In the once prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. In The Maribor Uprisings – part film, part conversation, and part interactive experiment- you are invited to participate in the protests. Dramatic frontline footage with a video activist collective places you in Maribor as crows surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear gas canisters. As a viewer, you must decide collectively with your fellow audience members which cameras you will follow and therefore how the screening will unfold. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, you will be faced with the choice of joining non-violent protests or following rowdy crowds towards City Hall and greater conflict. These dilemmas parallel those faced by protesters everywhere as they grapple with what it means to resist. What sparks outrage? How are participants swept up in – and changed by – confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city? What would you do?
Maple Razsa is an Associate Professor and Director of Global Studies at Colby College. He is committed to using text, images, and sound to embody the lived experience, as well as the political imaginations of, contemporary social movements. His films—including The Maribor Uprisings, Occupation: A Film About the Harvard Living Wage Sit-In, and Bastards of Utopia—have shown in festivals around the world. The Society for Visual Anthropology named Uprisings the Best Feature Documentary of 2017. Bastards of Utopia: Living Radical Politics After Socialism (Indiana University Press, 2015), the written companion to the film of the same title, won the William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology. Trained as a filmmaker and anthropologist at Harvard University, Maple has held fellowships from Stockholm and Harvard Universities, Amherst College, and been funded by IREX, NSF, Wenner-Gren, Fulbright and Truman Foundations.