Rev Left Radio - The Red Battalion: Embedded with the New People's Army

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Filmmaker Steven De Castro joins Breht to discuss his on-the-ground documenary film on the New People's Army of the Phillipines for Means TV called Revolution Selfie; The Red Battalion. Together they discuss his film, his unique documentary style, his time embedded with the NPA, the Marcos Regime, Comrade Joma, the poverty and inequality in Manilla and throughout the Philippines that the NPA are fighting against, the role christianity plays in the guerrilla movement, LGBTQ fighters in the New People's Army, and much more!      Watch the Trailer for Revolution Selfie; The Red Battalion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m__3prDPwH0&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=StevenDeCastro     Check out the film here: https://means.tv/programs/revselfie     Learn more about Steven and his work here: http://credibilitymedia.com/     Check out our interview with Jose Marie Sison (aka Comrade Joma) here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/joma     Outro music: "Chairman Mao" by Bambu   Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. I have a wonderful episode for you today. I have on the show filmmaker Stephen DeCastro to talk about his film he shot a few years ago but is now being released on Means TV called Revolution Selfie, The Red Battalion. And this is a really interesting documentary about the new people's army in the Philippines, the Maoist guerrilla communist movement in the jungles of the Philippines. This is a wonderful documentary. Highly recommend people go to Means TV and check it out.

I learned a lot. The on-the-ground interviews are wonderful. The way the entire documentary is set up is entertaining and unique. It's not the same old. Same old when it comes to documentary formats, which can be kind of boring. This is different. It's entertaining.

It's funny. It's moving. It's inspiring. and it's really embedding himself with a battalion of the MPA in the jungles of the Philippines and just talking and showing the people why they joined up, the community that they've developed out in the mountains in the jungles, the poverty inside the major city centers of the Philippines, in this case, Manila,

just a fascinating exploration of a revolutionary communist movement that is celebrated, you know, I think it's past their 50-year anniversary of the party itself, the movement itself, waging people's war against right-wing, colonialist, fascist, imperialist, forces, backed by the U.S., as always. And it's a really unique and profoundly inspiring film, and this conversation about it is absolutely wonderful. I really, really enjoyed it, and I think you will too. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Stephen DeCast.

On his newest film, Revolution Selfie, The Red Battalion, put out by Means TV. Enjoy. My name is Stephen DeCastro, and I'm a filmmaker, or documentary filmmaker. I guess I could call myself a revolutionary filmmaker. And I'm based in New York, Queens, New York. I am interested in looking at liberation movements throughout the world, including especially like peasant liberation movements. And so it's about looking at the poorest of the poor and how they respond to the conditions of exploitation and inequality and how they themselves

take destiny into their own hands in the revolutionary spirit of humanity. And so that's what I explore with my work right now. Beautiful. Yeah. And we're going to be talking today about the new people's army in the Philippines. This is a documentary that you released is focused this one that we're going to talk about today is focused on the MPA in the Philippines. Longtime listeners of the show know that we've done episodes on the new people's army and the Filipino communist movement and over on our sister podcast, guerrilla history, we actually got the wonderful opportunity as you did in your film to talk to Comrade Joma before he passed away. So that was a wonderful opportunity for us. And I'll link to that interview in the show notes for anybody who

wants to dive deeper onto this topic. But first and foremost, Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really loved this film. I thought it was very unique and interesting the way that you conducted it, brave in the sense of you embedding yourself within an organization that the United States considers a terrorist organization, which I'm sure we'll get to. But before we get into all that, can you just kind of tell us about this documentary, how you got the idea, and what your goal was by making it? This documentary is called Revolution Selfie, the Red Battalion. And so the idea of this documentary is that it is a movie that is kind of like a movie,

but it really doesn't know what it is. Sometimes it is like a game, like a first-person video game. And through the format of this game, the audience plays me. as a filmmaker and i bring the audience face to face with an armed revolution in the southern philippines um known as the new people's army which is the wing of the communist party of the philippines and uh what i'm trying to focus on is actually not party and politics and policy and stuff like that but just the uh bring people on the ground with the experience of working with peasants um as they figure it out in terms of how they're going to solve the problems of

this world global inequality and exploitation and imperialism and how how this actually works out from the point of view of the peasants um and so uh and so that's how the uh and that's revolution selfy the red battalion and how i got this idea i think was that i realized that at first I was interested in a documentary about the NPA and I was probably thinking in more of a traditional sense of oh yeah we're just going to do some interviews we're going to shoot some B roll and then yeah the interviews over the B roll and yada yada it's the same documentary and news type of style that you see you've seen for like 60 years it's a very effective way of doing a story but what I believe is that if you do the movie in a traditional way, people's reaction to it and their attitudes are going to be traditional. They're going to be like the establishment attitude towards something like armed guerrillas in the jungle. And so I walked around New York City for a couple of years and people would ask me, oh, what are you working on? I said, yeah, I'm working on a movie about

armed guerrillas in the jungle. And the response I got was usually kind of like boredom because people feel like this has been depicted in many movies and news stories and so forth and essentially I'm making a movie out of the extras and an Arnold Schwarzenegger type of movie or whatever and so people are not interested in that because they feel like they know like what the establishment. wants them to believe in terms of the attitudes towards like oh these guerrillas are either terrorists or they've got no chance to win or they're just exploiting the people or something like that so I decided that yeah that matrix of belief is so strong the matrix of prejudice against the revolutionary movements is so strong on the TV screen that you need another approach you need to a way to shake people up. So I just wanted people to focus on the game space. Like when you're playing a game, you are immersed in the experience, in the moment. And I just wanted to construct Revolution's selfie as a series of moments, kind of like goal-oriented like a game a little bit, and move people through the spaces of first Manila in the first half experiencing, like, what global poverty.

extreme poverty looks like in this world, and then moving them into the liberated zone, the operating area of the New People's Army, and how the same peasants who you see in Manila are doing something different in the jungle. They're organizing themselves as like under a shadow government in a revolution to try to fight this system and change the world. Yeah, absolutely. And just out of curiosity, how did you connect up? Because you told me before we started recording that this was actually filmed a few years ago.

How did you connect up with Means TV to release it on their platform? Oh, man, this is something else. So there's an amazing independent filmmaker. His name is Chris Bell. And he just, I was just coming out of Iraq because I was embedded with the the Kurdish Revolution, specifically the Yazidi people in Sinjar Mountain Range northern Iraq. And so I thought I was going to be there for months, and then I had to cut it short. I came back after three months.

The moment I got back, I got contacted from Chris Bell saying that he wanted to curate a revolution selfie for a spectacle theater in Brooklyn. And then Chris Bell said, oh, yeah, I want to refer you to Means TV and the founder, Nick Hayes. So it's Nick Hayes and Naomi are the founders of Means TV. And so this was great. And so I actually invited Chris to, I was going up to Vermont to a friend's house. And I said, hey, hey, Nick, let's meet. Let's talk about this movie deal. And we'll meet in Vermont.

