more Cape Town anarchists and, together with them, helped organize the first ever anarchist bookfair (www.anarchistbookfair.co.za) on the African continent. The bookfair was a huge success and received a surprising amount of publicity. Hundreds of people attended, the talks were packed with people and we sold many, many books and pamphlets on anarchism.
Now that it’s over, we’re busy working on the documentary again. We intended to release the trailer at the bookfair but have realized that for an amazing trailer – and we’re committed to nothing less – we really need a professional editor. Fortunately, however, one of our friends has the requisite skills and has agreed to help us with it, and this will be our primary task for the rest of the year. We’ve also lined up a few interviews with three awesome black South African anarchists and poets over the next few weeks.
In response to our call for help in our last blog entry, a whole bunch of people offered to help us with translations and transcriptions. So far we have received three fully transcribed and translated interviews, all of which are awesome and all of which will find their way into the documentary. We’re very excited by these newly translated interviews, all of which underscore the global scope – and awesomeness – of contemporary anarchism!
On another note, we have, like so many of you, been sidetracked by the occupations. While Cape Town isn’t quite Wall Street or Oakland, it is nonetheless inspiring to see the same forms and principles emerging locally; we’ve also thoroughly enjoyed following the trajectory of the international movement through some of the people and places we’ve encountered on this trip, especially our friends and comrades in Oakland! In this time of global upheaval we are proud to be working on this documentary, which feels more and more relevant with each passing day.
Finally, we would like to extend our deepest appreciation to Mario Remedios, Pedro Pablo Santa Maria, Justin Windett and Leif Johnson for their help with transcriptions and translation. We don’t know what we would have done without you!
That’s it for now. Hopefully the next time you hear from us we’ll have something to show you!
Aragorn and Steffi
Continue Reading
Catching up on the last few months
Posted on 20. Sep, 2011 by admin.
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
Continue Reading
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
