[matilda] Indymedia's Summer of Truth - reminder!

[Chris]

Hi John

On Fri 14-Jul-2006 at 11:26:51AM -0400, John Doe wrote:
> Hi - my film "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" was
> shown on July 2nd.  I'm just curious how it went.

I think it went well, not the biggest turn out, 20 or so
people, but significantly more than the London Indymedia
film festival seems to have attracted and it was a better
turn out than the last night which had 8 people (however
it was clashing with the world cup and a big birthday
party!). 

The screenings so far have mostly attracted people from
the activist sceen, people involved in different protest
movements, anti-war, etc, so most people probably
recognise most others at the screenings -- Sheffield isn't
so big, perhaps 500,000 people, if you have been active in
politics here for a while you start to see the same faces
at events... But this is OK, we have given a lot of
leaflets out events which have had a far more diverse
crowd and I think the impact of these screenings is
spreading far wider than those attending especially since
around half the films can be watched online. 

The only negative comments I have had when giving out
leaflets for the screenings, and I have given out a lot
(we had 5,000 printed), has been from people in and around
the SWP -- they are the biggest Trotskyist group in the UK
and tend to have rather closed minds -- they believe that
their group has the one answer for humanity, a world
revolution that they will lead and for them it is
incovcievable that their understanding of capitalism and
politicis is wrong.  The response from other on the left
has been far more receptive.

At the screening it was the third or forth time I saw the
film and I think that seeing it several times is necessary
for the dense, detailed information to sink in, it gets
better every time one sees it. 

In contrast one of last weeks films was The Oil Factor and
this seemed lightweight and padded out with lots of
unnecessary shots of jets leaving aircraft carriers and
other such, unneeded, military hardware shots. 

I can't speak for all the people at the screening but one
woman told me that she found it hard to take it all in,
not having the DVD version was part of the problem -- the
sound quality wasn't so great and much of the text on
screen was hard to read. 

When the DVD arrives (Nick if you read this can you check
the PO box!) we will do a load of copies and distribute
these at the remaining screenings -- we have given out
quite a few DVD of other films at other screenings and
these have gone down really well, and I think having dense
films is fine for this -- someone was telling me last week
that they were blown away by 911 Open Your Eyes -- so much
information from so many really clever people with so much
to say -- I'm sure that people will have the same response
to your film.

I think that you film is a great companion to others which
cover the structural failure of the 3 skyscrapers --
because it doesn't touch on these matters and instead
concentrates on foreknoldge etc.

We are going to try to get some films screened at the
local Independent Cinema, The Showroom,
(http://www.showroom.org.uk/) and your film is one I'd
love to see shown there. 

For people who haven't see "Everybodies Gotta Learn
Sometime" you can watch it online from this link:

  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2006/05/341703.html#everybodys-gotta-learn

And if you don't have broadband come along to the
screeninsg and we will hopefully have it on DVD :-)

All the best

Chris


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