A Leaderless Movement

I just watched part two of Avi Setton interview on his podcast NonDē Uprising with Ted Hope where the topic was the paradox of a leaderless movement. It’s always fascinating to me how Ted answers a question by taking us along on his thought process, which is sometimes challenging to follow, but he is always able to tie his thoughts together into very salient, understandable points.

One of Avi’s questions to Ted was “do all filmmakers have to be leaders?” To summarize Ted’s answer, he replied that it’s necessary for filmmakers to accept that they have to be responsible for not only making a film but also the marketing and distribution. He emphasized that besides this being a reality for most filmmakers it’s also not a bad thing. It forces filmmakers to think and build their audience before even picking up a camera.

The interview led me to thoughts of when I was in college. I was initially an english major. I had aspirations to be a writer. I romanticized being a novelist and dedicated myself to it. I also found myself elected president of the english club. As I recall no one else wanted to do it. I met other english majors who were also writing poetry, short stories. I was inspired to start a magazine, which we called S.O.U.P. (Student Organized Uninhibited Publication). I taught myself how to use Aldous Pagemaker (what a dinosaur!) and convinced one of my professors to let us use part of his budget to print it.

We had a dozen or so poems, short stories, some artwork and my contribution, an essay on corporate capitalism. I was afraid to submit any fiction I’d written after reading the submissions from other students. I told myself I would never be a writer. But I was good at writing clear nonfiction pieces. (I ended up changing my major to anthropology).

I also learned a hard lesson making the magazine. I was working under a deadline so took it on myself to design the cover. I designed an open can of soup spilling letters out. I thought it was clever albeit a bit crude in execution. One of the artists in our group flipped out. Said it was terrible and we should have made a group decision. I tried to explain that I had a deadline to finish it and get it to the printer. She wasn’t having it. We were able to move on but I knew I would never exclude anyone from a creative decision again.

I guess what made me think of this is I believe it speaks to Avi’s question. I wasn’t the leader of our little student publication. I just brought people together and made it happen. I also learned that it’s a fine line between facilitating something and making decisions for others.

So to answer Avi’s question I think we do have leaders, starting with Ted.

But not leaders in the traditional sense.

We are all leaders here.

A leader doesn’t sit back and wait.

A leader also doesn’t take over and try to run things.

A leader lights a fire.

A leader shares knowledge as they know it makes us all stronger.

A leader is led themselves by love. They treat others as they want to be treated. They build up, not tear down.

For me this is the beating heart of FilmStack and the NonDe movement. Everything else we are building here matters but if we don’t carry this with us what are we really doing here?