Cinema Swiss: Little escapes (Yves Yersin, 1979)

By: börek - November 2nd, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 6 November 2022, Les Petites Fugues aka Little Escapes (Yves Yersin, 1979). In French with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30.

Swiss documentary filmmaker Yves Yersin has also made one fiction film, and it is a masterpiece. In Little escapes (“Les petites fugues”), a 65-year-old Swiss farmhand named Pipe (played by comedian Michel Robin) discovers what freedom is. His freedom is not offered to him, but instead he conquers it, with “little escapes,” which invariably meet with disapproval from his boss. The farmer John (Fred Personne) believes that, except on Sundays, Pipe should simply always show up for work. At the end of the film, Pipe rebukes John: farmhand work is Pipe’s job, and so it is up to him to decide when to leave it for a while. Pipe’s personal revolution coincides with major social transformations in the 1970s, such as democratization, women’s emancipation, technological innovation, migration and tourism. With his newly acquired moped, Pipe experiences it all – but also discovers that his old habits please him as well.

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: Selfie (Agostino Ferrente, 2019)

By: börek - October 20th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 30 October 2022, Cinema Italia: Selfie (Agostino Ferrente, 2019), 78 minutes. In Neapolitan and Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30.

This documentary has been shot by Neapolitan teenagers living in Traiano, a neighbourhood where Camorra, the local Mafia, is an everyday presence. And yet their stories tell not only about violence but also friendship, hope, and intimate relations. The director gave a phone to them, letting them choose the way to tell their lives. A film made possible by smartphones only, where subjectivity and objectivity are inextricably intertwined in a unique mix, that opens a window to an angle of the world otherwise impossible to see for outsiders.

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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Machines in Flames: a secret history of self-destruction (Thomas Dekeyser, Andrew Culp, 2022)

By: börek - October 10th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 16 October 2022, Movie night: Machines in Flames: a secret history of computational self-destruction (Thomas Dekeyser, Andrew Culp, 2022), 55 minutes. Movie in French with English subtitles. Doors open at 8:00 pm, film starts at 8:30 pm.

“A secret history of self-destruction by following the footsteps of a clandestine group of French computer workers from the 1980s”. Machines in Flames is a cinematic search for the elusive group CLODO (Comité Liquidant ou Détournant les Odinateurs), who bombed computer companies in 1980s Toulouse, France. Journeying through the cybernetic nodes of military, industrial, and socialist development, the film exposes how recording devices fail to collect the ashes of history. The film combines archival traces, a viral desktop choreography, and paranoid footage of nocturnal stakeouts into a philosophical investigation of self-combustion.
The film is the debut work of the Destructionist International, and the first in a series of films on the appetite for abolition in ultra-leftism. It was first distributed through a network of self-erasing USB data sticks dropped outside corporate campuses. https://machinesinflames.com/

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: Vertical Ray of the Sun (Tran Anh Hung, 2000)

By: börek - October 9th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 9 october 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Vertical Ray of the Sun * Mùa hè chiều thẳng đứng / À la verticale de l’été * 2000 * by Tran Anh Hung * 112 minutes * In Vietnamese with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Most American movies these days have huge stories, and zero content. This movie is exactly the opposite, and in some ways is closer to European cinema of the 1960s. Here the story is minimal, but it is done in such a lush way. Even when it starts raining it feels like a shower of silver, not like the gloomy rainfalls here in Europe. To put it simply, poetry is still intact, and there is an engagement to the bigger picture of life, something lacking in more narrative driven movies. This is the kind of film you can sink into body and soul.

Although the film has a lush exotic mood, it doesn’t get carried away with its exoticism, and breaks the borders between East and West by bringing in elements of Western culture. For example, a Velvet Underground tune that pops up. The reason this diversity is possible is that the director grew up in Vietnam until he was 12, and then moved to France. So he has a double identity, and in his movies he brings together the best of both worlds.

