ABOUT THE ARTIST
1. Why did you submit to the Fourth Annual chashama Film Festival?
The festival focuses exactly on the concerns I have as a citizen of this world.
2. How is your work illustrative of the country you are from?
The destruction of the environment, the private appropriation of the commons, the submission of all the aspects of our lives to market forces are global phenomenons occuring in each of our countries. I try to reflect that in my films.
3. Where was the most favorite place where your work was shown abroad?
The Bottom line: Privatizing the World has been shown in many countries but in France and Columbia, it has been shown in a really great number of activist events and festivals. I am particularly moved when in my films are shown by people occupying the streets, workers in strike etc.
4. Are you glad that your work is going to be shown in NYC?
I am really glad to reach a new audience in New York! Especially at this time with the movement Occupy Wall Street! I wish some of my films could be shown there, The Bottom Line: Privatizing the World, of course, and also Turbulences, which is precisely about the financial markets.
ABOUT A RESPONSE TO THE FESTIVAL
1. What is the most rapid social change that you have ever seen?
The emergence of consumerism in China.
2. How do you find strength in instability?
The Chinese translation of the word crisis implies the idea of opportunity. Understanding the systemic sources of this instability, convincing ourselves that there are alternatives, that another world is possible, and uniting our forces in order to use this opportunity to implement the changes towards a new balance.
3. What do you do to divert disaster?
I agree with Einstein when he said: problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
ABOUT YOUR FILM
1. How did you choose your thematic material?
For years, I had been gathering articles about the patenting of the living, the privatization of education and health care, the bulk selling of water. Each subject was worth a film by itself, but one day I had the flash that there was a link between all of this: they all related to the fact that they were public goods - ”commons” – that market forces wanted to commodify.
2. What is the most compelling image in your film?
When the Cocopa Indian in the Colorado Delta, deprived of water by the dams and water diversion, says that nothing, neither air, water, or land, is sacred for businessmen any more.
Text compiled by Marcina Zaccaria