Arash T. Riahi, Iranian-Austrian producer and director, will have his Masterclass on the connection between film and cross-media platforms at Dokukino KIC (Zagreb) on December 13th at 17:00. Riahi is the director of the documentary "Everyday Rebellion", which follows nonviolent civil disobedience movements such as 15M, Occupy Wall Street and Femen, and has successfuly managed to build a cross-media platform around the film by launching the everydayrebellion.net website – an online interactive guide to civil disobedience and nonviolent protests. Restart is organizing this masterclass and screening of the film (the day before, 12.12., 6 PM, Kino Europa) together with Human Rights Film Festival that starts 8th of December in Zagreba, and 11th of December in Rijeka.
The entrance to the masterclass is free!
Today, many cross-media platforms are often integrated into film, but there are still only few projects which have successfuly joined film forms with internet media. "Everyday Rebellion" by Arash T. Riahi is one of the projects which succeeded. It is a projects which presents a great example of smart design and realization of a documentary project and the cross-media platform around it. Here is what Arash T. Riahi says about the project and the masterclass:
Over the course of the last 4 years we've worked on “Everyday Rebellion”, a documentary film and cross-media project celebrating the power of creative, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience from Damascus to New York City, from Teheran to Kiew, from Istanbul to Madrid.
Our goal was to give a voice to the people who are trying to change violent and repressive systems with nonviolent protest. We followed inspiring nonviolent activists and movements like the Spanish 15M movement, Occupy Wall Street, Ukraine's Femen movement, but also less known Syrian and Iranian activists as well as legends of nonviolent protest like The Yes Men, Reverend Billy or Srdja Popovic from the former Serbian movement OTPOR.
Above all, we built the website everydayrebellion.net – an online handbook for civil disobedience and nonviolent protest methods, fuelled by the work of creative activists worldwide. On the platform people can upload their own material but also watch and download many video-tips, how-to’s, tutorials and books in different languages for their daily protest.
Taking a stance as filmmakers, and generally, as human beings, was a necessity for us. We think it is about time to take position and leave our neutrality as documentary filmmakers behind.
This is the case study of a never ending film that is transforming permanently.
Arash T. Riahi was born 1972 in Iran an has been living in Austria since 1982. He graduated in film studies at the University of Vienna, then worked as a freelancer in the art department of the Austrian TV. In 1997 he founded the film and media production company Golden Girls Filmproduktion (www.goldengirls.at). His body of work, that won more than 60 awards, comprises of various awarded short and experimental films, commercials, music videos, documentaries, including "Exile Family Movie" and the cross-media project "Everyday Rebellion". His first feature film "For a moment of freedom" received 31 international awards and was Austria’s candidate for the Academy Awards in 2010. He is also working as a dramatic advisor, coach and guest lector. He teaches at the Vienna Film Academy and has been a group leader at the MEDIA scriptwriting programme SOURCES 2 since 2010.
