When the Chilean government tried to bring in a large transit fare hike back in 2019 ‘they knew not what they wrought’. Years of neoliberal oppression rooted in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1974-90) set off a year-long mass revolt. Exiled Chilean director Vee Bravo jumped on a flight from New York to graphically document the rise of working class Chilenos whose agitation reversed not only the fare increase but the entire constitutional edifice that General Pinochet (and his economic advisors from the University of Chicago) had installed to ensure the continuity of class oppression in Chile. The action in Primera is intense. Bravo embedded himself in a group of activists, known as Primera Línea or Front Line, which had the unenviable task of defending the broader movement, using everything from sling shots to Molotov cocktails to fend off police assaults. The film captures Anji, Camila, Felipe, and Male – pastry chef, street musician, welder and attorney – showing not only their bravery and streetwise intelligence but the price they pay in economic, physical and psychological pain for their activism.
Dewayne Johnson, a Bay Area groundskeeper was poisoned by a glyphosate-based herbicide produced by one of the world’s most unpopular agrochemical corporate giants. Monsanto (now owned by the German Bayer company) produces the highly profitable Roundup group of herbicides. The film places Johnson’s David and Goliath struggle in a wide-ranging critique of the ubiquitous use and effects of Roundup and the various tactics Monsanto employs to defend it. This despite the mounting evidence linking the agrochemical’s use to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma while regulatory agencies like the US’s FDA are so often biased or even ‘captured’ by the industrial interests they are supposed to be regulating. Into The Weeds blends evidence from agricultural users of Roundup with court room tension to create a riveting documentary. Although suffering from severe cancer-related and very painful skin infections, Johnson remains committed to making sure there are no further victims of glyphosate poisoning.
