The Zero Anthropology Project is actively engaged in independent media production of its own. Consequently, the project does not depend on established media to produce and disseminate its messages.

Zero Anthropology video productions appear primarily on Vimeo (with some still bearing the imprint of “Open Anthropology” [OA] from when this project went by that title, before it was appropriated by others). Any new Zero Anthropology documentaries will appear on Vimeo.

Second, there is the YouTube channel associated with the ZAP (and one associated with Anthropologists for Justice and Peace, an association that is now defunct). On the ZA YouTube channel, you will find lower quality versions of a few of the Vimeo videos, plus many archived news videos and various play lists dealing with Indigenous Peoples, imperialism, the Caribbean, and more. The YouTube channel is maintained for archival purposes only—since the early 2010s, uploading was discontinued so as not to provide free content for YouTube, which censored the channel on more than one occasion. (Censorship was also the reason for Zero Anthropology deleting its Twitter and Facebook accounts).

Thirdly, and far less visibly, videos are routinely published through Wordpress, and appear embedded in select articles of the Zero Anthropology Magazine. These usually consist simply of extracts from documentaries that are reviewed, and the occasional fictional work produced for satirical purposes.

Some of the top videos produced to date are listed below under some rather rough categorizations. Videos based on the poetry of Roi Kwabena, in this same section of the website, are listed separately under their respective titles.

Documentaries

LIBYA: Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

Based on the author’s book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War On Libya and Africa (Baraka Books, Montreal, 2012), and nearly two years of extensive documentary research, this film places the 2011 US/NATO war in Libya in a more meaningful context than that of a war to “protect civilians” driven by the urgent need to “save Benghazi”. Instead it counters such notions with the actual destruction of Sirte, and the consistent and determined persecution of black Libyans and African migrant workers by the armed opposition, supported by NATO, as they sought to violently overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and the Jamahiriya. This film takes us through some of the stock justifications for the war, focusing on protecting civilians, the responsibility to protect (R2P), and “genocide prevention,” and examines the racial biases and political prejudice that underpinned them. The role of Western human rights organizations, as well as misinformation spread through “social media” with the intent of fostering fear of rampaging black people, are especially scrutinized.

The same video as above, with altered audio settings and in two parts, is also available on Youtube (Part 1, Part 2).

Ethnography & Ethnohistory

Carib Community of Arima, Trinidad and Tobago from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

An introduction to the Santa Rosa Carib Community of Trinidad and Tobago, based on both ethnographic and historical research. The contents of the video are organized according to the following sections:

1. The Mission
2. The So-called “Extinction”
3. The Traditions
3-A. The Santa Rosa Festival
3-B. Work duties for the Santa Rosa Festival
3-C. The Smoke Ceremony
4. The Resurgence
4-A. Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez
4-B. Shaman Cristo Adonis
4-C. Carib Queen Justa Werges
4-D. International Indigenous Connections
5. The Question of Recognition

This is meant to serve as a condensed overview of four full-length video documentaries to come. Until then, please visit: http://indigenousreview.blogspot.com.

Music

PROGRESS from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

This is a video made to accompany the music of the Trinidadian calypsonian, King Austin, for his 1980 classic, “Progress”.

Reports

Ward Churchill Speaks: On Colonialism as Genocide from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

On Wednesday, April 15, 2009, less than two weeks after his successful lawsuit against the University of Colorado on the grounds of wrongful termination for constitutionally protected free speech, Ward Churchill traveled to Montreal and delivered an address at Concordia University. The entirety of his presentation, and most of his responses to comments are shown in the video. I filmed this under less than ideal conditions, using a rather low grade camcorder, with very poor lighting.

Satire

Counter-Counterinsurgency: The Video from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

“Help to prevent contamination. You can fight the spread of the contagion, and avoid becoming another zombie fan of counterinsurgency, by sending the link to this video to seven friends over the next seven days”.
 

The video above has to be read in context with a series of fictional stories on the Zero Anthropology Magazine, that were dressed up as critical investigative reporting into the working of a non-existent corporation, Razor’s Edge. The three articles that led to the video above are:

1. “The Razor’s Edge LLC Brings You ‘Reality Tourism’™”;

2. “Videos: The Adventures of the Master Class Reconsidered”; and,

3. “Risk, Trust, and Fulfilment: Reality Tourism, Continued”.
    

Image: A shop in Quidi Vidi village, outside St. John’s, Newfoundland. Photograph by Maximilian C. Forte (2018), free for non-commercial reuse, with attribution.