On the surface it is about three sisters who meet in Hanoi over the course of a month on the anniversary after their parents’ deaths. In these encounters secrets about the past are revealed. But the real meat is the ultra-sensual mood, and its feeling of incredible harmony with the environment. it doesn’t have a conventional approach to narrative story telling… instead it’s more a mosaic of small intimate moments, and the power of images to communicate a sense of life.

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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Movie night: Politics in India – Environment, Gender, Human rights

By: börek - September 26th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 2nd October 2022, Movie night: Politics in India – Environment, Gender, Human rights. Movies with English subtitles. Doors open at 8:00 pm, film starts at 8:30 pm. Films followed by discussion with film-makers.

Two short documentary films about people’s movements for environment and social justice in India.
‘Izzat ka Pani’ is a story about Abrar Salmani, a resident of an informal settlement in Mumbai. Salmani struggled for 10 years to access the city’s water network and secure his basic human right to water. His story illuminates a politics of discrimination that pushes people into a mindset of slavery to maintain power hierarchies. Salmani joined a citizen collective to dismantle the unjust laws denying him water.
The second film sits at the intersection of gender and environmental justice. How can we view nature through a lens of bounty and interconnection, instead of only seeing opportunity to extract resources? Women from India’s indigenous fishing communities ask such questions to protect the ecosystems on which their lives depend, while fighting against patriarchy at home and corporate power outside it.

Picture credit: Zenith Photographers, Chennai

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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Esperanto: Cinema and Esperanto video

By: börek - September 20th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond, Workshop

Wednesday 28 September 2022, Esperanto: Cinema and Esperanto video * Starts at 19:00 * Doors open at 18:00


The evening will screen a 30 min video called “Cinema and Esperanto” where approximately 20 feature films using somehow Esperanto are illustrated. The video is in English with English subtitles. Q&A on the topic will follow.

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Movie Night: Metaal en Melancholie (Heddy Honigmann, 1993)

By: börek - September 20th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 25 September 2022, Movie Night: Metaal en Melancholie (Metal y Melancolía) from Heddy Honigmann, 1993, 80 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30.

In Lima, the Peruvian capital of seven million, Heddy Honigmann shares a cab ride with the taxi drivers for whom this occupation is the only way of keeping poverty at bay. More often than not it is their second job, one that requires little more than a car – in whatever state – and a “taxi” plate, which is sold on every street corner. Determined, yet with a precise, measured sense of emotion, the director dissects their situation. A native of Peru, Honigmann returned to her place of birth after almost 20 years to make this film. Shot almost completely from inside the taxis, this documentary road movie reveals beautiful, moving anecdotes. Not only does the film portray these colorful and intriguing everyday people, but it also contrasts their dreams, hopes and disappointments to the state of Peru in the early 1990s. The economy is at an impasse, and teachers, soldiers, doctors and civil servants are part of the middle class in name only. In reality, their salaries are insufficient to feed their families; hence their need for second jobs. Still the rebellious and passionate drivers keep their spirits up, even if their vehicles often look less cheerful.

The film beautifully explores the disconnect between the peruvian people and their authoritarian government in the 90s. At the same time, the movie also explores the strange ways the lower class of taxi drivers experiences the ruling elite and interacts with them.

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: Marrakech Express (Gabriele Salvatores, 1989)

By: börek - August 31st, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 18 September 2022, Cinema Italia: Marrakech Express (Gabriele Salvatores, 1989), 104 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30.

Marrakech Express (1989) is the first film by Gabriele Salvatores on the topic of escaping, which is precisely the opposite of escapism. In the latter everything still and we allow ourselves a moment to forget how pointless is our way of life enjoying otherworldly stories. On the contrary, if we decide to escape we break the rules and get into the adventure of life, far from our comfort zone, without knowing in advance what we are doing, just living life, moment by moment. Marrakech Express is a story not only of escaping but also of life-long friendships, love, and the paradox of exoticism, the more you know it, the more it becomes familiar, losing its charm of distance. Salvatores here is somehow still an unripe fruit but, in his immaturity, he made a film that is forever green.

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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