Preview Screening – How to Start a Revolution

Ruaridh Arrow’s award winning film shows the influence of one academic’s template for non-violent revolution on every major antigovernment protest of recent times.

 

Twenty years ago Professor Gene Sharp outlined 198 non-violent techniques in his handbook From Dictatorship To Democracy for would-be resistance movements. It advocates branding demonstrators in strong colours and graphic symbols, writing large banners in English, putting women and children at the front of protest, all techniques used  to memorable effect in the so-called Colour Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the current Arab Spring. Underpinning it all is a lifelong commitment to non-violence espoused by Professor Sharp in the access given to the filmmaker.

 

Through his travel to Ukraine, Serbia, Syria and Egypt, Ruaridh’s film is also a fascinating insight how the leaders of an uprising in one country train participants in the next – and how social media now threatens dictators and tyrants around the world in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago. 

 

Winner Best Documentary , Boston Film Festival & Raindance London

Directed by Ruaridh Arrow

2011

80 mins