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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Film screening: Une île et une nuit (An Island and One Night)

By: börek - February 26th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 3rd March 2024, Film screening: Une île et une nuit (An Island and One Night) * 2021-2023 * 100 min * multi-lingual (11 languages) * no subs * Free or pay what you can * doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Around a campfire travelers, vagabonds and pirates tell their stories, share their dreams and adventures. From language to language and story to story they tell their tales of how they reached this imaginary island which could be a reality. The island comes under threat from the forces of development, capitalism, technology and gentrification.
A film made organically, collectively and non hierarchically by the inhabitants and users of a community called Le Quartier Libre des Lentillères, located in Dijon, France facing eviction and development as well struggling against all borders.
The Quartier Libre des Lentillères was born out of a demonstration in 2010, in Dijon, at the end of which a hundred people cleared and then cultivated quality land left abandoned and threatened by a real estate project. From there was born the Pot’Col’Le, an open and collective gardening dynamic based on the exchange of knowledge. The Jardin des Maraichères, managed on a self-employed basis, supplies weekly non-profit markets at free prices. At the crossroads of these two large plots, dozens of small allotment gardens are intermingled. In the midst of all this, busy farms, a dynamic of building huts and maintaining places open to all for walks, for workshops for the exchange of diverse knowledge, concerts or atypical parties. From all this is born a colorful neighborhood, mixed collectives fed by several hundred people.
However, all these dynamics are threatened: the SPLAAD (Société Publique Locale d’Aménagement de l’Agglomération Dijonnaise) and the Grand Dijon want to destroy this creative boiling that produces a neighborhood as we want to live it, outside the established frameworks, to replace it with a real estate project of “eco-neighborhood”: the “ecocity of market gardeners”. The first phase of construction has begun on the industrial plot of land of the former slaughterhouses, but we intend to oppose the work of the second phase of construction which concerns the Quartier libre des Lentillères. We are more determined than ever to fight so that solidarity prevails over business. Join us!

Une île et une nuit https://piratesdeslentilleres.net/
Quartier Libre des Lentillères http://lentilleres.potager.org/
https://radar.squat.net/en/dijon/quartier-libre-des-lentilleres

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: Good morning, night (Marco Bellocchio, 2003)

By: börek - February 19th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 25 February 2024, Good morning, night [Buongiorno, notte] (2003) * Directed by Marco Bellocchio * 106 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.

The kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the politician who succeeded in forming a government with the Christian Democrats (West side of the Iron Curtain) and the Communist Party (Eastern bloc) together, was a turning point not only in the history of Italy but in Europe at least. In the 1970s, going beyond the political division East-West was almost beyond imagination. One leitmotif we are invited to reflect upon is the generation gap between the old Communists who fought fascists during WW2 and the new generation of people in their 20s, who in the 1970s want to achieve a proletarian revolution in Western Europe.

How can we influence politics with our actions? The power of media, and in particular the mainstream news of television but also entertainment, in contrast with the power of books, is an element of reflection in Buongiorno, notte. We may share the same language (in the film: Italian) but if language is shared only on the surface, communication ultimately is impossible. The use of music, especially when extra-diegetic (i.e. heard by the public, not by the characters), is an element wisely used by the director to underline emotions and comment by himself what is happening on the screen; you will recognize the motif of Pink Floyd.

Bellocchio, who last year came back to the topic of kidnapping with Rapito (kidnapped), 21 years ago proposed a very audacious feature film. First, the topic was filmed previously in 1986, starring an outstanding Gian Maria Volonté — we should say that Roberto Herlitzka in Bellocchio’s film is extraordinary as well. Also, because Bellocchio’s angle is original, as the protagonist is a young woman, Chiara, who is part of the big history but in a sense stays at its margins. Her sacrifice, in terms of personal life, is illustrated by the black-and-white dreamy sequences that comment the film with a poetic touch. Finally, Buongiorno, notte also has an element of meta-cinema, reflecting on the responsibility of making films in the early years of the 21st century respecting history but taking liberties with history as well.

The film invites us to reflect on what are we ready to sacrifice in our normal life for our principles, and for staying loyal to our ethics. What is the value of life in front of imminent death? What does it mean to live 55 days in an apartment without ever going out? What is the difference between Christianity and Communism? What are we repeating in our lives, and what we are really choosing by ourselves? Do we have the courage to dream?

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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Voku for Solidarity With Migrants & book presentation ‘The Light of the Beast’ by Pablo Allison

By: börek - February 5th, 2024  Filed under: Book presentation, Filmavond, Infoavond, Volkseten/Voku

Thursday 15 February 2024, Voku for Solidarity With Migrants & book presentation ‘The Light of the Beast’ by Pablo Allison. Door opens at 7pm with food. The book presentation from Pablo Allison starts around 20:30. No reservation.

