An Excerpt from 'Remarking January 25 - A Series of Six'

Months have passed since the uprising of 25 January and yet many of the struggles for transformative change that the protests that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak attempted to advance remain at best incomplete and at worst under attack. Immediately after Mubarak’s resignation, it was hard to imagine that seven months later Egypt would remain a country of emergency laws and military trials, and one in which labor strikes and demands for distributive justice are constantly demonized and dismissed by decision makers and opinion shapers. As we live through the contradictions between the goals of 25 January—bread, freedom, and social justice—and the underlying political and socio-economic realities of post-Mubarak Egypt, the team of Intifadat Intifadat, made up of Philip Rizk and Jasmina Metwaly, brings to light a much needed perspective. The documentary Remarking January 25- A Series of Six situates the long plight of Egyptian workers in the road to the 25 January uprising and their subsequent struggle to resuscitate the spirit of the revolution and achieve its promise for a better life. The clip below gives a quick snapshot into one of the many stories of this struggle, namely that of the Turah workers of the Egyptian Starch and Glucose Manufacturing Company, victims of the Mubarak regime’s policy of privatization.

Click below to watch an excerpt from the documentary (for Engish subtitles, please click "cc"). For more information about Remarking January 25- A Series of Six and to access the full series click here. 

About Remarking January 25 - A Series of Six

An event does not happen in a circle- more likely in a broken sphere. The wave of protest that led to the January 25 Revolution did not start in Tahrir. It occurred in places, spaces, some of which were hidden, unspoken of, some darker than others. In every telling of histories there are silenced moments, yet every moment has its voice. Detached and intertwined, these are six stories of the Egyptian “January 25 Revolution”- told by some of the silenced voices. Filmed violently. Collected and edited by Intifadat Intifadat.

“We were imprisoned in our clothes”- The workers of Turah in the January 25 Revolution

“My son, my niece, my cousin, my father – they are all in Tahrir Square too. I am no different. The whole country is demanding their rights. I demand my rights too” – Abdalla, one of the workers carrying out a weeks-long sit-in in the neighborhood of Turah