RISE UP!: PORTRAITS OF RESISTANCE Announced At BAM, March 6-12

From Friday, March 6 through Thursday, March 12, BAM presents Rise Up!: Portraits of Resistance, a series charting the rich history of revolutionary cinema, with a selection of films that give voice to oppressed communities across the globe fighting to achieve self-determination. Centering the struggles of indigenous people and communities of color-from Cuba to Palestine to Senegal and beyond-this galvanizing program examines the myriad ways in which artists have deployed cinema as a tool for social action. The series precedes BAM's upcoming run of Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' explosive anti-colonial thriller Bacurau (2019), opening March 13. (Separate release to come.)

The series opens with Gillo Pontecorvo's iconic landmark of revolutionary cinema, The Battle of Algiers (1966), a scorching record of the Algerian struggle for freedom from France that weds incendiary politics with radical aesthetics.

Other titles include Ashutosh Gowariker's period epic of colonial resistance and cricket, Lagaan (2001), starring superstar Aamir Khan in one of his most indelible performances, with an introduction by film critic Devika Girish; Sarah Maldoror's Marx and Fanon-inflected chronicle of Angola's anti-colonialist struggle, Sambizanga (1972), the first feature film directed by a woman in Africa, with an introduction by scholar Yasmina Price; Cinema Novo renegade Glauber Rocha's boldly stylized acid western, Antonio das Mortes (1969); and Native filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin's immediate, immersive documentary on the 1990 standoff between the Mohawk First Nations community and the Canadian government, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993).

The series also includes Mohanad Yaqubi's urgent history of modern Palestinian resistance filmmaking, drawing from rare archival footage, Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2015), with an introduction by media scholar and documentary filmmaker Helga Tawil-Souri; Third Cinema revolutionary Jorge Sanjinés' explosive recreation of a government massacre of striking Bolivian miners, The Courage of the People (1971); Afro-Cuban firebrand Sergio Giral's anti-colonialist drama following an uprising by a band of slaves against their Spanish oppressors, Maluala (1979); and French-Senegalese actor-director Mati Diop's remarkable feature debut, Atlantics (2019), a supremely moving ghost-story-cum-romance blending the supernatural and the furiously political, introduced by Triple Canopy senior editor Maya Binyam.

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