Today the word on the street is ‘Occupy’. This is how we used to do it in the 90’s…
Imagine 5000 people being taken across London by underground to a mystery location and then transforming a motorway into a sand pit, a dance floor, a forest. Imagine radical ecologists joining forces with sacked dockers and occupying Liverpool docks. Imagine Trafalgar Square metamorphosed into London’s largest rave while under siege from 3000 unhappy riot police. Stop imagining and watc
h this film. YOU WILL BE INSPIRED.
May 1995, London, England. A small group of people decide to organise an illegal street party in Camden, a part of the city renowned for its consumerism and incessant traffic. The final location is kept secret, because they know that the state and business will not be amused. Reclaim the Streets! is born, a cocktail of raging love, revolutionary carnival, art and anarchy. Since then the clandestine street parties have erupted all over the world. From Hull to Sydney, Lyon to Tel Aviv, Vancouver to Valencia, people are taking back their streets. And this is only the beginning.
This film, a 2012 re-edit of the original, made from over a hundred hours of footage from 13 film-makers, and brought up to date with a recent expose of cop infiltration, tells the story of reclaim the Streets from its origins in London to the Global Street Party in May 1998 when 30 cities simultaneously joined in the fun.
‘Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.’
