The Resistance Saga
Life in Resistance – ¡Viva la Resistencia!
Skylight has launched The Resistance Saga, a traveling event to celebrate and stoke resistance on the road to the 2018 and 2020 elections. Over the last 35 years Skylight has developed a wealth of experience in impact storytelling with resistance movements in the United States and Central America. In that legacy we are excited to co-design local events to exchange ideas, and brainstorm strategies, with a network of newly engaged activists and established grassroots organizations. As The Resistance Saga tour rolls out, we see an opportunity to form a broad intersectional network of solidarity that gathers force across issues, campaigns and movements.
At each stop, local movement organizations will be our hosts: providing venues, inviting participants from their communities and sharing their experiences and knowledge. Art will anchor and focus the day, with film clips pulled from the Skylight archives and tailored to the issues most pressing in the host communities.
Central to the event will be a political dialogue led by the remarkable Mayan activists, scholars, and educators, Andrea Ixchíu and Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj. Both women are renowned freedom fighters who have organized against genocide, colonialism and imperialism for close to four decades. They are both protagonists in Skylights latest film 500 YEARS. From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, 500 YEARS tells a sweeping story of resistance in Guatemala, through the actions and perspectives of the indigenous Mayans, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.
We hope to conclude each half-day or day-long event with a public screening of 500 YEARS (Sundance Premiere 2017). Workshop sessions will be held in collaboration with local movement organizations as well as filmmakers and artists to explore the ways in which all of our work serves as a form of resistance. One of the workshops will focus on sharing the Skylight model of human rights media activism in order to discuss how storytelling can create and strengthen social impact. The day will conclude with a rousing concert by invited local musicians and fast-rising Mayan singer/songwriter Sara Curruchich, celebrating the resilience and beauty of the human spirit!
An advocate for indigenous rights, climate justice, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, and immigration reform, Skylight is committed to the long-term defense of human liberty. We strive to build spaces that foster solidarity, empower and energize activists, and create networks for action that will repel the present and looming assaults on our rights. Through the Mayan perspective, The Resistance Saga reminds us that resistance is not a quick fix nor a definitive victory. And it it is nothing without a vision for the future. Our rights are never guaranteed, and we must always defend them, nurture them, strengthen them. To #Resist is a stance, it’s an attitude, it’s a way of life.
Life in Resistance – Viva la resistencia!
#ResistanceSaga #VivalaResistencia