So he came. We spent the weekend in Vermont. We talked about all types of stuff like Revolution and film and everything. And so I got two film distribution with Means TV. And so right now on Means TV, you can see Revolution selfie, the Red Battalion, and learn about the Red Battalion, which in their language is Pulang Pagani Battalion. So you can learn about the people of the Boulin Bagandhi Battalion. But eventually, I don't know when, they're going to release my other film, which is the first film I ever made, which is about Fred Ho.

He's an Asian American radical activist and saxophone player and avant-garde composer, Dying of Cancer, and my movie's called Fred Ho's Last Year. So actually, it was great to involve myself with Means TV because it's not just a channel. Means TV is a community. So I get to, you know, see Nick and Naomi on Zoom a lot. And we talk about how we can further develop the co-op, which is Means TV. Yeah. Awesome. Huge shout out to Nick and Naomi and all the homies in the Means TV co-op doing great work.

We've been obviously connected with them for many years at this point and help promote their shows. And there's a sort of synergy between what they're doing, what we're doing. And I always love everything they do and everything they put out. So that's really, really cool. Of course, if you want to see this film, go subscribe to Means TV. You'll be supporting a co-op with revolutionary comrades doing good cultural work, and you'll be able to see this wonderful documentary. But as you were mentioning before, this documentary is unique and different for several reasons,

including you know, you embedding yourself with them, the DIY approach. As far as I can tell, it seems like it's just you out there recording everything by yourself. and, of course, the video game elements that we discussed a little bit earlier. Can you just talk a little bit more about those artistic decisions and maybe just a little bit more about why you chose to approach things in this unique way? I think I was watching my nephew one time. And, you know, like, of course, teenagers are always hard to get through to or whatever, especially if you're trying to tell them something lefty or revolutionary or whatever.

But then I was watching him at the computer, and at first I thought he was playing a game. And then I realized, oh, no, he's not playing a game. He's watching somebody else playing Call of Duty. But that wasn't the interesting part, although that's a little crazy, though. But what it was was the guy who's playing Call of Duty is actually giving a history lecture about something. And so my nephew is watching this guy playing his call of duty and he's absorbing the history at the same time. And I thought, wow, you know, like his generation processes information differently. And so I found that interesting.

I also find it interesting that when you look at video games and YouTube and social media in general and TikTok and all that, the visual language is really interesting and is almost never goes into the film language in other words as films and even television they don't incorporate the visual language of say like a YouTuber unless they're doing like some type of faux YouTube or faux social media section for their for their TV show or whatever or their movie and I thought wow isn't that interesting you have an entire visual language especially Especially the first person perspective that you almost never see in TV and movies today, even though people are consuming this content more than they're consuming like, you know, NBC or, you know, Netflix or whatever. Yeah, that's really, really cool. And that's a really cool little history of how you got that idea and then you applied it to this film. Am I correct in saying that the DIY part is literally you doing? all the filming by yourself or did you have some help? Ah, yes, you know, this is interesting because, you know, it's impossible to make a film

of almost any scale by yourself. And so, but this is as close to by myself as possible, actually. And part of it is that it's very difficult, very dangerous to embed yourself in a war. And so, you know, then. it became something where I could use the fact that this is kind of like a fake game or the fact that there's fantasy elements in this story to, you know, fill in the gaps of the story and to bring out like certain truths that are like the artistic truths of the struggle that I'm trying to depict, you know, that is more important than the truths of just recording what's in front of the camera in a, in a sober or objective way. And so that became

the idea that you could bring in fantasy elements into a documentary under the right approach was important to me. And also helps out the fact that is very difficult to film

stuff in a war. Some people don't want to be identified. And also just the there's a story of a movie that's not the story. So movie making is storytelling but a movie always there's a story

of the story, the story of how the story is told. And so for a Revolution Selfie is a very specific grassroots kind of story behind the story. And the grassroots story is what would happen if you tried to make a movie if you were somebody

who never saw a movie before? What would that look like? Or what would happen if you decided you were going to make a movie with just the stuff that is in your that happens to be in your backpack uh and so that is a part of uh revolution story the story behind the story is also supposed to be like low budget grassroots i like to say that you know in in real life i'm a cinematographer so the job of cinematographer is to make your movie look like a million bucks but in under revolution's selfie I'm trying to make the movie look like 20 bucks.

And so, you know, and so it turns out, yeah, I mean, the wedding of the story with the camera, the kind of camera you use, the way you move the camera with the story is the most important part. I won a cinematography award in Italy for this movie. Nice. And the camera I used cost, like, now you can get it on eBay for like $4.4.4. dollars or something like that uh and so um it and so i learned a lot about cameras and cinematography and the art of cinematography by the fact that i was never using my cinema camera i was always using like a small gopro camera yeah so interesting wonderful and i know a lot of this might sound a little hard to picture in your mind but that's why i really encourage people to go check

out the documentary it really is done in a really fascinating cool way and i've watched a million documentaries in my life never quite seen one like this so i highly encourage people to check it out but let's get into the content of the film itself um for those that don't know and of course rev left listeners will at least be somewhat aware of the mpa right the new people's army in the philippines Maoist guerrillas fighting the Filipino capitalist ruling class etc but can you just kind of remind us who the mpa is how you were able to make contact and embed yourself among them and importantly the dangers that you faced traveling to the Philippines to cover them up close uh yes well uh the the npa or the new people's army is a

Maoist guerrilla group and it is uh something that I've heard about my probably my entire life um as a Filipino I uh I am an American born Filipino but my parents are from Mindanao and Sabu and in the Philippines and so my parents are always concerned about social justice, social issues, and my father always talking about it. And as an American immigrant, you know, of course, you're worried about getting a job, trying to feed your family. And so for him, I think that this idea of going back to the Philippines and helping out the people was always just a, you know, a pipe dream that, you know, sounds good, but, you know,

never really has time for it or whatever and uh but he always was talking about it um because in a sense uh my parents were driven out because of marcos that um they they were being uh to uh you know under the toolage of the u s state department uh similar to marcos uh as college uh college kids uh but then they were brought by a state department to washington dc uh and um at that point marcos got and they said and you know these people all know each other and so and uh they said you know fuck that we we don't want to we don't want to work for marcos and so they then decided to stay in the united states and so i i was always hearing about the npa because of my father saying yeah you know npa is not going to their idealistic leftists they're not going to

they're not going to accomplish uh what they want but uh but he appreciates their idealism in his you know in his viewpoint um and so um after uh being a filmmaker for a while i decided yeah i'm going to try this out i'm going to try to um do something with the npa actually the first thing to happen is i met joma and this is interesting because um this is the first time that i was face to face with somebody who is in the history books i mean you know and history that I know extremely well, you know, and that it's like, you know, an American being face-to-face with, you know, George Washington or something like that, you know, and here he is. Wow, man, I get to meet and hang out with Jose Maria Sisson, the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. So we were hanging out in Utrecht, the Netherlands. And then I met all the other revolutionaries there, too. And then after I interviewed him and so forth, I worked out of a plan of going to the Philippines and doing the embed with the new people's army. But see, when you're dealing with a revolutionary movement, it's not like dealing with a corporation where they say, okay, yeah, you can come in film because the CEO says you can come in film and you get a letter from the CEO and that opens all the doors.

It doesn't work like that. You know, it's like, Joma can say, yeah, you could go over there and film. Then I go over there. And then I meet some people who go, yeah, where are you doing here? We don't know anything about it. They have to start the process all over again. And then they go, okay, fine, we'll assign you to an NPA unit. And then I go down to amend it now to hook up with that NPA unit.

And then it's the same thing again. The commanders are sitting in the jungle and they're like, okay, yeah, what the hell are you doing here? and we don't know anything about it and start the process all over again and so that's that's what happens you know um and uh so but in terms to the danger the biggest issue i think is the danger of the people that you they're helping you out they could be taking risks to get you into the area you know and people are really risking their lives to help me make a film and i am describing the film to them. And so the film is kind of like, well, you've seen the film. The film is sometimes funny, sometimes deprecating. Often it is self-deprecating film. And so it's kind of like a

jokey film a little bit. So people are risking their lives to help me do this. But this film is kind of, it's not like a serious film. It's supposed to be an entertaining film, you know. And so is another thing that I learned as a filmmaker, which is that you know, for you and me when we make media you know, we're very serious about it because we already have like

a leftist commitment to the masses. So of course, you know, we want to be as serious as possible in making our film or making our artwork. But for a filmmaker, that does not mean that your film has to be serious.

And thank goodness because I in fact don't watch serious films you know like I get bored just like everybody else and so I had to realize that you know

a filmmaker this is pop culture you know a filmmaker is an entertainer like a circus like a circus performer and I wanted to embrace that

and I like I have a serious purpose but it doesn't mean that I can't make a film that people are going to want to watch or people can't have a laugh once in a while and so forth. So, uh, that was important for me. The idea that

filmmaking is still entertainment. Uh, and that is important. Oh, it was important for me, I realize. Yeah. Yeah. And there's definitely some, some funny moments, but it's also next to genuinely moving and inspiring moments. Some of the interviews you do, for example, these people are, they're having fun, you know, they're obviously with their friends. They're sort of like making jokes amongst each other, but also they'll have these moments of real seriousness where they're telling you why they're dedicating their life and risking their life to fight for the masses to fight for a better world. And so that comedy juxtaposed next to the inspirational and the moving aspects juxtaposed to the unique, you know, whole style of the film itself makes for

really wonderful and, as you said, entertaining and enjoyable experience while you're also learning a lot. And I really appreciated that about this film. One of the comedy aspects, one of the parts that I found particularly funny is when you're discussing the illegality of this entire process. The United States, of course, has dubbed the MPA on their terrorist organization list, so you could get in real trouble for being a part of it. And you had this little part of the film where you're talking, where you have to kind of say, you know, explicitly don't join the MPA. And then you jump off this tall building. Can you talk a little bit about the dangers as far as this organization being labeled a terrorist organization and you being an American and some of the possible

obstacles you had to look out for when doing that. Yes. So this is one of the reasons why it's so hard to get information about revolution because there's, of course, the matrix, the cultural matrix, a prejudice that you'd have to go through if you're trying to get your information to CNN or whatever. But there's also the fact that it's a kind of a great area whether a filmmaker or a media person can actually do a movie like I just did. Because like when you embed yourself with a revolutionary movement, which is fighting against essentially the United States. The United States is trying to reinforce its rule in the Philippines because they want the Philippines to be like a platform for their next. war, you know, their next war of choice against China, which is really, I think, what we could call not a war of choice, but a war of multiple choice. Because right now we're in Ukraine doing a war, which in my view is completely avoidable war. And then they're already queuing up that we, they want to be in a war with China. So they're actually making the Philippines a military platform for possibly an attack. on China. So this film is embedding with something the NPA is called Foreign Terrorist Organization, FTO. So for an FTO, there are hundreds of organizations across the world that are on the FTO list. And so you could go to prison if you work with an FTO. And so if you go to embed with the FTO and then you say,

I hate these people, they're evil, then, you know, everything's fine. But if you go in there and you say, oh, no, I think these people are really cool or whatever, then, like, there's a possibility that you can go to prison for 17 years. And so that is something that we deal with in the movie in a little bit of an interlude, which I call the leap of faith in neoliberal capitalism, which is uh you know uh i'm trying to say don't join the npa as a signal to whoever wants to put me in jail that okay i don't want i don't want to go to jail for doing this movie um and then i i do this uh leap uh off this building that leap is in the guinness book of world records because it is the

highest bungee jump in the world uh is 688 feet or something thing like that. And so, but it's, that sounds pretty impressive, but actually it's just an amusement that you can do in the, uh, the city of Macau. Macau is a former Portuguese colony next to Hong Kong. And it's really known for a casino's shit like that. But, um, I, uh, but it also has this, uh, opportunity and pay some money and you can do this bungee jump off this gigantic needle. building. And so, yeah. And so the truth is, I just wanted to do a bungee jump. And, you know, so I figured, oh, well, how am I going to script this in here? You know, and so, but it's cool because I like to say

that Revolution Selvey is a movie of firsts. And one of the first is, like, this is either the first or, like, very rare movie of a political documentary where there's a stunt. You know, especially a stunt involving, like, the production, involving, like, the director of the movie or whatever. Yeah, very, very funny, very interesting, very cool. I enjoyed that part for sure. Thank you. Yeah.

Another thing I loved about this film is the first part of it starts with an on-the-ground examination of the rampant poverty in Manila. And we can see, and that kind of sets up, then you move into the jungle with the guerrillas and you can kind of see how the depravity and you know just cruelty of poverty in manila is tied to the mpa and the reason they are fighting so can you kind of talk about the poverty and the people that you found in manila um and kind of just the causes of the extreme poverty that you see in a city like manila of course here in the united states you know every major city is filled with homeless people as well this is not a judgmental thing

but there's, of course, brutal poverty in Manila as well. You know, on our planet right now, what do we get? We got 8 billion people about, and the bottom half of them, 3 to 4 billion are considered poor. And what is poor? Well, the poverty level is a little bit different by region, but it's basically $20 to $30 a day is the, the difference between poverty and middle class for most people.

