Love as the Face of Change

Among the news articles and survival tales found in today’s global crises, one filmmaker is finding love stories.

“Occupy Love” is the third film in the “Fierce Love” Trilogy from documentary filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. The first film in the trilogy was “Scared Sacred” released in 2000, followed by “Fierce Light” in 2009.

For his third film, Ripper began shooting by asking himself, “How can the greatest crises in the world become a great love story?” The film highlights environmental activism sparked by ongoing devastation caused by tar sand mining in Alberta, Canada. It also delves headfirst into the 2011 political revolution in Egypt, foreclosure protests in Spain, and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“There was this whole sudden flowering of social movements happening all over the world, which I’ve never really seen anything like before,” Ripper said. “That became the heart of the film.”

Amongst those flowering movements, Ripper aimed to find a great love story. He captured a love in community and progress rather than a romantic love. The narrative draws inspiration from activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West.

“The love that I’m talking about in ‘Occupy Love’ is what professor Cornel West describes. He says ‘Justice is love made public,’” Ripper said. “And so the love that I’m talking about is a public love. It’s the love that [King] talked about when he talked about love in action.”

It’s this love that Ripper believes unites the movements despite their differences in agenda. Whether environmental, political, or economic, each crisis is woven together throughout the documentary.

“It really is about creating a just and sustainable world and a world that works for everyone and all life and that’s what I feel is the heart of all the movements that are emerging around the world,” Ripper said. “Even though they deal with their specific local issues, at their root they’re about justice.”

While Ripper was filming in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began and caught the director’s interest. Despite highlighting action on a global scale, Occupy Wall Street is a running thread and narrative arc to the documentary.

“The Occupy movement embodies a lot of this idea of shared power,” Ripper said. “A movement away from hierarchical dominated power to a world of participation, and that’s what excited me most about the movement more than its specific goals.”

Ripper is also a co-producer with Ian Mackenzie and Nova Ami, a documentary filmmaker and New School student working towards a master’s degree in media studies. Ami, who met Ripper through the Canadian documentary film community, helped in the film’s early stages before taking on the role of producer.

“I started helping [Velcrow] work on Occupy Love in various capacities, shooting, doing sound and it became a natural evolution that I take on the role of producing,” Ami said.

“She was always the first point of feedback in the cuts as well, before we showed it to anybody,” Ripper said. “She’s the rudder steering the ship.”

Unlike previous films in the trilogy, “Occupy Love” was first shown in community screenings before its  theatrical release. Since April 11, the film has shown in more than 200 global community screenings. Australia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ireland, Greece, the United States and Canada are just a few countries and more screenings are added each day.

“In Brazil they had an outdoors screening with 1,500 people,” Ripper said. “It really has been exciting to see the community just run with the ball.”

“Occupy Love” will be released in theaters citywide on Friday, May 3. The opening will be held at Cinema Village on 20 East 12^th Street and will be followed by a launch party.