Research Events

Peter Snowdon's film The Uprising (2013) – which J. Hoberman called a 'masterpiece of iPhone cinema' – coalesces YouTube videos from the Arab revolutions. It shows the Arab Spring from the inside, as it was experienced by citizens of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen – marking the first time that participants took it upon themselves to film, narrativize, and broadcast their efforts to overthrow oppressive regimes in real time. This movie and Snowdon's book The People Are Not an Image (Verso, 2020) treat the phone camera as an extension more of the arm than of the eye, examining what happens when film becomes a direct tool of revolutionary action.