🇧🇫A small landlocked country in West Africa, Burkina Faso is home to a vibrant community of artists, musicians, & engaged citizens who carry on the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara, killed in a coup d'état led by his best friend and advisor Blaise Compaoré, who then ruled the country as an autocrat for 27 years, til a massive popular insurrection led to his removal.

✊✊🏽✊🏿Today, the spirit of resistance and political change is mightier than ever and it permeates every aspect of the Burkinabè life. It is an inspiration, not only to Africa, but to the rest of the world.

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🎥 Director/Producer: Iara Lee - Korean-Brazilian 🇰🇷 🇧🇷 activist filmmaker, world traveler and sports enthusiast 🏊🏻‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️ 🚴🏻‍♀️ INSTAGRAM: @iara_lee

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🇧🇫The documentary chronicles agricultural resistance and the fight for food sovereignty in Burkina Faso--a small, landlocked country in West Africa. Showcasing activist farmers, students, artists, and leaders in the local Slow Food movement, the film looks at how the Burkinabè people are reclaiming their land and defending their traditions against the encroachment of corporate agribusiness.

From women gaining economic independence by selling artisanal "dolo" beer, to youth marching in the streets against companies like Monsanto, to hip-hop musicians setting up their own farms and reviving the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara through their music, BURKINABÈ BOUNTY shows the creative tactics people are using to take back control of their food, seeds, and future.

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🎥 Director/Producer - Iara Lee Korean-Brazilian 🇰🇷 🇧🇷 activist filmmaker, world traveler and sports enthusiast.🏊🏻‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️ 🚴🏻‍♀️ INSTAGRAM: @iaralee

❇️FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM - @culturesofresistance or check our website @ad
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to our channel for more, as we bring voices of grassroots communities to you!

As the world's agriculture and food systems face a crisis of disappearing seed diversity, a new short film tells the story of how African farming communities and organisations are reviving traditional seed diversity across the continent, and resisting mounting corporate pressure to use industrialised seed and farming methods.
This film is the follow up to our landmark 2012 film Seeds of Freedom, narrated by Jeremy Irons. Find out more and watch more films at seedsoffreedom.info

More about Seeds of Sovereignty:
Seeds of Sovereignty shows that farmers around the world have saved and bred an unimaginable wealth of seed diversity to meet many different challenges, but as corporate seed and chemicals replace farmers' own ingenuity, this diversity is steadily disappearing. Reviving farmers' in-depth knowledge of how to save and adapt seed is critical, and the film is aimed to encourage others to do so by setting out the key stages in this process.
Through interviews and stunning cinematography from across the continent, the 35-minute film unpacks an approach aligned to the principles of the growing global food sovereignty movement and provides a guide for anyone looking to revive traditional, diversity rich, seed and farming systems around the world.
Seeds of Sovereignty is the follow-up to the 2012 film Seeds of Freedom, narrated by British actor Jeremy Irons. Seeds of Freedom challenged the global corporate agenda to control and monopolise the food and farming sector, most particularly through genetically modified seed. It has achieved global success and is used by anti-GM campaigners across the globe.
Films produced by The Gaia Foundation, the African Biodiversity Network, MELCA Ethiopia and GRAIN

A 5 min stop motion animation exploring agroecology in Africa and its contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

⁣Biztech: How a Ghanaian is building affordable homes with plastic waste.

The President of Sri Lanka started pushing to build a new port in a small town at the south end of Sri Lanka because ambitious projects like this make you look like a good, caring politician. The only problem was that everyone, including their own government studies estimated that the port wouldn’t be profitable. But then the President announced that the project had been greenlighted - with help from none other than China.

The port opened in 2012, and the forecasts were right - no one was interested in using this new port. And it’s finances were in the hole. So the President went back to China for another loan, this time for $757 million.So what did they do? They took out another loan from China, this time for $1 billion dollars, to help pay off that upcoming debt payment. It’s safe to say that Sri Lanka found itself at the mercy of the Chinese government. It was drowning in debt payments and was left with an expensive port no one wanted to use. And now, China owns 85% of that port and managed to squeeze 15,000 acres of land around that port as well.

Debt traps, debt diplomacy is nothing new. China is probably just taking a page out of the original master at this game: the US. Why did the US go through all this effort to indebt these Less-Developed Countries, or LDCs? Simple: when you’re a global superpower, you need a lot of resources to stay on top: oil, energy, raw materials, nations under your influence so you can call them up when you need something like votes at the UN, and so on.

Today, China is in a similar position - they’re desperate for energy, money, and resources to continue their astronomical growth to the top.Who knows in the long run what will happen with China's colonialism. China has the ability to be forceful when needed, especially in their sphere. History would say China will follow the old model, but things have radically changed before. China is making mistakes but continues to sell these projects.