ABigIndyProduction HowToStartARevolution

How To Start A Revolution (2011)



HOW TO START A REVOLUTION is the remarkable untold story of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gene Sharp, the world's leading expert on non-violent revolution. This new film (from first time director Ruaridh Arrow) reveals how Gene's work has given a new generation of revolutionary leaders the weapons needed to overthrow dictators. It shows how his 198 steps to non-violent regime change have inspired uprisings from Serbia to Ukraine and from Egypt to Syria and how his work has spread across the globe in an unstoppable wave of profound democratic change. How To Start A Revolution is the story of the power of people to change their world, the modern revolution and the man behind it all

Accolades
*Winner - Best Documentary Raindance Film Festival
*Winner - Best Documentary Boston Film Festival
*Winner - Mass Impact Award Boston Film Festival
*Winner - Best Documentary Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival
*Winner - Special Jury Prize Ottawa One World Film Festival
*Official Selection New Orleans Middle East Film Festival
*Official Selection United Nations Association Film Festival

“Smart and timely” – Time Out

“Inspirational” –The Globe & Mail

"Moving... capturing the hearts of audiences." -Telegraph

Synopsis

Half a world away from Cairo's Tahrir Square, an aging American intellectual shuffles around his cluttered terrace house in a working-class Boston neighborhood. His name is Gene Sharp. White-haired and now in his mid-eighties, he grows orchids, he has yet to master the internet and he hardly seems like a dangerous man. But for the world's dictators his ideas can be the catalyst for the end of their regime.

HOW TO START A REVOLUTION reveals the remarkable story of modern revolution, the power of people to change their world and the man behind it all. Quiet, unassuming, soft-spoken and barely known to the wider world, 83 year old Professor Gene Sharp has written the standard textbook for revolutionary leaders around the globe. Used by activists from Serbia to Egypt, from Ukraine to Syria, and now influencing Occupy Wall Street, one of Gene's most important books 'From Dictatorship to Democracy' is nothing less than a handbook of 198 strategic 'weapons' that are used to topple dictators. Banned in many countries, his work has influenced a generation of revolutionary leaders who yearn for democratic freedom in Asia, throughout Eastern Europe, in the Middle East and now here in America.

This film explores how, in a few short years, a new wave of revolutionary spirit has swept across the world through a network of international activists, trainers and teachers. It reveals how the leaders of an uprising in one country train and inspire the participants in the next and explores how social media now threatens dictators around the globe in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago.

We meet revolutionary leaders from Serbia, Ukraine, Egypt and Syria as they explain how they struggled to seize democratic power from the hands of dictators. And, as the world's headlines turn once again to Egypt in Autumn 2011 for the first Presidential elections, HOW TO START A REVOLUTION is an inspiring exploration of the power of people to change their world.