Culture

The film “Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood” (2012), directed by Daniele Vicari, reconstructs a key episode in recent European political memory: the police repression during the G8 summit in Genoa. It is a work focused on institutional violence and the cover-up of events that took place at the Armando Diaz School. The historical context is set in July 2001, during the G8 counter-summit in Genoa, when thousands of people mobilized against the global neoliberal model. The raid on the … Read more

The song “Bella Ciao” is an anonymous Italian folk anthem, transmitted for years through oral tradition in the northern regions of Italy. Its exact origin is uncertain, but it has become an internationally recognized cultural symbol of antifascist resistance. Its earliest roots can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century, linked to the “mondine”, women working in the rice fields of the Po Valley. These women used protest songs to denounce harsh working conditions: exhausting workdays, … Read more

Leisure is not a neutral territory. Since the early 20th century, board games have functioned as a space of ideological dispute, where economic and social behaviors are shaped. The current wave of resistance games revives a forgotten tradition: using dice and cards not to accumulate fictitious capital, but to build social imaginaries (that is, ways of organizing and interpreting reality) based on the common good and solidarity. The origin of this movement can be traced to the work of American … Read more

The Asociación Galega de Comunicación para o Cambio Social (AGARESO) premieres the documentary “La hora robada. Turismo, neocolonialismo y desarraigo en Gran Canaria”, an audiovisual work that examines the social and territorial consequences of the current tourism model on the island. The 35-minute piece was developed במסגרת the course “Comunicar para o cambio” and involved a team of five filmmakers traveling to Gran Canaria for five weeks. The project was initially conceived to address migration routes to the Canary Islands, … Read more

El futuro sobre plano (2004), by the Madrid-based punk rock band Biznaga, is an expression of rage in the face of the severe housing crisis in the Spanish State and a call for social mobilisation. The lyrics reflect the current housing situation in the country: financial speculation by vulture funds, lack of social housing, gentrification, mass tourism, evictions… but they also call for the contestation of the city and for reclaiming the right to inhabit it with dignity. The music … Read more

The Strategy of the Snail (1993) is a Colombian film directed by Sergio Cabrera and written by Humberto Dorado. It is considered by many critics to be the finest film in Colombian cinema, and has won awards at festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival and the Biarritz Latin American Film Festival. Based on a story by Ramón Jimeno, the film tells the story of a community of residents in a building known as La Casa Uribe who face … Read more

Libertarian municipalism is a political and social proposal developed primarily by the American thinker Murray Bookchin starting in the 1980s. This current of thought, rooted in social ecology, is based on the premise that human scale and proximity are indispensable conditions for truly democratic management of public life. In contrast to the concentration of power in large states and bureaucracy, libertarian municipalism proposes reclaiming the capacity to make decisions in the most immediate spaces: neighborhoods and towns. The central idea … Read more

The Chilean song that emerged before Pinochet’s 1973 coup and spread from the Seattle Battle to the Arab Spring In June 1973, in Chile, the political situation was unsustainable. Marches, pot-banging protests, and strikes foreshadowed a dramatic outcome. In this context, composer Sergio Ortega gathered with the band Quilapayún to fulfill a commission from the Central Committee of the Communist Party: to create songs that supported Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government. Between a curanto in the garden and Brahms’ chords, … Read more

The Corporation (2003) is a Canadian documentary directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, with a screenplay by Joel Bakan, which examines the legal and ethical nature of large corporations. The film is structured around a provocative hypothesis: if corporations are considered legal persons, what kind of personality do they exhibit? Drawing on the criteria of the DSM-IV and the contributions of specialist Robert D. Hare, it argues that the structural behavior of the modern corporation aligns with traits characteristic … Read more

  By mapping identities without sovereignty, a break in the uniform narrative of nation states is revealed. Atlas of Stateless Nations in Europe (2017), by Breton researcher Mikael Bodlore-Penlaez, provides a precise geopolitical catalog of indigenous, national, and cultural movements demanding autonomy from the Basque Country to Lapland. Through detailed maps and historical analysis, the book breaks down the mechanisms of cultural homogenization to highlight realities such as those of the Sorbs in Germany or the Veneti in Italy. The … Read more