• Created by documentary filmmaker Iara Lee and her husband George Gund III
• Centered around the feature documentary film Cultures of Resistance, directed by Iara Lee and produced by George Gund III
• Supports the Free Gaza Movement

See also:  Iara Lee   George Gund III


Created by documentary filmmaker Iara Lee and her husband George Gund III, Cultures of Resistance (CoR) is an online activist network focused on “peace and global justice issues”; it is also the title of a 2010 feature documentary produced under the aegis of that network.

The CoR network consists of four major projects whose names are variants of the 1960s anti-war slogan, “Make love, not war”:

• “Make Music Not War” (MMNW) is an initiative that produces videos which showcase leftist musicians while presenting information about the musical traditions of various Middle Eastern countries. Among MMNW's featured artists are Shadia Mansour (a British-born Palestinian rap singer whose music focuses on Middle East politics) and Lowkey (a rapper and poet of English and Iraqi descent); both performed at a book-tour event for the Holocaust denier (and CoR ally) Norman Finkelstein.
• “Make Food Not War” (MFNW) is an educational program that advocates “food aid” and “food justice” for “communities in need,” and “challeng[es] policies that promote industrial agriculture rather than sustainable community-based farming.” This initiative's name is reminiscent of – and was likely inspired by – the anti-war group Food Not Bombs, to which Iara Lee and George Gund III have donated money through the Caipirinha Foundation.
• “Education Not War” is a program by which CoR promotes, among other things, the work of the late Marxist historian Howard Zinn.
• “Make Films Not War” is a rebranding of the Iara Lee and George Gund III Foundation's “Conflict Zone Film Fund,” promoting the production of antiwar films.

The CoR documentary titled Cultures of Resistance includes Iara Lee's film footage of the infamous May 2010 incident involving the Mavi Marmara, a Free Gaza Movement (FGM) flotilla ship whose crew and passengers (one of whom was Lee) provoked a violent and deadly confrontation at sea with Israeli commandos. While condemning what Lee has depicted as Israel's “indefensible” actions, Cultures of Resistance lauds the respective efforts of:

• Jeff Halper, spokesman for the International Solidarity Movement and founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions;
• The Zakira Photo Project, a Lebanese filmmaking group which Lee says “make[s] visible what life is like for Palestinian refugees”;
• The Medellin International Poetry Festival, which spotlights “the work of poets committed to promoting peace and social justice”;
• Brazilian photographer of slum life Andre Cypriano, whose images of poverty are popular among leftists and have earned him an award from the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography;
• The Yes Men, a team of socialist, anti-globalization activists; and
• Katibe 5, Lebanese hip-hop group composed of revolutionary Marxists who admire the writings of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara.

A notable admirer of Cultures of Resistance is Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink.