Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)

By: börek - July 1st, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday July 14, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: CHOCOLAT * 1988 * Directed by Claire Denis * 105 minutes * In French with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

French Director Claire Denis grew up in west Africa, where her father was a civil servant. The family moved to a different country in Africa every several years because they wanted her to understand culture and geography. This is why much of her work deals with the spiritual and psychological impact of colonialism, especially in West Africa. This was her debut film, and it is about a French woman reflecting on her childhood in a colonial outpost in French Cameroon as a 7-year old girl.
So as you might expect the film is largely autobiographical, recounting her own memories and emotions while she was growing up, and in this case the film has a special focus on her relationship with her family’s African servant.
This film isn’t restless, like so many movies today. It sinks into the world of west Africa, and moves at an ambient pace… allowing sensuality to surface. The film is about identity, memories, and a romance that tries to navigate racism and complicated social structures. This is different from a Hollywood film also because it doesn’t try to exploit our emotions and treat us like children by making things black-and-white. Instead it is a film full of mystery.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Cinema Italia: Fantozzi (Luciano Salce, 1975)

By: börek - June 12th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 23 June 2024, FANTOZZI (1975) * Directed by Luciano Salce * 103 min * In Italian with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30. After the film, please engage in sharing comments, ideas, and inspiration with the host(s) of the evening!

A cult film that entered the Italian pop culture, Fantozzi is a sharp critique of white collar’s alienation in modern capitalism, and how the only way to escape is breaking the rules, but, even then, success is far from being guaranteed. Structured in ten episodes, it rotates upon the misadventures of Ugo Fantozzi, his relations with his wife, his colleague Filini, Miss Silvani and others, in situations like Christmas, New Year’s Eve, a trip on the Alps, and so on. A distorted portrait of Italy during its industrialization and the paradoxes of modernisation, which has something to say outside Italy and to contemporaries too.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966)

By: börek - June 4th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 9 June 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (La muerte de un burócrata) * by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea * 1966 * 85 minutes * In Cuban Spanish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

A key black comedy in Cuban film history, directed by one of its maverick filmmakers Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment, Strawberry and Chocolate) who chose to stay in post-revolutionary Cuba and supported its socialist cause but never thought twice about criticizing the regime’s shortcomings.

In this film director Alea lampoons the stuffy and insane world of bureaucratic red tape. The journey begins when a widow realizes there was an important document in the pocket of her deceased husband who has already been buried, and needs an official permit to have the body exhumed. This starts an absurd chain of events with a razor-sharp Buñuelian sense of black humor.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Cinema Italia: Lamerica (Gianni Amelio, 1994)

By: börek - May 25th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 26 May 2024, While There’s War There’s Hope [FINCHE’ C’E’ GUERRA C’E’ SPERANZA] (1974) directed by Alberto Sordi is cancelled for technical problems. Apologies for the inconvenience. We will watch together, instead:

LAMERICA [THEAMERICA] (1994) * Directed by Gianni Amelio * 116 min * In Italian with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30. After the film, please engage in sharing comments, ideas, and inspiration with the host(s) of the evening.

In 1991 a ship with 10-20 thousand Albanians came to Bari. They were escaping extreme poverty and a chaotic situation in their country, after the fall of the dictatorship. This film draws from that episode, and tells the story of two different generations of Italians in Albania through the eyes of the two protagonists, whose identities between the two countries make us think about what it means to belong to a nationality in general and how fragile is our social status when society around us suddenly collapses. The film also invites us to ask ourselves about the effects of migration in a foreign country which is more a dream than a reality.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)

By: börek - May 12th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 12 May 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Killer of Sheep * 1978 * Directed by Charles Burnett * 80 minutes * In English* free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

Back in the 1970s there was a defiant wave of black filmmakers on the West Coast of America that would later be known as the L.A. Rebellion. This movement broke out of the film department at U.C.L.A, so their movies were mostly based in Los Angeles. And since the filmmakers were primarily black, the films were exposing the poverty, violence, and everyday racism that their communities endured. One of the key directors that emerged from this movement was Charles Burnett, and this was his debut.. The depiction of his community was so tenderly and honestly rendered in this flick, that it became legendary even though it was pushed underground and never shown to a mass public audience.

What’s the story of this film?I don’t want to say very much, because everybody is fixated on stories. The Killer of Sheep focuses on the slums of Watts during the late 70s. It’s about a guy who dreams, but who is forced to work in a slaughterhouse. It’s about his family, and the world around him. That’s all I will say, and let the movie unfold for itself.

