On December 2008 we organized a series of events in Leiden, the Netherlands, in solidarity to the insurgent people in Greece. On January, while planning one such solidarity-action for Rotterdam, we were asked to present a video-compilation for the uprising in Greece. We decided to take up this challenge, although we had limited experience with video editing and very little time to do it. In that sense, this was from the beginning a truly DIY-project.

All of the material that we used (videos, photographs, posters, etc) was mostly collected from non-commercial sources, such as the athens indymedia server, the “black-tracker” and the numerous blogs and websites that were created during the uprising, but, inevitably, much of it comes also from commercial websites like youtube or the Greek Mass Media. Tracking down the material, downloading and sorting it out was a difficult task, and editing was even more chaotic, as the photos and videos come from diverse sources and in various formats that were often incompatible. For these reasons, plus the limited time available, we were not able to make a true “documentary” of the uprising: some events were not included simply because we did not find any documentation, others because of technical issues, and a few because of our own political differences. Therefore, the videos that we compiled represent only the end-products of our efforts; they are not meant to be seen as representative of the full spectrum of the events that took place during the uprising.

As a result of these technical- and content-related biases, the screening of the videos acquired a very specific structure. Thus, after the end of each part we would stop the screening in order to interact with the audience, answer questions and stir up a discussion according to the theme of each video. In this way, we also tried to include in the debates issues and events that were not represented in the videos.