Events

with director Maple Rasza, Professor of Global Studies, Colby College. 

Introduced by Naeem Mohaiemen, Visual Arts.

Part of the Grad Studio series “Cinema of Uprisings”

In the once-prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became an unruly revolt. This participatory documentary places audiences in the midst of the third and largest uprising as crowds surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear gas canisters. Soon the mayor will resign—and the movement will spread to cities across the country. The Maribor Uprisings takes up urgent questions raised by these events, and by uprisings elsewhere, from the Arab Spring, through Paris, to Black Lives Matter. What sparks such popular outrage? How are participants swept up in—and then changed by—confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city? The directors invite audiences to engage these questions through an unusual and participatory form. Drawing on the dramatic frontline footage of a video activist collective embedded within the uprisings, this film places viewers amidst the jostling crowds. It requires them to make their own choices about which cameras they will follow and therefore how they will participate. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, audiences in the theater must decide whether to listen to organizers and remain with those committed to nonviolent protest on Freedom Square or to follow rowdy crowds toward City Hall and almost certain conflict.

About the Artist
Since earning his PhD in anthropology and filmmaking at Harvard University, Maple has been teaching in the Global Studies program at Colby College. Maple is committed to using text, images, and sound to embody the experience and political imagination of contemporary activist movements. His previous films, co-directed with Pacho Velez, include Bastards of Utopia and Occupation: A Film about the Harvard Living Wage Sit-In and have shown in festivals around the world.