Lessons from Taking BA Everywhere to the Sundance Film Festival
Interventions, Rich Exchanges, and Changing the Terms of Discussion
by Annie Day | February 3, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
There is a great deal to sum up from our time at 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In this article and the accompanying piece (see “Making BA Everywhere a Big Deal at the Sundance Film Festival”), we are giving Revolution readers a picture of what we did and a first blush at drawing lessons from this experience.
Along with the broad outreach on the street, revolutionaries participated in the discussions at panels or raised questions to the filmmakers in the Q&A's after the screenings. This brought essential questions of revolution and communism into the discussion and was sometimes part of changing the terms of discussion. We thought it was important to engage what was on the floor in different ways, even as what we were bringing wasn't going to come “from within” the terms of discussion as it was. We made an important distinction that while the basis to struggle over communism does spring from every pore of society (to paraphrase Lenin), that isn't spontaneous. We wanted to listen and learn well, and at the same time, bring in a whole different framework of understanding the most fundamental problem facing humanity... and the revolutionary solution.
One example where we felt we did this well was in a panel called “Exploratory Detours.” This was a discussion about the role of failure in the creative process. While the panel focused on the role of failure in making art, this was also applied to questions of society. It was a rich discussion and people talked about the importance of asking the question of “failure” according to whose standards, the importance of non-conformity, and the need for persevering in something you've deemed to be important.
One speaker, a lawyer, talked about the stakes of failure when you go beyond a specific creative endeavor. He told a story about being a young public defender in the South defending a young Black man facing rape and murder charges. He described this as a classic setup and knew the guy he was defending was innocent but the courts found him guilty. The man was exonerated 25 years later, two years after he died in prison. When the lawyer told this story, this received an audible gasp.
It was an engaged discussion, and people talked about questions of insecurity, the need for determination and at the same time, being open to different creative pathways.
I got called on early in the Q&A and introduced myself as part of a movement to make a revolution in this country and explained that I wanted to come at this from a different angle. I explained that I work with The Bob Avakian Institute and that Bob Avakian is a revolutionary leader who has brought forward a new synthesis of communism, studying the advances and errors of the previous socialist revolutions. And that he has looked at what he calls “the learning curve of revolution.” The experience of previous socialist societies was not a failure, but profoundly liberating. When talking about failures and society, you have to pull the lens back to determine whether the “failures” of a society are an anomaly or a mistake that cuts against the essence of that society or an extension of the society itself. The kind of legal railroad of the Black youth the lawyer described is a concentration of the oppression of Black people which is built into the DNA of the capitalist system in America... at what point do you say “OK, the whole system is a failure, no one should put up with it any longer, we need to make a revolution and bring into being a new system because I think we're long past that time.”
The lawyer on the panel spoke to my comment on one level. He said he appreciated what I was saying and that many would agree with me, but he said even then you couldn't wipe the slate clean and you do have to work within what is. He didn't give a more substantive response than this, but said it was a good question.
This exchange did create some buzz and at one point, I heard two people in front of me joking with each other about “communism being the answer” at which point I intervened in their discussion and said it was. They were skeptical but took info from me.
We had a crew outside the theater distributing flyers about the BA Everywhere campaign and a number of people asked if they were with the person who'd asked the question inside and gladly took more info. I talked with a couple of people outside who work in film, who appreciated the question as well. One said he'd never heard of BA, but wrote down his name so he could look into it more. The other said he appreciated that I introduced myself as someone who sees the need for revolution. He said he wasn't sure he agreed, but realized you have to go against the tide to talk about things in those terms and appreciated the clarity and certitude of that. We talked further about the need for revolution and they raised questions about the history of communism: I gave them both the special issue of Revolution newspaper “You Don't Know What You Think You 'Know' About... The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future,” some materials from Avakian, and a flier about the BA Everywhere campaign. They also raised a question about human nature. The reality is that this system gives rise to and promotes a “look out for number one” mentality, and people see that as some unchanging human nature, which it is not. Also, the fact that this false concept of a fixed human nature is so pervasive is part of what we're working to change now. Here, I brought it back to the BA Everywhere fundraising campaign. People don’t know that there is another way the world could be and another way people could relate to each other. People don't know about the new synthesis of communism developed by BA. Making this known throughout society—and raising the necessary funds to do so—is what we're on a mission to accomplish in the near term, and they should talk with me further—themselves getting more deeply into BA, and contributing to the BA Everywhere campaign.
Both these people gave me a way to follow up and I told them I'd like to talk with them more seriously about Avakian's work and ask them about making a contribution to the BA Everywhere campaign.
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Again, this was just one example of hundreds of exchanges and interventions at Sundance, but it was rich and is an example of how things got opened up further.
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