Matthieu Lère

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On December 23, 1995, the discovery of sixteen charred bodies in a small village in the Vercors region of France caused a real trauma that marked the inhabitants and, more broadly, the French. It was the first time that followers of a sect, in this case the Order of the Solar Temple, committed suicide in France. This led the authorities to create an interministerial mission to fight against cults, which would become Miviludes. The investigation of the tragedy avoids another tragedy in the Canary Islands and shows everyone the danger of cults.

Green Warriors Indonesia: The World’s Most Polluted River is a film by Martin Boudot (2018) that investigates the impacts of the pollution of the Citarum River in Indonesia. The film highlights the implications of textile factories’ poor wastewater treatment practices on public health, and shows how these are partly driven by the consequences of the unequal power dynamics between the factories and the multinational garment companies based in the ‘West’. Boudot challenges the viewer to increase consumer demand for eco-label garments as a way to try and address this. This analysis finds that in doing so, the film foregrounds investigation undertaken by the European reporters at the expense of contributions of local research and activism, rendering it archetypal of the “white saviour industrial complex” (Cole, 2012).

In 2024, Act Up-Paris, the French homosexual AIDS activist association, will be 35 years old. Throughout its history, Act Up has invented a new, provocative, and radical way of campaigning; it has brought HIV-positive people and the gay community out of invisibility; it has forced public authorities and pharmaceutical companies to take the epidemic seriously; and, thanks to its information and prevention work, it has saved many lives. All of this continues to do today when a general slackening of youthful attitudes is leading us to fear a resurgence of the epidemic. With Act Up ou le chaos, Pierre Chassagnieux & Matthieu Lère deliver, for the first time, an exhaustive documentary account of the terrible yet magnificent history of Act Up-Paris. They draw on never-before-seen archives and the exceptional participation of those who have made and continue to make Act Up.