Breaking the Spell & the Miami Model Video Screening

Video Screening at Media Island April 7, at 8pm

Breaking the Spell is a 1999 anarchist documentary, directed by Tim Lewis, Tim Ream, and Sir Chuck A. Rock.

Using amateur camera footage recorded by protesters at the scene of the 1999 WTO riots, it documents the riot from the perspective of the anarchists, their opinions of fellow protesters, local politicians, and includes footage which aired nationally on 60 Minutes.

The film is currently distributed by CrimethInc. on the CrimethInc. Guerilla Film Series, Volume One DVD.

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the Miami Model

In November, 2003, trade ministers from 34 countries met in Miami, Florida, to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA threatens to devastate workers, the environment, and public services like health care, education, and water, and to destroy indigenous rights and cultural diversity across North, Central, and South America. Thousands of union members, environmentalists, feminists, anarchists, students, farm workers, media activists, and human rights activists who gathered in Miami to struggle against the FTAA were brutally attacked with rubber bullets, pepper spray, electric guns and shock batons, embedded reporters and information warfare, all coordinated by the new United States Department of Homeland Security.

Against Capital's model of paramilitary oppression, information warfare, and corporate rule, we offered models of grassroots resistance, creative action and solidarity. Collectively, Indymedia activists shot hundreds of hours of video footage documenting the FTAA protests in Miami. This footage has been edited by the FTAA Miami Video Working Group into a documentary that cuts through the mass media blackout to reveal the brutal repression and assault on civil liberties that took place, as well as the life-affirming and inspiring alternatives to capitalist globalization that were also in full effect in Miami.

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