2007, 1.5 min
END:CIV is the first feature film to analyze our culture’s addiction to systemic violence, industrial capitalism and environmental exploitation, as evidenced by the current epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based on the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen and the runaway success of director Franklin Lopez, END:CIV asks: “”If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”
About Derrick Jensen.
Hailed as the philosopher poet of the ecological movement, Derrick Jensen is the best selling author of A Language Older Than Words and Endgame, among many others. Author, teacher, activist, small farmer, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he regularly stirs audiences across the country.
What keeps informed Americans from resisting is the same mechanism that kept the Jews outside of the Warsaw ghetto uprising from resisting. People seek to keep themselves from harm’s way at every chance, unless harm is thrust in their face. But, even this burden of harm is not enough unless it is associated with the probability that resistance against it will result in success.
To be sure, sometimes the sheer futility of a situation can cause explosive resistance (as in the case of the Palestinian resistance), but the likelihood of this scenario is practically nonexistent without proper settings – that is, a prolonged, degrading, spacio-temporal gestation (i.e Gaza and the West Bank).
In the end, Americans may need fire in their hallway, quickly approaching their door, before action is taken. Whether this statement be correct or not, the collective lessons of Slavoj Zizek and Naomi Klien should ring in our ears: (respectively) we must create philosophical and intellectual roadmaps (which take into account the failures and lessons of the liberal left’s past) for our members on the field to utilize, and policy plans must be hashed out so that, when time permits, they can be picked up and implemented by those in need (a leftist co-opting of Friedmanite ideology).
jacques laroche
jacqueslaroche.blogspot.com