A Force More Powerful

This two-hour documentary traces the infectious proliferation of non-violent popular movements for change over the course of the last century, from Gandhi's civil disobedience campaign against the Raj, through Jim Lawson's Nashville sit-ins against segregation, to Mkhuseli Jack's boycott's of apartheid business in Port Elizabeth. The film's a bit of a history lesson - there have been fleeter expositions of people power. It also begs questions of context and comparison, but the evidence it marshals of effective methods for defeating oppression - Gandhi's principle of satyagraha ('holding to truth'), Lawson and Jack's flair for dramatising issues and thereby raising awareness, and the ever potent strategy of making life costly and controversial for those holding the purse strings - is certainly absorbing.