Films in protest

Entertainment, expression, and education - films have it covered. Whilst most people use films for the sake of entertainment to enjoy themselves - to take a break from life’s stresses, to escape from reality - they are also capable of inducing the opposite effect: films have the ability to make you more in tune with reality, to affect reality, and also to shape it. The medium of film, especially in the current day, has a lot of power. And this power makes it a very useful tool in furthering change in our society and worldwide.

Films allow a person to express their ideas and thoughts in a way that is accessible to the masses. There are numerous films that have been made over the past years that have had a visible impact in society, and have been used to speak out against injustices. They have been used to start social movements and they have been used in political propaganda. The film The Thin Blue Line literally saved an innocent convicted man’s life; this documentary, directed by a detective, used witness statements to re-enacted scenes of the crime, which led to the lifting of his sentence, leaving him a free man. In Super Size Me, the American fast food industry was put under scrutiny, causing a revolution in the awareness of obesity, its causes and its effects. The film even led to McDonald’s removing its ‘super size’ option from all of its menus. These are some examples of tangible results from a film looking to create change. Usually, however, the impact of films is not quantifiable. It is more subtle and is often left open to interpretation.

Whether it has an observable impact or not, one thing is certain: these films create awareness. Following the advertising tag line ‘all publicity is good publicity’, as long as someone has seen a film with an aim of informing someone of a certain matter, whether they initially agree with its premise or not, they know of it. This in itself is half the battle. Films like Ava DuVernay’s brilliant 13th, which exposes a ‘loophole’ in the 13th amendment which abolished slavery in the U.S. while allowing minorities in America to still be targeted, the touching After Tiller, which attempted to educate people on pro-choice, and Cowspiracy, which managed to make almost everyone who watched it to at least want to try being a vegetarian, have impacts that change the way people think and feel. Something which cannot be put into a statistic but in certain ways is much more important.

While most films that have championed, or had the intention of furthering, a cause have been documentaries, they are not restricted to that category. Fictional films can still carry a strong message and connect with people. One could say it might even create more empathy as, being a work of fiction, the director is able to create material to cater to audiences emotions, whereas with a documentary film, usually the directors have to play with whatever material they can get which often consists of what can be thought as ‘dry’ material. Films such as The Cider House Rules, a film about back-alley abortions, and Rosetta, which follows a 17-year-old girl looking for employment to escape her alcoholic mother, they too succeeded in gaining a lot of attention towards their subject matter and in the case of Rosetta, political attention to ensure the payment of minimum wage to youth.

A corollary of film being a medium which allows any person to express their ideas and thoughts however, is that any person can make use of film – there is no censorship on their ideas. History has shown that films can have had a disastrous effects on society too. Films such as The Birth of a Nation, which arguably led to the re-birth of the Klu Klux Klan through its degrading depiction of African Americans, and the notorious German propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, which popularized the cause of the Nazis, are good examples of this. The impact of these films, well known to all, shows the power of film in society. There is tremendous power and in the wrong hands it can do tremendous wrong. But this also means in the right hands it can do tremendous good.

In an age where films and documentaries are churned out in multitudes, there is no lack of informative material out there. Online streaming sites such as Netflix – which has around 70 million viewers, whilst creating a fair few extremely good documentaries of its own – further the mass of video content available for people to watch. While people are unlikely to pay to go to the cinema and watch a documentary, they are much more likely to do so in the comfort of their own home. Increased viewing means good news for documentary filmmakers, whose main issue is actually getting people to watch their films. As Yariv Mozer, director of The Invisible Men, a documentary about the plight of gay Palestinian men, said, “Sometimes raising the awareness of one person, making him change the way he looks at reality, at life, will show when he meets someone in need, these are the small things that will make a big change’’. And as history has shown, raising awareness is something film can do very well.