Reviews

“Shutdown does exactly what I expect any good activist documentary to do. It gives props to our hard won victories and gives time and space to figure out our failures…Shutdown is about something much larger then an anti-war organization. It’s about reflecting on how we work with each other and learn from our mistakes in order for us to move toward the creation of a truly sustainable movement for social justice. I suspect shutdown will…spark critical and thoughtful discussion in communities throughout the nation.”

-Finn Finneran, Left Turn Magazine. Nov/Oct 2008

“A marvelous film. The authors have done an extraordinary job of research into buried episodes and forgotten conversations to recapture, with eloquence and intelligence, a startling episode of resistance to war, capitalism, and the state in San Francisco.” 

-Andrej Grubacic, co-author of Wobblies and Zapatistas

Resistance Is Fertile
By Traci Vogel
Published on August 20, 2008 in the SF Weekly
http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-08-20/calendar/resistance-is-fertile/

They came carrying signs and babies. Eighty-year-olds in sweat suits and
28-year-olds in business suits, staging die-ins and blowing tubas and,
sometimes, weeping. On March 20, 2003, thousands of Bay Area residents
marched peacefully through San Francisco’s Financial District, protesting
America’s invasion of Iraq and bringing traffic to a grinding halt. One of
the march’s main organizers was Direct Action to Stop the War, which was
founded in October of 2002 and unraveled slowly afterward. In a new
documentary, Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War,
Direct Action looks back at what worked and what failed in the spring of
2003, re-creating the fervor of the era through archival footage, photos,
newspaper articles, and interviews with activists. With the protests’
recent five-year anniversary and the reinvigoration of Direct Action — not
to mention the fact that the Iraq War is still going — Shutdown may
inspire some to take to the streets again.