Revolution!

"Our word says only one thing. We seek only one thing."

On January 1st 1994 in an obscure area of Mexico called Chiapas an armed uprising began. This was to be a unique uprising perpetrated by a unique group of revolutionaries. You may think this has little to do with filmmaking, but you'd be wrong! The unique nature of the uprising was paralleled by the growth and power of the Internet and the introduction of digital technology. Once the uprising began the Zapatista became involved in the world's first Net-war and the images generated became potent weapons in the battle for hearts and minds.

First a little history is required: the uprising was the work of a group known locally as the EZLN, but known popularly as the Zapatista. On the morn of New Years Day they emerged from their camps in the jungles to seize many of strategic towns in Chiapas and soon controlled a sizable chunk of the state. There have been rebel uprisings in South America before, too many to count; yet this time it would be different. As the Mexican army backed by the power of the US military was about to squash the Zapatista like an annoying bug, messages, images, and video clips poured onto the Internet. Zapatista activists were using this new medium to get their message out. People heard the call and responded, this call was not an order to take over the government. Theirs was a call to be recognised, to be empowered in their own communities - to be given their own space.

Net users, seeing the proliferation of Zapatista content, like a cinema audience identifying themselves with the lead characters in a film, took-up the message of the Zapatista and carried it far and wide across cyberspace, as New York University's Stefan Wray explains; "This rapid widespread dispersal of these communiqués and other information, and the subsequent establishment of intercontinental networks of solidarity and resistance, accounts for part of the reason why the Zapatistas survive".

Something else significant was happening: A media revolution. For the first time and without the trimmings and editing of the traditional media - people were observing events un-edited. The Zapatista's information was open for any and all to read, Stefan Wray again; "This new media, the Internet, became a vital means for the transmission of information from inside the conflict zone in Chiapas to other points of resistance in Mexico and to points beyond Mexico's physical borders." The Zapastista dominance of the information war can be seen as due to, in part, the slow response of the worlds media in dealing with the information flow over new technologies. For example Efrain Bartolome living in one of the occupied towns during the uprising writes, "We wanted news, but the only thing on TV is Don Fransisco on one channel and American football on the other." In part due to the Mexican government's lack of understanding of new technology and in part due to net communities embrace of unfettered information.

This switch in information flow was highlighted in the book by the microchip maker Intel's president and CEO, Andrew S Groves. Groves shows a model where in the pre-web days the consumer can only link with the company via the media/content providers. In the post-web world, the two can link directly. This was happening in the jungles of Chipas, except the consumers became the audience and the companies became armed revolutionaries:

Lets bring the topic of filmmaking in at this point. Do the ideas of information exchange, removal of trimmings, first hand observation of events, resonate with the ideas of filmmaking? This article argues that there is a strong convergence with the events in the jungles of Chiapas and the ideas of Cinema Verite. Disagree? Lets us begin with a defintion from 'Cinema Verite in America: Studies in uncontrolled Documentary' by Stephen Mamber; "Cinema Verite is a strict disciple only because it is, in many ways, so simple, so 'direct'. The filmmaker attempts to eliminate as much as possible the barriers between subject and audience. These barriers are technical (large crews, studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment, special lights, costumes and make-up), procedural (scripting, acting, directing) and structural (standard editing devices, traditional forms of melodrama, suspense etc.) Cinema Verite is a practical working method based on a faith of unmanipulated reality, a refusal to tamper with life as it presents it's self. Any kind of cinema is a process of selection, but there is (or should be) all the difference in the world between the Cinema Verite aesthetic and the methods of fictional and traditional documentary film."

In short Cinema Verite seeks to remove the barriers between creator and audience. In their poetic speeches, the Zapatista sought to remove the ideological barriers between their cause the concerns of people worldwide, Zapatista Net activists in harnessing the power of the Internet sought to remove the barriers between events and their representation. All seek simplicity of message to receiver; like in the diagram above it the removal of the middle-men.

The film footage that emerged from the Zapatista revolution was as raw and real as it could get, as noted by filmmaker Nettie Wild, "On camera, the Peace and Justice [government ministry] accuse the Zapatistas of violence. Off camera, they threaten to kill the Mexican members of the film crew." The films made had an ingrained passion, such as that reported by activist filmmaker Carmen Ortiz, "But if you're involved with your subject, you put something of yourself in the video, something personal".

The video images the Zapatista gathered are free of production clutter and unlike the news reports we normally rely on for the images of the world at large, there was no set-up shots, noddy shots, comment or studio analysis - just raw images of the action as it happened, as Stephen Mamber's book notes the "faith of unmanipulated reality".

Read the second part of The Zapatista: Post-Modern Revolutionaries & Filmmaking - Media Power