Red Square Revolt: Quebec Students on Strike
Lessons from Montreal: Documenting the tuition crisis for Americans
Sarah Leavitt • Thursday, May 24, 2012
A group of New Yorkers have taken an interest in Quebec’s student strikes and have created a documentary in the hopes of bringing the news of the tuition conflict to Americans.
“After Victoriaville, we could see things were going to get more intense and so we scheduled a trip,” Nate Lavey, one of the filmmaker’s, told OpenFile Montreal via email today. “We knew that the demo on Monday was going to be big, but we hadn’t planned on the government passing Loi 78, which has made the whole situation incredibly tense and dangerous for activists, students and professors.”
Lavey was inspired to make this documentary because of the dearth of coverage in the U.S.
“We had been disappointed by the lack of U.S., English-language coverage,” he said. “We knew radicals had been involved, but since many of them come from francophone backgrounds, their perspective on the strike wasn’t getting out, especially beyond Canada.”
Lavey and his team began shooting the documentary this past Saturday and worked hours on end to get it completed and online by Wednesday morning. After being unsuccessful in receiving funding from independent media outlets, they put their own money into the project. So why was it so important for them?
“We think it’s important that this story — and especially the perspective of radicals — make it out of Quebec. The strike is part of burgeoning anti-austerity movement that is sparking worldwide, so the lessons from Montreal are going to be relevant to people everywhere.”
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