FANZINE: The film ends with images of Americans protesting the Iraq War. The connection between these scenes and the rest of the film feels immediate and logical. And yet it's a very sudden leap. What, for you, is the relationship between the “other history” you convey in Profit motive and the whispering wind  and the historical moment we're living through now. Has American radicalism died? Is it alive and well? Is it alive but ailing?

JOHN GIANVITO: To clarify, not all the scenes in the finale pertain to the Iraq war. I shot various protest marches in DC, New York, and Boston and they include ones focused on immigrant rights, gay rights, and the Republican National Convention protests in which a host of issues were represented. But the war does dominate. For me, these images were intended to be predominantly emblematic. They were meant to speak in general, iconic ways of the ongoing existence of this trajectory of struggle––which I didn't want people feeling is something just dead and buried. As well, it's fair to say it represents an urge to inspire the viewer to step into that stream, and––in the face of meditating on the histories that the film documents, in its odd way––to potentially hear that history beckoning us to find our own way to contribute to this long struggle for the betterment of humanity (a struggle hardly confined to the U.S., which is the reason behind the use of “The Internationale”).

While it’s evident that there's been a winnowing of large street protests in the past couple of years, I don't see this as indicative of the collapse of a meaningful progressive movement. As others have pointed out, the growth of organizations like MoveOn.Org, CodePink, and others, are––from a historical perspective––indicative of a much more successful rallying of such energies. The sheer amount of money, the millions that have been raised by MoveOn is much greater than the funds raised by similar activist groups in the past, and are very targeted in their use. I believe people are searching for and here and there finding other, more efficacious ways to continue to fight the fight.

That said, again, trying to use history as a way of grounding myself, I think of Howard Zinn's remarks about what it was like in the deep South in the early 1950s, and how seemingly remote the possibility appeared that there could be any rapid change to the problem of segregation. For many people at the time it appeared to be a distant hope. And yet, within just a few years, certain key events––Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, Rosa Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus the following year, sparking the famous Montgomery Bus Boycotts––a few incidents rapidly igniting a movement, started moving the country towards a resolution of these barbaric laws and practices. I think a lot of times there are things going on underground, smoldering desires that just need to find the right mechanism to unleash that energy forward.

I'm not pessimistic about the absence of people pouring out into the streets at this moment, although I certainly would like to see more evidence of real rage, targeted rage, against things such as this obscene war in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. I think people are in search of where they can best put their energies that will produce real change. I think that is part of what we're seeing around the Barack Obama campaign. For me, there's a lot of projecting onto him certain hopes and aspirations about shifting this country in a more sane direction.