Starr Forum: How to Start a Revolution

September 27, 2012 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm
25 Ames Street, Cambridge

A film screening featuring the work of Gene Sharp and discussion with the director

Speaker:
Ruaridh Arrow, the film's director and currently a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School. 

How to Start a Revolution reveals how Gene Sharp’s ideas work in action. The film uses extended interviews with Gene, his assistant, his followers and leaders of revolutionary movements worldwide, as well as user-generated content from around the globe, to reveal the power of nonviolent revolution on the streets. The film, from first-time director Ruaridh Arrow, profiles Gene and his followers on three continents and was filmed in 18 months. 

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gene Sharp is one of the globe’s greatest thinkers on nonviolent revolutions. His work over the last 50 years has been groundbreaking. His seminal book, From Dictatorship to Democracy, has been the standard manual for leaders of ‘colour’ revolutions around the globe. He has been called the ‘Machiavelli of nonviolent struggle’, and called much worse by the regimes who have fallen as a result of his work.

An introduction followed by Q&A with the film's director Ruaridh Arrow. Arrow is an alumnus of King's College London and Glasgow University. He won the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year and a Guardian Student Media Award for investigations including the European paedophile network in Vietnam. Ruaridh has worked at The Herald in Scotland, and as a producer at Sky News and Channel 4's Dispatches. He has since gone freelance and is currently a visting scholar at Harvard Law School.

More about the film

Free & open to the public | Refreshments served