So basically less than, about half the world is less than $20 a day. But I wanted to explore, not the poor, I want to explore extreme poverty, which is also a measure in the U.N. I think that extreme poverty is $2 a day. And so I wanted to look at that because this is a perfect opportunity, like Manila is a perfect opportunity to explore extreme poverty. I mean, the moment you get off the plane and the areas, the poverty areas in the movie are actually the areas that you see right after you get off out of the airport. And so extreme poverty is something that is really a deep thing because it's a hard world

to penetrate because it's almost like being. on a different planet and trying to communicate to people and like their understanding of what you're saying is different my understanding what they're saying is different and so it's a hard world to to get into and penetrate and so um i am able to explore extreme poverty through the eyes of a little girl unis and uh so um and her whole family the patrimonial family who live um at that time they lived by the side of a highway in the middle of Manila. And so that was just totally by chance. And sometimes a movie that is successful like that, like Revolution Selfie,

there has to be a lot of things that are not just the filmmaker is great or whatever, but things that happened by chance that I didn't know I was going to have such a delay in getting assigned to an NPA unit. So I was in Manila for like months. And so almost right next to where I lived, I was able to meet the patrimonial family. And that was a really important thing. So people can understand that this girl, this is a little tiny girl in the middle of Manila and how alone she is and how difficult life can be. and then the other thing that this raises too is the last thing of the last part of your question there where you said oh and that this is tied in with the work of the NPA and this is almost like it was so important for me in such a miracle that it almost makes me feel like getting religious because when I started out with the movie I had no understanding of how I could tie in

the patrimonial family with the NPA. What I was trying to express was that the NPA are kind of like coming to the rescue or trying to save the patrimonial family. Now that I say it now, and the Revolution Selvey has been seen by thousands of people, like I know that people feel that that's obvious. yes but uh but there's nothing in the movie where that it's said or there's you know it's not really said explicitly in the movie but somehow it all matches up and i i just find that that that's like a miracle or something yeah absolutely yeah the fact that it wasn't necessarily a conscious choice on your part but it fits so perfect is is really interesting and of course the the part with unis and her family is a deeply moving part not only your your kindness but you know

This is an entire family with multiple children living under a bridge in extreme poverty. And this little girl is adorable and, you know, smiling and loves her family. And, you know, it's all this stuff, but yet they're still relegated to this brutal life of grinding poverty. And some of the other children that you looked at as well are like kids that are rummaging through dump sites or basically living in or right next to huge dump sites or polluted creeks where they are descent. ended upon and bitten by mosquitoes hundreds of times all over their bodies. And, yeah, just all those parts of the film were incredibly moving to me and very heartbreaking. And I think that adds a sort of emotional thrust to the rest of the film. That was really well done.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. For sure. Another thing that you covered, which I also found moving is, you know, because I am moved by this sense that people all over the world, good people all over the world are really fighting for very similar things. You cover the protests against the new administration of Marcos. I thought that was a really wonderful thing as well.

Can you talk a little bit about Marcos, who he is, and the protests against him that you visited in the film? Ah, yeah. So it's fascinating to me because now we have Bongbong Marcos, who is the son of the dictator Marcos. He is now the president of the Philippines. In the 1960s and 70s, a piece of the 80s, Ferdinand Marcos was the dictator of the Philippines, and then he was ousted by a people power revolution, and then he was exiled in Hawaii. Then he died a nice, peaceful death in Hawaii.

Then his body was brought back and was on display somewhere in the Philippines. So what's interesting is that, um there was a government effort to uh bury marcos in the hero's cemetery so they move his body from wherever was to like you know the the war memorial cemetery of of the philippines and there were huge protests and so i think that both sides knew the significance of this if you can uh honor the dictator and say oh no he wasn't an asshole who killed thousands of people tortured people tortured people for no reason tortured people if they said something embarrassing to his daughter or tortured or killed people because they're trying to finish a construction project and and there's an accident and there's bodies in

the construction site and they just pour concrete over the bodies and saw off their limbs and stuff and they're like oh that doesn't matter we're going to bury him as a hero that that decision to bury him as a hero would pave the way for Marcos' son to reconstruct the dynasty and become the president of the Philippines years later. And so essentially that's what happens. You know, the Duterte administration of the Philippines decided, oh, no, we're going to do this hero's burial. They actually did almost like a military operation, like this stealth burial. like um they quickly put him in the ground in the uh in the hero cemetery even though there's like thousands of people protesting on the street um so that's uh what happened in revolution selby

but what's happening now in two uh twenty three is that uh yeah bonbon marco is now found a way to install himself as the president of the philippines um and uh many people think he did this by essentially fixing the commission on elections and you know like his computer results came out so fast that it was almost faster than you know you could actually count the ballots in the election and so now we have and so it's interesting how it works like the creation of myth and the alteration of history can pave the way for like a totally undemocratic democratic administration to arise. Yeah. Yeah, and a similar thing happens in, like, something like in Brazil under Bolsonaro when they're, you know, redeeming and romanticizing the military dictatorship and even playing around with the idea of bringing them back. This reactionary, modern, contemporary government, looking back to a former military fascist dictatorship, longingly, right?

So this is happening around the world as well. And I just wanted to ask before we move on. Yeah, yeah. It's like, Make America Great again. Exactly, exactly. And what's interesting about what you just said is that you got Bolsonaro, and then before Bolsonaro, there was Duterte, who is drug, like, so-called anti-drug dictator, who killed, like, thousands of people in actual judicial killings.

And then, so with Duterte, then was Trump, then was Bolsonaro, and all three of them were clients of Cambridge Analytica, which is like, you know, internet troll company consultant for elections and all the shit. So they basically are right-wing populist,

internet trolling. Like, and what would happen is you would say something about Duterte on Facebook, and then like thousands of people would find your post, and they would diss you. And same thing with Bolsonaro.

And, you know, so, it is a global phenomena that we're fighting against. And just really quickly, for those that don't know, can you maybe just very briefly kind of talk about the U.S.'s relationship to the Marcos fascist dictatorship? Because this is not something just happening completely unrelated to U.S. foreign policy and military empire. It's very much something that goes hand in hand. You want to touch on that real quick?

Oh, yeah, I think so. So what happened was in World War II, the Japanese, hit Pearl Harbor and then they started to land in the Philippines and so when that happened the Filipino people rose up en masse

in anti-Japanese armed resistance and so the the U.S. Army intelligence says that there were probably about 200,000 anti-Japanese fighters all throughout the Philippines

and based on the Philippine population at that time and the fact that every Filipino has a family also has a family basically you're talking about the whole country all Filipinos good Filipinos fought the Japanese

but there was a minority of people who said oh we can actually make some money off this shit so let's be the puppets of the Japanese and some of these people they also created spy networks the Filipino was to try to

you know turn patriots in to be tortured and killed by the Japanese. Sometimes it's just lynched right on the spot you know and so when World War II is over

MacArthur came in and they were a little bit shocked because the anti-Japanese resistance of the Philippines was led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and not only that but even a battalion of Chinese communists came over

to the Philippines, to fight with the Filipinos, to fight the Japanese. And so he was like, if we have democracy, then these people are going to be ruling the ruling party in the Philippines. So they didn't want that. So they said, oh, we need some puppets of the U.S. so that we can stop the commies from taking over the Philippines democratically. And so who are these puppets? Well, let's use the same puppets that the Japanese used.

So they took the Japanese puppets and they installed them as the rulers of the Philippines and the United States has been controlling the politics of the Philippines, the so-called Democratic Philippines, is from 1946 all the way through like now. And so Marcos is an outgrowth of that. Marcos is a part of that ruling system. But it's just like in the Matrix where what is the name of the do with the glasses, you know, who keeps on going, Mr. Anderson or whatever, you know, like Agent Smith. So, you know, like Agent Smith starts to go freelance and decide, oh, I could take over the Matrix. And so Marcos was like that. He was like, oh, you know, I'm in it for me.

And so I can use the colonial structures and step in to the shoes of the climate. colonizer and try to steal from the other ruling families of the Philippines and aggrandized power to myself. And so that was like Marcos's thing. It's very typical thing of third world dictators at the time. You know, of course, Indonesia. This is U.S. supported, you know, fascism and genocide against the socialist, communists of Indonesia. And so the same thing in the United, in the Philippines where, like, massive U.S. military aid was used to prop up the military to support the ruling class of the Philippines, which is even worse than, like, other ruling classes around the world because this ruling class is the worst people of the Filipino people because they are self-selected because they were the puppets of the Japanese. Right, right.

So they are the worst, least loyal, selfish people that the Philippines could produce. And they run the country even today. Yeah, a tale as old as time of the last century is any time, anywhere in the world, since World War II, there's been a fascist dictatorship or some horrific terrorist organization or any anti-communist, anti-democratic movement soaked in blood. the U.S. is absolutely behind it and this is uh this is no exception absolutely yeah so in the film of course you you cover the poverty your story with unis you talk about the protests what marcos represents i mean you show it through visual cues of course what marcos represents and the the masses rising up against him as much as they can and then you move into the jungle you get picked up and you get to go into the encampment of one of the battalions of the new people's

army and you talk to many people in the mpa can you tell us a bit about the sort of person that joins the mpa and the reasons that they gave you for joining up oh my god is this this is the most amazing part of it it's really uh something that changed my life uh because um and i you know i i've been you know a leftist for a while i knew about the world i've been all in different countries in the world and even been to philippines before um uh several times uh and uh and uh so So I thought I really knew what was up about imperialism and inequality, and it wasn't until that very first day when I came into the liberated zone of the New People's Army that I realized, wow, man, everything I really didn't know about the world. Everything I was told about the world is a lie because this is so powerful the idea that you have a revolutionary organization in an area where there is no police brutality because we don't have police. The people themselves are organized to resolve disputes and ensure the peace.

and we don't have exploitation from landlords because we drove the landlords out and the people can farm their own land and they can farm it collectively but only if they want to you know and so

there is it's so amazing so even when you have a government that cares even if that government has no money at all that's better than a rich government

that don't care you know um and so i found that so fascinating but the people themselves that's what is amazing to me uh because you have folks who for years and they're they're really you know as intelligent as any college graduate or university graduate you ever met you know people who could be doctors lawyers living in large houses if that's what they want um but Instead, oh, you're going to meet people who all their possessions are in one backpack and that they are sacrificing every day. And they wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning every fucking day to do whatever it is they do to help out the masses of the people. And so I thought to myself, wow, if you have 10 people like this, you could have a revolution. um but uh i was on a mountain with 600 people 600 people who were like this and i was like

how is that even possible i mean how is it that i could live my entire life and i never met people like this uh who it's like a superpower or something they they can completely set aside um what uh you consider it be like your own selfish comforts or whatever um and and uh be part of a revolution be totally dedicated to a masses and so i guess i talked to a lot of people about this with the npa and i just came to a conclusion that um there's nothing special about these folks but it's something in every person uh every human being has this potential uh that when the conditions are that bad when there's a lot of injustice uh you have something in you where you You say, no, you know, fuck all the, you know, selfish things of this world, that your career or whatever you're thinking about.

And I'm going to dedicate myself to this struggle. And not only that, but it's not as depressing as it sounds. You know, I mean, that's your thing. You think, oh, wow, you know, these people are like saints or something, and they live miserable lives or whatever. Oh, no. It's really great, actually. it's great to be part of a collective it's great to live under the stars every night you know i've got the best sleep of my life um with the npa um and um uh you know it's not even even the fear is not so bad

you know i mean like we could be ambushed at any time um uh or like a drone could come over and drop a bomb on us but you know as long you know the collective as long as we're together

we can deal with it you know you've had this kind of feeling in a revolution and that is so vital it's so powerful to understand

that it's something that you know I've just read wrote an article for socialist forum which is a publication of DSA

and trying to talk about my sense of alienation in progressive politics in America because people just don't know what's possible, you know? It's just sort of like people think that people, there used to be a time when people thought that taking a locomotive train is bad for you because the human body was not designed to to travel at 30 miles per hour. And so it's like me coming from the jet age coming to that world where people are like, can we travel at 30 miles per hour?

You know, I got to go to a doctor and check myself out or whatever. And so when you see what a revolution looks like, you understand hey, it's not so bad. It's, it's it's really possible. It's just your imagination is limiting what you can believe about humanity and change in America. Yeah, incredibly well said. And yeah, one of the things that comes

across when you interview these people is that they are regular people. They're incredible in amazing ways, right? They're self-sacrificial. They're deeply intelligent. They're deeply committed to something bigger than themselves. But they come from all walks of life. They're all ages. They're all gender and sexual orientations. They're just normal people and they really believe that a better world is possible and they actually go out and they fight for it. And one thing that I walked away from this film thinking is there's more humanity in the jungles of the Philippines than there is in the center of civilization in Manila where people are living under bridges and sleeping in nooks and crannies of concrete. And out in the jungles, people are, you know,

coming together living in a more authentic and humane way and there is a sense in which you give up a little bit of that individual possibility you know maybe some of these individuals could have as you said live these wonderful careers or relatively comfortable jobs in the city center but they explicitly say i'm i that is a meaningless life i would rather be here fighting for a future than you know working consuming and dying and it just it was absolutely um beautiful to me to to see that and one of the things also is the LGBTQ element within the MPA, the welcomingness to the LGBT people and the predominant, you know, sort of role that they play in the revolution. I found that incredibly beautiful as well.

Yeah, and I believe that that might be in every revolution. like the the idea of that there's a lot of LGBTQ people who join the revolution seems like a disproportionate amount I wouldn't be surprised if that's been the case for thousands of years

you know like if you look at back of the French Revolution for example even the Philippine Revolution of 1898 was well known for the American soldiers being shocked that a large amount of the fighters who were fighting in the revolution were actually women. And so the, and so why is that? I don't know.

And I think that this is something that I was just so glad to explore. There's some unique aspects of, say, like the Philippine Society as well. like just the overall establishment society of the Philippines. Well, what you see on TV, you often see like a drag queen is like the host of a game show

on TV in the Philippines. And there are drag queens and gay people, lesbians in every family in the Philippines. And so I would say that, you know, the Philippines is a very sexist place.

