Argentina, Indymedia and the questions of communication
“i” is a meditation on the relationship between media and power as it is manifested by the worlds largest all volunteer network of media activists — Indymedia. The feature-length documentary follows the first year of a small collective in Buenos Aires as it struggles amidst assassinations, a collapsing economy, and a whirlwind of political upheaval.
It's non-linear structure mimics the network ideology it documents. The viewer encounters a series of interlocking events, parallel storylines, and related imagery that coalesce around a small group of individuals within Indymedia Argentina — who are themselves linked internally and externally to the forces that surround them.
The film progresses through a series of "hyperlinked" excerpts from different media renderings of the upheaval, offering an exploration of the events themselves as well as the story-telling capabilities found in the embedded structure of information on the web. This structure serves to illuminate the concepts of collective communication, horizontal organization and networked social action. The result is a fractal-like portrait, disclosing a repetition of form and phenomenon regardless of the scale at which it is examined. "i" uses the micro-scale of the individual collective to mirror and frame the macro-scale of the surrounding social movements, theoretical philosophies, organizations, and events.
In editing this film, Lyon and Ingoglia pored through hours of footage from several continents, looking for the resonant moments where these specific connections and intersections unfurled. This delicate process took four years and much meditation — as they sought to portray what at first glance might be a largely invisible phenomenon. What has emerged is not only a document of a particularly notable moment in history, but a profound testimony of the experience of unfolding network consciousness.
DVD 84 minutes Englisch / Spanisch voice over
special features:
The Eye of the Storm (film prequel), 14 min
selected scenes of the first indymedia center
radical media making in Argentina in the 70s
rare extended interviews with indymedia founders
subtitles in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, Bahasa, Suomi, Italian
suitable for mixed spanish/english audiences
"beautiful, intellectual, riotous. It fits in no box.", Naomi Klein
Website i the film
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