March 20-21, 2021: A film festival in celebration of World Water Day, presented by SOA Watch.
SOA Watch is honored to host a mini-film festival on March 20 & 21, 2021 in partnership with Mutual Aid Media, COPINH, and OFRANEH. The film festival will include the world premiere of the documentary La Lucha Sigue (The Struggle Continues) about the struggles of the Lenca and Garifuna peoples in Honduras as well as amazing discussion panels following each film.
Register free at https://soaw.org/march2021filmfestival/
This film festival is a celebration of World Water Day and the communities that put their lives on the line to defend it. Each film will be followed by a community specific panel with fierce Indigenous and Black women leaders. A large group discussion with all the women warriors together will close out the festival.
Join us to hear directly from the visionary frontline leaders that are building a global movement to protect the earth, put health over wealth, and show people that another world is possible. Greed and destruction is not our destiny. Indigenous and Black people know how to survive–they have been surviving genocidal systems that have ravaged their communities for centuries. The film festival and the panels will reflect on what’s working, what’s not and what we need to do to protect each other and the planet.
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 2021
3pm ET
LA LUCHA SIGUE (THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES) makes its world premiere on the heels of COPINH’s commemoration activities for the 5th anniversary of the assassination of world-renowned Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres. Additionally, March 20 will mark 8 months and 2 days since the forced disappearance of 4 Garífuna men of Triunfo de la Cruz (Honduras) from their homes. (COPINH=Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras)
6pm ET
INVASION is a short film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation who, to protect their river, are standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous peoples.
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2021
2pm ET
L’EAU EST LA VIE (WATER IS LIFE): FROM STANDING ROCK TO THE SWAMP is the story of fierce Indigenous women who are risking everything to protect Mother Earth from the predatory fossil fuel companies. Followed by a session of organizers in the U.S. South telling their dreams of freedom.
4:30pm ET
group discussion with all the communities.
ABOUT THE FILMS
LA LUCHA SIGUE (The Struggle Continues)
from Honduras
In Honduras, the most dangerous place in the world to be a land defender, the Lenca and Garífuna people are not backing down. They are fighting to uphold their rights and Indigenous and Black cultures in the face of state backed megaprojects and narco-traffickers who seek to assassinate them, destroy their lands, and erase their existence. Watch the trailer.
Community Panel: Bertha Zúniga Cáceres (COPINH) and Miriam Miranda (OFRANEH)
INVASION
In this era of “reconciliation”, Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people. Watch the trailer.
Community Panel: Freda Huson (Unist’ot’en) and Jen Wickham (Gidimt’en)
L’EAU EST LA VIE (WATER IS LIFE): FROM STANDING ROCK TO THE SWAMP
is the story of fierce Indigenous women who are risking everything to protect Mother Earth from the predatory fossil fuel companies that seek to poison it. Watch the trailer.
Community Panel: Cherri Foytlin (LELV), Anne White Hat (LELV), Sharon Lavigne (Rise Saint James), Eve Butler (Saint James)
WOMEN IN RESISTANCE
an international panel
4:30pm ET on March 21, 2021
These women warriors will come together to share their strengths, knowledge, and traditions. Miriam Miranda, Bertha Zúniga, Freda Huson, Cherri Foytlin, Sharon Lavigne, Jen Wickham, Anne White Hat, Eve Butler. Poetry reading by Anne Spice.
Come meet the women who collectively: have recuperated their land from narco-traffickers, are spearheading a campaign to bring some of the most powerful figures in Honduras to justice in a country that runs wild with impunity, are organizing a nation-wide process to re-found Honduras with a new people’s constitution, have been protecting their yintah (territory) from some of the biggest oil and gas companies for a decade, inspired solidarity actions across so-called “Canada” that #ShutDownCanada’s economy for 2 months, delayed construction of an Energy Transfer Partners pipeline by 2 years, shined a national and international spotlight on cancer alley, and are taking on Formosa Plastics to stop them from constructing one of the largest US plastic plants.
In the face of this ongoing colonial violence and racial capitalism these communities are organizing a traditional university, recuperating territories to house climate refugees, leading COVID-19 community responses, revitalizing their languages, upholding their spiritual and cultural practices, growing food forests and using land based healing programs to address the harms of colonization.