It's a very feudal, semi-futal, society, but I might say that in terms of tolerance for LGBTQ, I've actually never been in a more tolerant country in the whole world, actually, than the Philippines when it comes to this. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, especially here in the U.S., which presents itself as like this progressive, liberal pinnacle of democracy and human freedom, we're living through another iteration of extreme reaction against the LGBT community and it's a mainstream hate and dehumanization

of LGBT people and it's just it's obvious to me that throughout the world that revolutionary movements would be full of marginalized vulnerable people in various patriarchal societies because they have the most stake in overturning the status quo and they can see that another world another way of being could be possible and so they throw their lot in with the revolutionary elements. I just found that to be an incredibly

a beautiful aspect of the ongoing revolution in the Philippines, and I thought you covered it really well as well. I think now that I'm thinking about it with the right wing, how they're going against the drag time story hour, which is a big thing in my community here in Jackson Heights, Queens. That, you know, these right wingers come from outside her neighborhood to go yell all this evil shit against a drag queen story hour

at a public library. And now that I'm thinking about, I think that the right wing is actually pretty smart, and they're picking their targets. The idea that, oh, yeah, we're going to target, like, sexual freedom or choice, and, you know, you can't be who you want to be, you know, and the right wing is, you know, really on brand with their, with their fascism, you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. So in the guerrilla camps of the New People's Army, as you were kind of alluding to earlier, they have their own form of government. They have their own form of education. They have their own health care. Can you kind of talk about this, sort of how the camps are run and what non-military activities they engage in together, because it's not all cleaning your rifle and marching by any means. It's a human, beautiful society of human beings doing a multitude of human activities, right? Oh, man. Yeah. And I think that that's one thing. that people don't know about revolution and

especially folks who I think are gravitate towards Revolution selfie because they see a lot of guns and so they're thinking wow man we need to get some guns or whatever and maybe

harken back to the Black Panthers you know the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation armies in the different cities and their rich tradition but that aspect of the gun can often it can obscure like the holistic aspect of what a revolution is I think like the gun is a manifestation of what you need to continue the work that the revolution is

doing but the revolution doesn't start with a gun and so it's the form of organization the fact that it's structured that it's uh with the masses and that you uh and that it's secure and then like what the revolution really offers to people you know and so uh after i came back um from the philippines i read this guy named ekbal akhmad i think and uh he uh wrote that you know what is a revolution a revolution is really uh an organization which starts to take over governmental functions so you know the idea the revolution says we are the government you know they're going to fill the gaps in of what the government is uh not doing because of their lack of concern for the masses and so um and so the health care and the um also something that was not

in revolution selfie because revolution selfie is a it's a two-hour movie and there's a lot of stuff that I had to take out is the idea about justice. So most people on the outside think that, oh, you know, a revolutionary justice, that's some type of star chamber shit

that is really bad and you know, they put you under a bright light and they they yell stuff at you and then they take you out and shoot you or whatever. And it's not like that. Revolutionary justice, they tried to do

it without arms because if you shoot people all the time, you're not going to be very politically popular in the community. And they generally can work things out in what they call it like a conflict resolution. And the people who do this for the NPA, I swear could teach a class on it at Harvard for a negotiation, conflict resolution. These folks are really well trained on how to do this. And so the whole point of this is another unbelievable truth that I came away with, which is that revolution is never in the future. A revolution is not like peasants would never join your revolution if you just show up and go, hey, you know, We're the Communist Party, and this is our platform, blah, blah, blah, and just your ideas.

Revolutions are not ideas. They are not words in a book, and they are not the future, they're not promises. Revolution is always now. And so a revolution is to create a new reality, new relationships of the most important relationships in your life. So in the justice situation, the relationships between you and your neighbor, or you and your spouse, in the economic, the relationship between you and your landlord, it's a feudal relationship. We're going

to redo it so that it's not a feudal relationship. And a power relationship, like the country to the city, and your relationship, the masses with the bourgeois classes and so forth and so revolution oh yeah

and your relationship with yourself and so that is the most important thing the revolution gets you to change your relationship

to yourself and so that is one of the things that I the truths that I learned about

about revolution yeah to comprehend revolution not as the acute moment in which an old government is overthrown and replaced by a new, but as an ongoing process that's always operating, sometimes below the surface, sometimes out in the jungle, sometimes out in the streets, but the revolution is always happening. As long as the conditions

are unjust, there's going to be the revolutionary process taking hold, and I do appreciate how you look at it in those terms. And what they're doing there is this well-rounded, it's not merely the fetishizing of the gun. It's like almost like this, like we're lucky, The gun is the tool we have to use. We don't worship it. It's just a practical reality that we have to pick up the gun because our enemies have picked up the gun.

But here's all these other ways that we're enacting the revolution. And it's about how you handle disputes in your community. It's about how people are given health care. And it's about playing volleyball with your comrades, which is another scene you shot in the film that I loved as well.

Just all these people, the revolutionaries out in the jungle and they take time to shoot hoops and play volleyball with each other. it was just awesome and that's dual power that's building up a way of governing society and an entire social apparatus that's that is dealing with the holes that a regular government leaves and building up the capacity to deal with shit that the government ostensibly is supposed to provide and deal with and that building up of dual power is how you win people over how you take care of their needs that's the material reality not just coming to them with a set of ideas or proposals and saying are you on our side or not right I think so, and I think that also I realized something about being an activist in the city as opposed to being a revolutionary in the mountain, which is that, and, you know, activism, especially for left, especially in the United States, you're always mad about something. You're always like, you know, watch some YouTube video, oh, damn it, those assholes, you know, Trump and everything. And so there's a lot of negativity.

There's a lot of anger about the things that are going on in this world. But that is easily absorbed by the hegemony, I think. Revolution starts when you start to realize other pathways of joy in political transformation. and that there's happiness. And so being an activist in the city can often be very stressful, you know, very fearful. People are always trying to kill you. People are always trying to put you on some type of kill list. You could get beaten up.

If the right wing wants to beat you up, you're totally defenseless. and people are always slandering you. So, like, often it gets so bad that an activist decides I'm going to join the NPA. And that is just totally different experience. It's just, like, there is no, you know, anger, stress, this, that, like, it's really about the stresses of trying to fit into your environment, into your fighting force, learning new skills and so forth. forth, learning how you can relate to the masses, and it's a continuing, a feeling of improvement, like, kind of like self-improvement. Like, I have never heard this so many times than when I was with the NPA, or when people

would say, I'm trying to be less selfish. I thought that was so interesting, and people would say, I'm trying to improve myself. and like I'm like why like an American would say why why are you trying to be less selfish

you know most people are working on trying to be more selfish how can I serve myself more you know and so the idea that they feel a value and I've learned how to be less selfish

you know from being here for years in the NPA and how how that really uh yeah and basically it's like a happiness you know uh and understanding how how to plug into that yeah i mean i guess you could summarize it as like the the activist in the urban centers is always running the risk of burning out it's always a matter of you know are you burnt out or not but out it's like it's nourishing it's the opposite of burning out it's it's uplifting it's building

upward and that was a that was a beautiful thing you captured as well yeah that's a yeah that's a good point yeah um one of the other things we have a couple more questions here for you um one of the things i found really interesting was that you covered this connection between christianity and the and the mpa and a lot of people were talking about their politics and their religion in in sort of like equal terms right and some people were even motivated by their religion um which is predominantly christianity as far as i understand to join the mpa right taking the message of jesus christ and applying it means becoming a revolutionary and trying to build a better world. Whereas, you know, of course, here in the U.S., we have the right wing, taking Christianity to be synonymous with

cruelty against vulnerable people and the amassing of as much wealth as you possibly can amass. And it just so antithetical to everything. And it turns a lot of people here in the West off to religions like Christianity because of how it's so intermingled with white supremacy and capitalist logics. But I found it very interesting that there, there was this connection between Christians and revolutionaries. Can you talk a little bit about that? Oh, I think that what I saw going on, well, first, I think I, maybe I never met a Christian before going to the NPA.

