Iara Lee

From 1984 to 1989, Lee was the producer of the São Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil.[10] From 1989 to 2003, while based in New York, she ran the mixed-media company Caipirinha Productions to explore the synergy of different artforms (such as film, music, architecture, and poetry). Under that banner, Iara has directed short and feature-length documentaries including Synthetic Pleasures, Modulations, Architettura, and Beneath the Borqa. Synthetic Pleasures, released in 1995, deals with the impact of high technology on mass culture. The multimedia project Modulations, released in 1998, traces the evolution of electronic music. Her next film was Beneath the Borqa, a 2000 short documentary film about the lives of women and children under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.[11]

In 2010, Lee directed the feature-length documentary film, Cultures of Resistance, which celebrates creative acts of political struggle. The film debuted in its final form late in 2010, after which it screened at many film festivals, including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and won numerous awards.[12][13][14][15] Notably, the film was screened at the Beijing International Film Festival in 2011, defying the norms in a country where political resistance is rarely depicted in the media.[16]

Lee's subsequent projects include a short film, The Kalasha and the Crescent (2013), on the ways that the Kalash indigenous people of northern Pakistan are responding to the challenges facing their culture; and a documentary entitled The Suffering Grasses: when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,[17][18] (2012) which explores the Syrian conflict from the perspective of the civilians who have been displaced to refugee camps. The Suffering Grasses came out of footage taken during Lee's participation in a press delegation to Turkish refugee camps housing Syrians in exile.[19][20]

In 2015, Lee released K2 and the Invisible Footmen (2015),[21] which documents the unsung efforts of the indigenous porters who for decades have facilitated the ascent of the Earth's second-highest mountain. That same year, she released Life Is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara (2015)[22], a documentary that chronicles the everyday violence of life under occupation in Western Sahara. In 2018, she released two films about Burkina Faso: Burkinabè Rising: The Art of Resistance in Burkina Faso[23] (2018) and Burkinabè Bounty: Agroecology in Burkina Faso[24] (2018). She followed these with Wantoks: Dance of Resilience in Melanesia[25] (2019), a documentary profiling the artists and activists in Melanesia who are fighting for self-determination while trying to defend their homes against the rising sea.

In 2020, she released a full-length documentary entitled Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse[26] (2020), which examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster. Later that year, she released From Trash to Treasure: Turning Negatives into Positives[27] (2020), which showcases a spirit of reimagination among artists in Lesotho. She also launched a short film series called Dispatches from Malawi,[28] starting with a music video for "Better Must Come," a song by Ishan Cyapital featuring Teebz. "Better Must Come" gives voice to popular dissatisfaction with corruption and denounces government apathy about the urgent problems facing countries like Malawi.

In 2008, Lee traveled to Iran and supported a number of cultural exchange projects between that country and the West, with the goal of promoting arts and culture for global solidarity. For example, she helped produce Iranian rapper Hichkas' "Ye Mosht Sarbaz (A Bunch of Soldiers)" music video,[29] which was directed and edited by Fred Khoshtinat.[30]

Lee has also actively supported indigenous and civil society campaigns to prevent the construction of the Belo Monte mega-dam on the Xingu river, a major tributary of the Amazon in Brazil. According to the California-based nonprofit International Rivers, the dam project threatens to displace over 20,000 people, destroy an extensive area of the Brazilian rainforest, and endanger indigenous tribes that depend on the river for their survival.[31] In 2009, Lee released a short film about the dam controversy, Battle for the Xingu, in conjunction with groups such as International Rivers.[32]

• Dispatches from Malawi[35] (2020), short film series
• From Trash to Treasure: Turning Negatives into Positives[36] (2020)
• Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse[37] (2020)
• Wantoks: Dance of Resilience in Melanesia[38] (2019)
• Burkinabè Bounty: Agroecology in Burkina Faso[39] (2018), short film
• Burkinabè Rising: The Art of Resistance in Burkina Faso[40] (2018), feature documentary
• The Kalasha and the Crescent (2013), short film[41]
• The Suffering Grasses (2012), feature documentary[17]
• Cultures of Resistance (2010), feature documentary[42]
• Battle for the Xingu (2009), short film[43][44]
• Modulations: Cinema for the Ear (1998), feature documentary
• Synthetic Pleasures (1995), feature documentary

• "Iara Lee: Through the Lens of an Activist", Quotes Magazine, 2020
• "Iara Lee veut toucher les coeurs", Subtile, 2020
• "Q&A Politics: Iara Lee", Dazed and Confused, 2012
• "Syria: Thirst for Revenge Among Refugees in Turkey, Warns Radical Filmmaker Iara Lee", International Business Times UK, June 2012
• Interview with Iara Lee about her footage from the Mavi Marmara by Democracy Now!, June 2010
• "TEO MACERO: Interview by Iara Lee", MODULATIONS, September 1997
• "Jon More Matt Black: Coldcut Interview by Iara Lee", Modulations, Summer 1997

• Cultures of Resistance Network Foundation
• Cultures of Resistance Films
• Iara Lee's blog at the Huffington Post
• Iara Lee at Shift
• Iara Lee at IMDb
• What happened to us is happening in Gaza, by Iara Lee. San Francisco Chronicle. June 5, 2010.
• Cultures of Resistance on YouTube
• Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo