By Tim Saunders on
Singer Annie Lennox has been collaborating with Mexican filmmaker Gael Garcia Bernal on a new film for Amnesty International.
Bernal – who is best known for his performance as Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries – is currently working on the film, titled Resist, to be released in 2009. He spent an afternoon with Lennox late last week, researching background information.
“I spent a little bit of time with Gael Garcia Bernal in collaboration with Amnesty International,” said Lennox on her blog. "He is making a documentary film, and wanted to ask me some questions on film. He is really switched on… and looking for ways to contribute to “positive change” in the world. In this we have a shared passion and interest."
Bernal’s Resist project is a quest for people whose actions are shifting perspectives on the world, a search for people who are inspiring new ways of thinking, acting and being, who are instigating change from below.
“Social Justice is not something that is just delivered or produced,” he said about the film. I want to make a film that really explores resistance – not casting people as victims, but rather that shows that ‘it is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees’. For millions of people worldwide the system will not change in their lifetime, yet they do not concede defeat. Real people at the risk of being alienated, hurt and killed, still fight back. To me, resistance is the human spirit expressing itself at its most creative, at its most instinctive."
More information about Resist can be found at the film’s website.
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