I mean, like, these folks are like so, like, you know, it's like the kind of like the saints that you read about in like some type of religious text or something, you know, and then you're meeting them for a first time or something on the end. And I think that the experience of Christianity in the Philippines of today is very similar to the experience of Christianity during the colonial period from 1600s through the 1900s. And so maybe it was kind of like European colonizes kind of like fuck themselves. a little bit because they thought, oh, well, you know, we're going to create like a system of mental slavery

and we're going to inculcate a system of obedience through this Christianity. But why is it that when you look at history, you find hundreds of rebellions in the colonized places

that are based on Christianity? And I think that one possibility to me is that Jerusalem was a colony of the Roman Empire and the relationship between the clerical class, the so-called Sadducees and Pharisees, who cooperated with the Romans to oppress the Jews. Jerusalem that that really dovetailed a lot with people in the colonized areas and they say hey you know that's that's my story or what Jesus is going through is an anti-colonial struggle and that's the same thing that I'm going to and so so that's a theory about it for me that somehow like Filipinos really attach themselves to Jesus why is that like the sovereign that they feel, mostly coming from

oppression from the local landlord or just imperialism, colonialism, they relate that to Jesus and the struggle of the Jews in the Bible. And so I think that

that is just fascinating, you know. But whatever it is, as I said in the movie, yeah, I think that Jesus was more responsible for revolution than Carl Marx in the Philippines, that's sure. Yeah. No, it's the universality of Christ's message.

It's the, and I'm not particularly a Christian, but I have a lot of love and appreciation for the progressive and revolutionary liberatory elements of Christianity and for the spiritual figure of Jesus Christ himself, who I take a lot of inspiration from personally. And, of course, that message can be contorted and distorted as we see here in the West by various reactionaries claiming to be Christians while living in a very anti-Christian. in life. But here it's like seeing yourself in the suffering of Christ, seeing yourself in the suffering of, you know, the Jews in the Bible and using that as motivation for overturning the rotten state of affairs that you currently live in. I think it's a beautiful thing. And one of the

people you interviewed spoke, you know, really beautifully about it. And I found that to be a fascinating element that I had not, I had no idea even existed. I was not sure of the religious makeup of the Philippines and any connection between religion and the Maoist guerrillas. But I thought that was a really cool thing that you highlighted there yeah thank you and uh you know when we when we talk about these things sometimes i feel embarrassed because it uh it's like i'm i'm pretending like uh you know like i scripted it or or you know there was some genius on my part but it's really the uh it's really the the people yeah the uh the uh the pulang bagani battalion and And not just the rank and file of the battalion, but also battalion command and the political officers of the battalion.

I really feel grateful for them that, you know, I don't know if you know this, but other leftists in different countries dis on the Philippines because they say, oh, you know, you guys are still doing Maoism and that's some old-fashioned Marxism or whatever. I think it's so fascinating that for a movement that is often associated with old-fashioned Marxism that they were really into avant-garde film. I would tell them, this is my crazy idea and all these things, and I'm going to jump off a building and everything like that. And the political officers were not only tolerant, but they were actually suggesting different crazy ideas to bring. into revolution selfie and so and so really I love it the fact that like

if anything when I go to screenings it almost feels like a time machine for me because like have you ever had this experience where you take a trip someplace and you have these amazing revelations

on your trip and then you come back home and then you like I want to spread these revelations to other people and you're talking to your mother And she goes Oh yeah Well that's nice dear And like

Is it We're just going to go on with our life You know Like it's It's so difficult To tell people What you've been to On a trip

But for me It's not a problem at all I just roll the tape And people are in the room And I take them back To go meet to the people Of the Poulan Bagani Battalion And it's so heartening

You know Hell yeah man Beautiful I love that Yeah And you know Just really quickly This is my own personal

Editorializing if you will But this idea that the Maoists are somehow backwards or of a previous era, you know, from a communist point of view, I see Maoist movements like the MPA as being on the cutting edge of revolutionary communist movements around the world, actually waging people's war against the forces of colonialism, capitalism, capitalism, and fascism. So, you know, far from being backwards, I think they're among the most advanced. And I think we in the West have a lot to learn from them. Yeah. One thing that I think is the strength of Maoism is, if you think about going back to Christianity, there's many different ways to be a Christian. So one Christian will just say, yeah, I go to, you know, whatever. I go to church once in a while, and then, you know, I want my baby to be baptized in the church, you know, blah, blah. And so I'm a Christian. another person will say you know what I have a PhD in Christianity and I know everything about you know this particular aspect of it and I wrote my thesis about it and so forth and I teach classes on it and so I'm like the dog's balls of them you know I'm a super scholar of Christianity and so what's interesting is they're both Christian and so it's the same thing with Maoism you know like Maoism yeah you could you could get a Ph.D. in Maoism, but you can also be, like, you know, a teenager in the NPA, and those, that ideology works at that level, and it works at the higher level as well. Right. Yeah, and for the revolutionary engaged in struggle, it's a living, breathing thing. Sometimes for the abstract intellectual, it can just be words on a piece of paper, abstract concepts, but for them it's life and death, and I think there's something really important about that manifestation of it.

And, of course, my personally, the favorite Christians I've met are the ones that try to enact and live the message and life of Jesus, not the ones who just want to use their religious dogma as a battering ram against their social and cultural opponents, which is so often the case. Oh, yeah. But, you know, I think that maybe it's because of the power of Christianity as an anti-colonial power that this kind of, like, bullshit Christianity kind of, like, rose up and then became, I'm sorry, what they call it, like prosperity, like prosperity gospel or whatever. Yeah, the prosperity gospel, yeah. Earn as much money as you can, baby. It's for Jesus. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, like religion has all. always had something to do with like the labor movement. It's had something to do with like Latin American Revolution, Philippine Revolution, as though I think it's interesting that people figured out, no, let's do a different kind of Christianity called Christianity,

but we're going to try to do the opposite and be like have it put forth reactionary views, you know? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the dialectic within religions themselves. And I always say every major religion has a political spectrum in it, right? From the far-left revolutionary liberationists to the far-right fascist, you know, one who impose through violence there's very specific dogma. And so our job as leftist, as communists, as socialist, is not to disregard religion, but to treat it as a terrain of struggle and to fight for the revolutionary and liberatory interpretations of the various religions, which are, really there. They're not just something we impose on the tradition. Those traditions are really in those religious cultural traditions and we can pull them out and we can emphasize them. And I think that

that's our job. And I see people in the MPA doing exactly that. That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely, man. All right. So one more question before we ask where we can find your work online. And that's just kind of a nice way to wrap up this conversation is what did you learn in your time there that most surprised you about the MPA, about the Philippines, about anything? And what do you wish people to the world knew about the new people army i think i i began thinking that i was going to make a movie that was going to be interesting about um uh something that's going on in the philippines and the more i dove into it the more i realized that um i'm i'm really tapping into an energy that's on the planet earth

and that the the Philippines revolution it's like just there's many different faces and you know it happens in the Philippines revolution

India is called an Axelide revolution and Kurdistan called Rojava revolution Kurdish freedom movement and that the especially this aspect

and what I'm talking about is peasants like the peasant for most of human history most humans have been peasants and so the power of being able

of organizing the power when they decide we're going to we're going to organize we're going to overthrow a dictator is really something it's like it's like touching our live wire of the electricity of humanity to me.