Today a lot of people in universities seem to get off on using sophisticated academic language that separates them from everyone else. This creates a clique or an elite group that ends up basically just talking amongst each other. This is the last thing we need. Back in the 70s this was much less of a problem, and someone like Charles Burnett was able to speak in a human way, and on a human level. This didn’t preclude experimentation or creativity. In fact it was exactly the opposite. The members of the L.A. Rebellion wanted to redefine the aesthetics of cinema, but to do that, they didn’t resort to academia to define their new forms, they instead went into the streets. Too many artists are creating with their head these days, and not with their heart. They are convinced that the heart can’t be creative, but they are so wrong. This film is a perfect example of this.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ogro (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1979)

By: börek - April 2nd, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 7 April 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ogro * 1979 * Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo * 111 minutes * In Italian with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

Directed by the legendary Gillo Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers) this film focuses on the Basque struggle in the last years of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. As always with the films of Pontecorvo, the film methodically follows an oppressed community and their attempts to push back against power.

This film unfolds the background of a real life event that happened in 1973. A group of committed Basque ETA freedom-fighters decide to assassinate a fascist military leader named Luis Carrero Blanco, who was Franco’s strongest supporter. Director Gillo Pontecorvo is sympathetic to the Basque cause, and paints a vivid picture of their oppression. They are not seen as unreasonable bloodthirsty murderers, but as radical humanists.

Although it precisely documents the actual preparations that lead to the assassination, it also raises questions about how one achieves social change: by radical violence or by patient determination? For example, although it was an outright murder, many people felt that Blanco’s assassination led to the fall of the dictatorship in 1975. This movie was made less than five years after the actual event, and doesn’t take a firm position on either side, it just raises all these questions.

It stars the always wonderful Gian Maria Volonté, along with Ángela Molina (Buñuel’s This Obscure Object of Desire), and Eusebio Poncela (Almodóvar’s The Law of Desire)… and an original music score by Ennio Morricone.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Cinema Italia: The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

By: börek - March 22nd, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 24 March 2024, The Battle of Algiers [La battaglia di Algeri] (1966) * Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo * 121 min * In Italian with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30. After the film, please engage in sharing comments, ideas, and inspiration with the host(s) of the evening.

Known as one of the most important and influential films of all time, “The Battle of Algiers” is set and shot in Algeria’s capital. It shows the main events that marked the beginning of the Algerian War, which led to Algeria’s independence from France.

Through an intense and cruel fictional realism, almost simulating the style of a newsreel, Pontecorvo’s film confronts and interrogates the spectator about all the aspects and consequences of colonialism: control and exploitation of people and resources, violence and discrimination, insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, military colonial control through torture and illegal executions.

How far would you push yourself for the self-determination of your people’s group? Driven by an excellent cast of non-professional actors, raw and powerful imagery and an incredible soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, “The Battle of Algiers” hasn’t aged a bit since its release in 1966, still depicting through cinema what’s still going on in some parts of the world.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: five obstrructions

By: börek - March 10th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 March 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: five obstrructions * 87 minutes * In Danish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

If the pandemic revealed anything to me, it is our difficulty to be creative anymore. This entire thing could have given us the possibility to get back to our senses, and it could have been a catalyst to find creative solutions to the problem. Instead what resulted for the most part was a lack of reflection, a total shut-down of the imagination and paralysis. In a way, one of the most intriguing movies ever made by the Danish director von Trier is this constructed documentary… and it shows us how limitations can be used in a positive sense rather than a negative, self-defeating one.

So what is this movie about? One of the artists Lars von Trier looked up to most was a fellow Dane named Jørgen Leth, who was famous for a short movie he made in 1968 called “The Perfect Human”. Von Trier says he watched that film more than twenty times, and found it fascinating. So he decided to approach his mentor, and challenge him to remake his legendary movie five more times, but this time around with a new set of five difficult obstructions that von Trier would give him. In this flick we see Jørgen Leth accept the challenge, how he struggles with it, and when restricted into a corner, how he pushes back with creativity. In this battle von Trier shows how rules and boundaries can be used to spur one’s spirit, rather than deflate it.

We are becoming more and more complacent and dependent on products and gadgets to do things for us. In the process we are losing many of our natural skills. For me, it’s clear we are locked in a mechanism of consumerism and technology that is robbing us of our imagination and spirit. We are addicted to convenience, and given the choice we will always push the easy button. We recently went through a pandemic that confronted and limited us in many ways, but maybe it wasn’t devastating enough. It seems it wasn’t severe enough to unlock us, to free us—it didn’t force us to be creative again. This film is an incredible experiment, a documentary about filmmaking and the nature of creativity itself.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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