Anarchist filmmaker Gregory Hall (centre) on the set for “Bruised” (2012)

This article was originally published on the Fifth Estate

In the aftermath of 9/11, I pretty much dropped everything to produce media about the protests against the war in Afghanistan. However, I was clueless about the alter-globalization movement and that mass mobilizations had been happening all over the world for the two years preceding the Twin Towers attacks.

That is, until joining Indymedia in Atlanta.

Indymedia, or IMC, a decentralized network of radical journalists born out of the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle, was now a worldwide phenomenon, and when the US was beating the drums of war, IMC centers became the megaphones for anti-war mobilizations.

The anarchists who staffed the centers introduced me to a new world of indy filmmaking that changed my life forever. Watching“Breaking the Spell,” a film about the WTO protests that was filled with “riot porn,” I kept thinking to myself, “Can they really do that? Is this shit legal?” I borrowed VHS copies of such gems as, “Crowd Bites Wolf,” “Fuck the Corporate Media,” and “The 4th World War,” and decided this was the type of media I wanted to make.

What made those films so exciting was that they were unapologetic about their politics. Anarchists were at the forefront of the action, not the cops or politicians. They displayed a creative celebration of movement victories and radical culture, normalizing the sentiments which I had previously felt somewhat alone in—a hatred for capitalism and authority, and an uncompromising love for freedom and social justice.

Over a decade later, however, it is sad to say that the world of radical anarchist filmmaking, which I had expected would develop by now, has not come to fruition. Maybe my expectations were set too high. After seeing the rapid global spread of IMCs, I imagined that anarchists from all over the world would pick up cheap cameras and pirated copies of Final Cut Pro programs and unleash a new wave of radical cinema. To be sure, the growth of citizen journalism has had a significant effect on world politics, but “radical anarchist cinema” doesn’t mean eyewitness video reports of police brutality or “livestreamed” protest events.

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