And so what I did is I thought, oh, well, I could call this movie Revolution Selfie, but then I decided, you know what, I'm going to call it Revolution Selfie, the Red Battalion. I'm going to give it two names because I wanted to do another revolution selfies, you know. So this movie is called The Red Battalion. This movie that I'm working on now is called Revolution Selfie War with No Name. And so what I'm trying to do is find a commonality that human live wire that hides inside different peoples and cultures. And so I embedded myself with the Yazidi people, part of the Kurdish freedom movement in the autonomous administration of Sinjar in Sinjar Mountain Range, northern Iraq. And so there, the Yazidi people survived the ISIS genocide 2014, and they organized revolutionary militias to defend themselves against ISIS.

ISIS is still there, you know, and they are facing challenges from the Iraqi army as well as from the Turkish army, which is really fitting because the Turkish military is basically. the Islamic State. ISIS stands for Islamic State. They lost their state. Turkey is an Islamic State. And they are also terrorizing the Yazidi people. And so to see those folks under stress like

that and to draw commonalities with the Philippine Revolution, I think this is sort of like my life's goal right now. And I what I'm trying to do is lucidate a truth about humanity and what revolution is. And

And so that's the biggest thing that I learned. It set me on this like path in life. Yeah, that's wonderful. And I agree. It's when you watch a film like this one, you realize that what they're doing is profoundly human. And it transcends all ethical, linguistic, cultural divides. And you can just see that these are regular people fighting for human decency against, you know, the ruling elites, against those with all the wealth and power. And that's a, that's a story as old as humanity itself. You know, you can really see the human struggle within these individual particular struggles. And you bring that out in your film, but it's right there at the surface for anybody to engage with and be inspired by. And I personally find it incredibly inspiring. And for your future films, you have an open invite to come back on and discuss them. I really love what you're doing with your filmmaking. And you're a wonderful podcast guest as well.

Well, great. Before I let you go, though. So Revolution Selfie, the Red Battalion, people want to see that. They should go at Means TV, Means TV streaming channel on Roku and other, I guess, devices and stuff. And, you know, I really hope that people do it to learn about Revolution of Selvi. And then for me, yeah, one thing that is important to me is I never thought I would say this as Bill Baker. But I actually don't care too much about a gang on Netflix or whatever because. I love

like public performance because to see the movie live with a group of people the experience to me is so energizing and it's so educational for people that even though

I'm bringing it down to hundreds when a movie could be accessible to tens of thousands it's actually really important for public performance so if anybody wants to do of public performances, let me know because actually I have a duty

to the Poulin Bagani Battalion a lifelong duty to show Revolution's selfie whenever I mean, as you know in the movie, some people have passed away, some people have given their lives and so this movie in a sense, they live on.

So I would love to show Revolution selfie wherever, whenever. Revolution selfie is seven different languages. It's shown and Chiapas has been shown like all over Europe and it's in Arabic, it's in Kurdish, you know, and so I just, so if anybody out there wants to screen revolution selfie, yeah, find a way to contact me, a revolution selfie on Facebook, and then let's do it.

Cool, yeah, absolutely. That's a wonderful idea. I know personally people that work at little art, you know, film places locally, and, you know, you could get this screened at a local you know, sort of like indie film or art film, studio, maybe not the big, you know, industry, monopoly theaters, but certainly in these smaller ones. And, yeah, getting around communally and watching a film like, like this.

I mean, it's very human. It's like, it's the modern version of getting around a fire and telling a story, and there's something deeply human and communal in that alone. But for people that do want to contact you and might want to follow up on that recommendation, I'll link to Means TV and the show itself. Where can people find you directly?

Well, I think that the best way is on Facebook, you know, it's amazing. People are not even going on Facebook anymore, but for me, go on Facebook and go on Facebook and look up Revolution selfie and connect up to me there. Or on Facebook, oh, wow, you know, I guess I must be an old fart. On Facebook, yeah, find Stephen DeCastro. And if you want to send me an email, it's Tenant Lord. lawyer at gmail.com tenant lawyer at gmail dot com perfect i'll link to all that in the show notes wonderful film thank you so much for coming on keep up the great work my friend and thank you

from 10 yards with little pebbles. I call it strength and all. But when it's broadcast on robin, they're savages like causing. They never give the background story. They rather damn your frequency with trickery. It headline news. It's nothing new.

And if it's only half the truth, it ain't true. Living booths that guerrillas in the Philippine jungle won't stop, won't quit till the babies don't struggle. I wrumble with colonization's effects on my people homes. The buck stops here

with a buck to your ears. The current affairs that where my fellow organizers out say machine, that you wait with my fellow actors, South from the comfort of a couch we make critiques of the world while little girls in the mountains let the sunshod's hurl. Is you ready? All day, dog, whatever you say, dog, megaphone's up, band and across the face dog.

Always dog, whatever you say dog, rifle to the sky band and across the face dog. Is you ready? All day dog, whatever you say dog, megaphone's up band and across the face dog. Always dog, whatever you say dog, rifle to the sky band and across the face. I learned the speeches and teachers a mouth of necks. Nooses around her neck Made Malcolm dropped a little and capitalized the X T and the Mint Square drum

Make the big old dumb Compelled sisters in the mountains back home To grab guns My lungs punked Los Angeles small strong A hand on my M-1 The Gorilla Villas and the Viacom Ho Chi Mc Trellin Your home girl's favorite

I'm the maker of the music For the busboy and the waitress Every blue Call a hero piece the blues Scholar Gio Ayo Saba Did you hear about the talks in the White House Iran is now a new threat I told you were up next

American Rand To the rain of Middle East left up jump the boogie put a bullet inside And let the gorillas and government collide in the fight to make the poverty disseminate Bullets fire hell astray show down in China down in Dap Town LA Is you ready all day dog whatever you say dog megaphomes up band and across the face Allways dog whatever you say dog rifle to the sky band and across the face dog All day dog whatever you say dog megaphone's up band and across the face dog always Dog, whatever you say, dog, rifle to the sky band and across the place.

I regurg the words that drama over and over every soldier with a good run slung over his left and right shoulder got people and triple K slang. Make change where the school books or the bang bang, gang bang. Gather up the troops all on the block. Put bullet holes in the White House and connect the dots. We don't need those cops. We need the hood or lock. We need the murders of our people by our people to stop. We need our money to recycle, keep the neighborhood rich.

We need to monitor the air. education and about kids. We need the money to be evenly distributed out. We need M. Cotea to shut a motherfucking mouth. Zapatista Guerrilla as soon as the beat played. My rifle's a little scrappy. It's my I-KKKK. Indigenous spear chucking on mine. My spirit acts these white boys out like Kevin Petal. Hello kids! Just one at a time! Yeah. What kind of like me back?

This is the Maltitone... No, the next one over. Maltitone bar. Thank you. Thank you.