The Light of the Beast is the culmination of six years work documenting migrants traveling from Central America, through Mexico and into the USA as the final destination. Since 2007, British-Mexican artist Pablo Allison has tried to understand life and its intricacies, by documenting migration and its consequences.

‘The Beast’ or ‘La Bestia’ as migrants call it, is a freight train that carries goods between Canada, the United States of America and Mexico. As most people who leave their countries travel with no money, ‘La Bestia” represents the only way to get to the USA border, despite this being forbidden by Mexican authorities.
This journey is tough and it can be extremely dangerous for people to travel this way, for a number of reasons. These travellers often referred to as migrants, run a high chance of being kidnapped, mugged, extorted or ending up dead in the desert before they reach their destination.
The majority of migrants that use this mode of transport come from countries with the highest levels of violence in the world. Places like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are examples of countries where the situation is so untenable that undertaking this potentially devastating journey is an only option for survival.
The vast amount of migrants that leave their countries are forced to, due to the oppression and extreme violence caused by delinquent groups that dominate entire communities. Violence in these countries is a product of decades of poverty and a lack of decent and fair policies from governments in Central America as well as from US interventions over many decades. https://www.pabloallison.co.uk/

The benefit for this voku is Solidarity With Migrants, an open assembly in solidarity with migrants in Greece consisting of locals, internationals and migrants against racism, fascism, and capitalism.
Our speech and actions are against the war against migrants waged by the states, capitalism and all kinds of racists and fascists, focusing on the anti- migration policy of the Greek state and the dehumanising camp system. We seek the communication between and connection of the struggles of locals and migrants against our common enemies, in the context of international struggles against all forms of oppression and devaluation of our lives. People attending and participating in the assembly come from different backgrounds and are often faced with different forms of oppression and violence (racist, gender violence, sexism, classism etc). Many of us are also involved in political movements, antifascist, antiracist, antisexist and other struggles. We want all to be equal and we also want society to become fair and free for everyone. This is the basis of everything we do.
We are not an NGO nor in another way an official organization so we don’t get funded from anyone and we are also totally independent from refugees organizations, the greek government and the European Union. According to our political standpoint of opposing all these, refusing funding by them is essential.
Solidarity With Migrants: solidaritymigrants [at] riseup [dot] net […Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Changing Skins (Andreas Dresen, 1997)

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

Sunday 4 February 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: RAUS AUS DER HAUT * 1997 * (Changing Skins) * Directed by Andreas Dresen * 90 minutes * In German with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

The setting is mid 1970s East Germany, and our story revolves around two high school students, Anna and Marcus, who are inspired by news reports coming from West Germany. What are they excited by? Some new product on the western market, or a Hollywood film? No, they are captivated by the real-life terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof who were robbing banks and kidnapping corporate executives. When their teacher threatens to demote them, which would prevent them from entering university because of their unruly behavior, they decide to drug their teacher, kidnap him, and keep him hostage in a cellar until after they graduate. This little gem is a ‘feel-good’ terrorist film by the East German director Andreas Dresen. It is a romance, but with a sharp wit and sense of humor. Personally, I adore this little gem, and it’s totally unknown.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, few directors from the former East bloc were able to make films in the new ‘united’ Germany. They were mostly run out of the industry, and thrown into unemployment. They were treated as if they had been contaminated by the plague. Andreas Dresen is one of the few voices in cinema that can accurately portray the life and dreams of his former East bloc GDR. And he does this with magic and charm…. and in the process he dispels many of the myths people in the West have about East Germany.

This is a mind-opening flick, with a series of wild twists and turns, but also a down-to-earth sense of humanity that was typical of the GDR. Here there is no trace of the arrogance of big-budget American movies that seem fueled by cocaine and cash. This is a low budget flick with a beautiful sensibility. Even within Germany this film is extremely difficult to see, and outside Germany it is utterly unknown. That makes this an extremely rare screening of this discreet masterpiece.

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: Pasqualino Settebellezze (Lina Wertmüller, 1975)

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

Sunday 28 January 2024, Seven Beauties [Pasqualino Settebellezze] (1975) * Directed by Lina Wertmüller * 115min * 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!

Pasqualino Frafuso, know as Settebellezze (Seven Beauties) navigates and survives life adversities thanks to his charisma. The film spans from the 1930 till the end of WWII, goes back and forth through time, and the protagonist’s choices and relative consequences show how life events (both on a small and a bigger scale) could change one’s life and core beliefs in order to survive, but at what cost?
Jumping from drama to comedy, and back again at the first one passing by the grotesque as a genre, this film shows how someone’s life pillars might shake and then shutter just to keep going and stay alive, especially regarding the theme of self-respect.
The film is a historical drama in a highly dense timeframe, but we are aware of what’s going on just from what touches directly our protagonist’s life, which invites drawing a parallelism with us today and with what we perceive, what we are aware of that’s happening in “our” countries and around the world and how those events directly affect us.

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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