Paul Moody
Acts of Resistance: Reflections on a PhD by Critical Humanist Documentary Practice

Acts of Resistance:

Formulating a Critical Humanist Documentary practice by centralising activists and artefacts of the Committee of 100 and Solidarity, 1956-74.

Acts of Resistance is a PhD by documentary film-practice, recording first-person accounts of British new left and anarchist activism between 1956 and 1974. It began with a study of one person in 2010-15 and between 2014-23 I filmed with former activists of the Committee of 100 and the Libertarian Socialist group Solidarity. These interviews contextualised artefacts and archives of their non-violent protest and direct-action campaigns for peace and nuclear disarmament, and against fascism, imperialism, and homelessness. Prioritising contributors as participants rather than subjects, my role as documentarist is to visualise and edit their contributions into the historical narrative, after which I invite their comments on iterations to increase accuracy.

My research generated the theory and practice position of Critical Humanist Documentary, demonstrated in documentary chapters: ‘The Committee of 100 (parts 1 and 2)’, ‘Spies for Peace’ and ‘House the Homeless’. Drawing on sociologist Ken Plummer’s ‘critical humanism’ (2013) Critical Humanist Documentary prioritises the sociological, ethical, and political significance of life stories and first -person narratives. Participant observation underpins my retrieval and contextualisation of the participants’ histories in a form that avoids emotionally manipulative audio-visual tropes.

Defining ‘artefact’ as human-made phenomena (Smith 2007), I apply the term to activists’ actions (demonstrations, occupations, illegal radio broadcasts) as well as their material creations (documents, publications, graphics, films, photographs), designed to generate support and publicity to expose iniquities of states and capital in narratives of what Raymond Williams terms ‘counter-hegemony’ (Williams, 1977, p.113).