Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Charlottesville: Race and Terror
2. “Don’t Be A Sucker”

BSA Special Feature: “Charlottesville: Race and Terror”

BSA Film Friday has become a popular section on BSA and usually we show 3 or 4 short films from around the world more specifically related to Street Art and the artists work, their process, techniques, influences and inspirations. Today we stay on the street and look at the events recorded live by Vice News and aired on HBO “Charlottesville: Race and Terror.”

What happened in Charlottesville this week will happen again – unless we all do something, small or big, to prevent these deadly, revolting, malignant and cancerous instincts to take society back to times of darkness and misery.

Tens of thousands of soldiers already died fighting against these evils of racism and fascism and the Nazis were defeated with a promise of “never again” to future generations – and an attitude of zero tolerance must exist for persons who move us in that direction again. If we remain silent, impassive and unmoved we’ll likely realize our mistake only when it is too late.

So this documentary is a small sorry window into one aspect of the current state of our nation. The actions and opinions expressed openly and without remorse on our streets speak volumes about us and our society. We often say that “it all comes from the top”. Indeed it does. Encouraged and given permission by their president these individuals decided that it was about time to come out in the open and shout their hatred and threaten others – emboldened by the thought that they have allies in the White House.

Clearly, many of these folks are mislead or have been misinformed. As one commenter on YouTube writes beneath this video “Do they not realize that the actual Nazis killed thousands of American soldiers in WW2 in the name of fascism?”

Today we have in the highest national office a person who looks at the self-described white supremacists who marched with Tiki-torches last Friday night in Charlottesville and sees “very fine people.” Some of us believe that we all have the potential to be good people but we are not used to having presidents who side with those who espouse genocide, fascism, racism – and we know from history what our response must be. No true leader makes a false equivalency by saying there are “very fine people on both sides” when one side is espousing the extermination of others based on religion, race, orientation… what have you.

We return to the motto of the United States: E pluribus unum – out of many, one.

Let’s recognize the humanity in everyone, defend the rights of each of us, and elevate those who honor our motto into our highest offices. Our history demands it, and all people deserve it. We all won’t be rich and famous but we all should aspire to live in peace and harmony with a shared sense of responsibility and to do our jobs with dignity, to drive, to walk the streets, to go out and have fun, to pray and gather and to surf the Internet without fear that we will be attacked or jailed because of the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation or our ethnicity. When it comes to fascism and Nazis and racism, let’s continue to educate ourselves and each other about the clear and present dangers so we can say with complete confidence, “Never Again”.

“Don’t Be A Sucker”

A propaganda film made by the US military has gone viral this week, and even though it was made in 1943 and re-released in 1947, you can see obvious parallels to today.

An anti-fascist film produced  in the wake of WWII, the producers are aiming to deconstruct the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime.

The older wise man schools the confused younger guy about how Nazi’s split up a country so they could take it over. “We must guard everyone’s liberty, or we can lose our own,” he says. “If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice, we are threatening our own freedom.”