We Are Alive uses the personal to access the political in a way that feels honest but also sometimes limiting. The film opens with a personal blow to director Carmen Castillo, as she reacts to the death of her friend and political comrade Daniel Bensaid. She recalls how Bensaid befriended her and plugged her into an activist network when she fled her native Chile under Pinochet and moved to Paris in the 1970s. From these remembrances, she sets out to investigate the state of left-wing activism today, which is no longer a part of her everyday life or consciousness. Her search takes her around the world, from Zapatistias in Chiapas to the indigenous fighters of Bolivia’s “water wars” and several other conflicts that pit the disadvantaged against the powerful.
Castillo is very forthcoming about her status as an older person who has somewhat lost the thread of political engagement, but that impediment shows itself in a variety of ways, most notably in a resolutely old-fashioned conception of politics. The film lacks even a mention of the internet and apart from a brief mention of Greeks protesting against EU fiscal policy, most of the conflicts presented here are rather old, if still important.
But the old-fashioned perspective is sometimes refreshing since many instances of online-based activism have captured media attention without producing any physical change. We Are Alive, even if inadvertently, reaffirms the continued importance of street-level organizing. One of the film’s great strengths is Castillo’s rapport with interview subjects, who give powerful testimonials of their political engagement and how it has affected their lives. The constant refrain of these testimonies is that standing up for political rights has given their lives dignity and often the community building was its own reward.
An interesting thread that emerges is that despite instant communications and a global supply chain, these conflicts remain stubbornly local. What Castillo seems to mourn almost as much as her friend is the death of an international meta-narrative that posited worldwide revolution as a historical inevitability and linked conflicts from around the world. This international network allowed her to easily link up with ideological allies after coming to France. The fracturing of this international leftist culture shows that capitalism has globalized much more effectively than the opposition, though We Are Alive shows that pockets of resistance will always exist.
We Are Alive is an earnest search for political engagement in the world today. While it is sometimes hampered by an outmoded political sensibility, it brings sensitivity and a willingness to listen to worldwide combatants in social struggle.
