Seite - 75 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/01

Activist Citizenship, Film and Peacebuilding | 75www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 not act”.7 For Arendt, freedom meant the ability to act,8 and the negation of this ca- pacity to act9 within totalitarian regimes is an attempt to deprive a human being of its existential and ontological meaning. The negation of freedom to act, or “zero liberty” through “totalitarian methods of domination”,10 has been depicted in films such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (I 1975), perhaps one of the most controversial films made on this subject. Since “totalitarianism renders this capacity to act into isolation”,11 disobedience becomes an act of citizenship, where subjects become citizens by escaping from this isolation. This disobedience, however, should be distinguished from the deliberate refusal to act within an oppressive totalitarian regime, where citizens chose the right “not to act” in the sense that they do not want to participate in the existing order of things. There is a long historical relationship between activism and the arts. The very act of creation is inherent in human nature. Director Andrei Tarkovsky described the act of creativity as an unconscious act similar to confession, as an ability that we share with God.12 The arts have always had a political dimension and through the arts both conflict and peace have been communicated and the figure of the activist citizen and non-citizen rethought. In the past decade activism increasingly has also been per- formed through social media (cyber-activism or “hacktivism”13) by whistleblowers and now well-known figures such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. It has also been expressed within collective movements such as the Occupy movement, which embraces a moral quest for the transformation of existing systems because “debt ceases to be a threat to active citizenship but a condition of it”.14 Activism re-creates the socio-political conscience of citizens and the figure of the citizen itself. Activism can be individual or collective and can take place locally or globally, and often it is a shared experience in which citizens are “claiming the rights that they do not have”,15 inevitably involving a distortion of the totalitarian order. Activism is also a novel crea- tion whose final effects and consequences are yet to be realised. Equally, in film activ- ism is a construction of something new. Although films do not always provide explicit political solutions, filmmakers often propose an alternative vision of society in which existing concepts and understandings of justice and rights are seen as corrupt and morally wrong. When speaking about activist citizenship and film, we ought to acknowledge the significant number of international film festivals across the globe that communicate 7 Isin 2012, 114. 8 Isin 2012, 116. 9 Isin 2012, 116 10 See Arendt 1961. 11 Isin 2012, 114. 12 Paraphrased; see further Gianvito 2006, 160. 13 Yang 2009. 14 Bretherton 2011, 367. 15 Isin/Saward 2013, 42.