Just Do It – review

Radical dissent ... Just Do It. Photograph: Kristian BuusJust Do ItProduction year: 2010Country: UKCert (UK): 12ARuntime: 90 minsDirectors: Emily JamesMore on this film

This is an embedded documentary, by Emily James, who has placed herself within the ranks of climate change protest groups, following them as they show up at coal-fired power stations and gleaming corporate bank headquarters, supergluing themselves to each other, and to the entrances, and using bike locks to link themselves to stepladders wedged in the revolving doors, and waiting for ITN News to show up. Since the Ian Tomlinson death, the police have a gentler attitude, and so the resulting confrontations have a calmer, almost pastoral quality. The protesters' star is Marina Pepper, a cheerful soul who believes in the subversive power offering the police a nice cup of tea. (I remember Marina in the 1990s when she was a journalist – now she has taken it to the next level.) The protest groups are intensely English, a roving awkward squad, intent on mischief and being a fly in the ointment of profit; yet they make friends with the bemused coppers and bailiffs, and get a bit upset when things inevitably go sour. There is some interesting detail: the rather hippyish procedure at meetings is to do a finger-wiggling "jazz hands" gesture when you agree with something, which makes the proceedings look like an Al Jolson convention. The protesters have a remarkable technique called "dearrest": when an officer tries to arrest one of their number, the others will simply all grab hold of the arrestee, creating an unwieldy human mass and the exasperated officer will simply give up and go elsewhere, out of sheer irritation. Perhaps is the future wave of activism.

View the original article here