Since the late 1960s, a group of activists has met weekly to protest US-led military invasions in front of a small-town post office in central Pennsylvania (this is one of many such sites). At the height of anti-war mobilizations, and later during the spread of Occupy movements, one reportedly witnessed a crowd. Now, this has dwindled to a core of elderly activists, no one younger than seventy and one in his nineties. The artist returns to the scene of his original political upbringing as a 13 year-old protesting the first Gulf War (1991). Upon telling one of them he’d been there before as a child, she said, “Funny, you don’t look old enough for Vietnam.” Instead of staying behind the camera, making the portrait he’d intended to shoot, the filmmaker is forced to confront the awkwardness of filming a four-person protest, and becomes, briefly, a participant. Via voiceover interview, his ambivalence around these gestures is explained to mirror, in some ways, a renewed respect for the ongoing commitment of their protest after a long period of disregarding such acts as hallmarks of mainstream left-liberal politics in the US.
Rent this work for public screeningsStrike Anywhere
Benj Gerdes & Jennifer Hayashida
2009, 00:32:00