Cultures of Resistance

Cultures of Resistance, along with like-minded collaborators around the globe, is producing an international traveling film festival to showcase the very best of narrative and documentary films from around the world that promote peace with justice and oppose war and those who wage them.

The CONFLICT ZONE FILM FUND awards seed funding to forward-thinking filmmakers – both new and established – who possess a provocative, artistic, and culturally significant vision. The fund supports narrative and documentary film projects that explore a range of themes and ideas, from peace and disarmament to human rights to arts and culture around the globe.

We made contact with award-winning Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (HALF MOON, TURTLES CAN FLY, A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES), and discussed how best to go about this. We decided to commission five up-and-coming Iranian filmmakers, two of them as young as 10 and 13, to produce a series of short videos on the themes of war and peace. Ghobadi's company, Tehran based MIJ Productions, co-produced.

Published in 1980, Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking A People’s History of the United States recounts the nation’s history from the perspective of ordinary citizens: union organizers, slaves and abolitionists, suffragists and veterans, musicians and railway workers. Since its original publishing, the book has attracted millions of readers and has gone through numerous updates and incarnations, including several aimed at classroom teaching.

As one of the most powerful mediums of our time, film has been and continues to be a powerful tool for opposing war, promoting peace with justice, and building international understanding. We highly recommend the following films for their powerful narrative and verite treatments of pressing war and peace issues, past and present.

CULTURES OF RESISTANCE is a film journey into the causes of contemporary war and conflict around the world, and an impassioned meditation on the apocalyptic problems facing humanity at this critical juncture in the history of the species.

The Cultures of Resistance Network and Agit-Pop Communications teamed up to create a must-see animated short anyone can share to help inform others about the Bush administration's merciless drive for war with Iran and the many informed voices of reason standing against it.

In October, the CULTURES OF RESISTANCE crew bunked down in Honduras to hear the roaring battle cry for a war against warfare—The 2nd Hemispheric Conference Against Militarization.