You can buy Left Cultures from their online shop at www.leftcultures.com. Above is the cover of Left Cultures 2; below, we reprint a sample story from that edition, together with its accompanying image. The story is by Shaun Dey, the image is by Gary Embury.
It all started with an obsession at an early age with Marvel comics. I found to my delight that I could actually copy my favourite characters, which got me into drawing and painting – although my dad made me drop Art at school, despite my teacher’s protestations. “You won’t get a job with art” he said … that was the end of me drawing for quite a while.
When I was 15, punk changed my life. Punk led me to John Heartfield and Dada, and the possibilities of montage – which then led me onto Picasso and the Cubists. Alongside that was the growing influence of film – Scorsese, John Waters and Roger Corman in particular (I loved the fact that Corman would knock out films in a couple of days, with The Wasp Woman only taking 24 hours from start of shooting to finishing the edit).
Not that I was doing anything with all this stuff yet. I ended up working for the local council and at the age of 23 became a mouthy trade union shop steward around the time of the Miners’ Strike, another life-changing event. I got involved in a number of unofficial strikes and political campaigns. Learning how to make a point in under three minutes at union meetings came in handy later in constructing an argument/narrative in a film and keeping it as brief as possible.
Just over 10 years later, my mum’s death made me look at where my own life was going and I started drawing again. Two months later, I was accepted onto an art foundation course just as it became clear I was being forced out of work due to my union activity. I ended up getting a Fine Art degree as the anticapitalist movement was taking off, and got involved in Indymedia – using new affordable digital camcorders to film your own struggles rather than allowing mainstream media to misrepresent them.
That led me to a long trip around Latin America, seeing how social movements used film and the influence of third cinema on the way video activists worked – and then another visit to Latin America in 2005 led to the formation of Reel News, particularly visiting the Brukman clothing factory workers who ran their factory under workers’ control after occupying it to try and save their jobs four years previously – and only occupied it because they didn’t have the bus fare home. We thought, if they can end up running a factory with nothing, surely we can start a regular newsreel of inspiring struggles with nothing!
Then, in a dispute of construction workers in 2011, I was asked to put videos out every week for the workers to send round to build further action. They eventually won – and I learnt how to do my job properly. Since then Reel News has been involved in a number of victories, and I have my dream job, spending all my time with inspiring people fighting back …
