Resistant Imagery in Struggles for Justice

Migrant Media is a collective of migrant, black and refugee film activists established in 1991. The struggles of race and class are at the core of their resistance-based documentary film-making and a dominant thread in their work is around campaigns for justice by the families of people killed by the police in the UK. They employ the techniques of Third Cinema to incite political change through a provocative strategy of deconstructing established narratives. As Getino and Solanas (1971) state: “Every image that documents, bears witness to,
refutes or deepens the truth of a situation is something more than a film image or purely artistic fact; it becomes something which the system finds indigestible.” In this spirit Migrant Media challenges conventional documentary, adopting a position of the filmmakers as the gatherers of resistant imagery. This documentary practice is a radical approach in confronting dominant media and state narratives. Resistance, from a community perspective, is documented over 3 decades, employing a “documentary of force” research method.