Resistencia: The Fight for Aguan Valley

A Documentary on Honduran Rural Workers followed by discussion with the filmmaker
91 mins, 2015

Film showing on the current struggle in Honduras and discussion with director Jesse Freeston

When a 21st century coup d’etat overthrows the only president they ever believed in, the farmers take over the plantations. With no plans to ever give them back.

June 28th, 2009. The Honduran people are preparing to vote in the first referendum in the country’s history. But, instead of waking up to ballot boxes, they see soldiers carrying out the first coup d’Ätat in Central America in three decades.

This is the story of the two thousand farming families who challenged the coup project by taking over the plantations of the most powerful landowner in the country and converting them into worker-run cooperatives.

Shot over four years, Resistencia is both a testament to the capacity of an organized movement to transform the most fertile land in the country, as well as an account of the coup regime’s violent attempts to get the land back.

Jesse Freeston is a filmmaker and video-journalist based in Montréal, Québec. He was a key member of The Real News Network where from 2009 to 2011 he produced more than 100 investigative video pieces on economics, politics and social movements in North and Central America. Since 2012, he has directed five documentaries for teleSUR, the world’s largest public Spanish-language broadcaster. His other video collaborations include working as: a co-producer for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, a member of Montréal’s CUTV news collective during the 2012 ‘Printemps ârable’, and a shooter/editor for the Montréal chapter of Vice News.
He has completed two independent documentaries—the first 2013’s Revolutionary Medicine: A Story of the First Garifuna Hospital (co-directed by Beth Geglia) and in 2015 Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley was released, his first feature-length documentary.
You can find links to much of his work at jessefreeston.com.