Gen­er­a­tion Revolution

This new, eye-open­ing doc­u­men­tary intro­duces a group of polit­i­cal­ly engaged black youths known as Lon­don Black Revs who pur­sue social change through var­i­ous forms of activism. Span­ning the sum­mers of 2014 to 2016, it charts the rise and fall and rise again of a com­mu­ni­ty that is fight­ing for equal­i­ty across all ​“oppres­sive” platforms.

“I always say I was nev­er French enough for the French.” Alex is a a new­ly ini­ti­at­ed mem­ber of the Black Revs, and this trag­ic per­cep­tion of iden­ti­ty result­ed from racist heck­ling as a child in rur­al France, draw­ing her in to a life of activism. Com­prised of sim­i­lar­ly inti­mate inter­views, as well as footage of the group’s cam­paigns (which include col­lab­o­ra­tions with R Move­ment and Black Lives Mat­ter), the film explores the pas­sion of indi­vid­u­als chan­neled into reform under the umbrel­la of ​‘black and brown’ empowerment.

Indeed, the film’s aim is to offer a true pro­jec­tion of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. It isn’t an impar­tial piece of film-mak­ing. Tack­ling insti­tu­tion­al racism with­in the police is a key focus for the Revs, yet police­men them­selves are not inter­viewed. This doesn’t negate its legit­i­ma­cy as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of youth­ful ide­al­ism, how­ev­er. In fact, that is its pur­pose. Nei­ther does it pass judge­ment on the Revs’ cam­paign meth­ods, which include film­ing their esca­lat­ing trend of vio­lence, cli­max­ing when a gen­tri­fi­ca­tion march turns into a an ad-hoc siege of Brix­ton police station.

Melan­cholic music plays over footage of police defend­ing them­selves with pep­per spray. This music choice tries to illic­it sym­pa­thy, but the actions of these rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies are impos­si­ble to con­done. The film­mak­ers don’t main­tain this emo­tive stance, how­ev­er, por­tray­ing the event as a cat­a­lyst for some­thing else: Lon­don Black Revs become Lon­don Black Rev, the leader expelling all oth­er mem­bers for flag­ging up the dan­ger and hypocrisy that he is encour­ag­ing, caus­ing an ex-Black Rev, Josh to, ​“learn that the kind of char­ac­ter­is­tics you see inher­ent in dirty politi­cians can hap­pen with­in the polit­i­cal move­ment,” mak­ing it, ​“one of the most tumul­tuous times of…[his] life.”

Gen­er­a­tion Rev­o­lu­tion is an engag­ing, edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence that changes how we per­ceive activism itself: rev­o­lu­tions hap­pen in crowd-fund­ing for home­less aid pack­ages, fem­i­nist work­shops for both gen­ders, edu­cat­ing the insti­tu­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed on their legal rights, and not just in large-scale, bloody marches.