Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Solo (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1970)

By: börek - June 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 June 2018, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema.
SOLO, 1970 Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky 83 minutes. In French with English subtitles.
Doors open at 20:00. Intro starts at 20:30

Once the revolution of May ’68 collapsed, there were few brave enough to discuss what had happened. Some directors like Godard continued, but in a more underground way. This flick was one of the few that managed to fuse some of the ideas of May with the predominant movie industry. Most films dealing with this taboo subject were totally marginalized, but this one slipped through the door.

This isn’t only directed by the notorious Jean-Pierre Mocky but he also stars in it – and he comes off a bit like a less cynical version of Alain Delon. This flick was connected to what was really happening in France during the post-68 crisis, but stylistically it was ahead of its time. Italian ‘police films’ would explode in the mid-70s, but this film already has the poise and determination of those movies in tact. Graced with a moody soundtrack the story focuses on a diamond smuggler who cares nothing for the political upheaval of ’68, but when his revolutionary brother is being chased by the cops, he is forced to help his brother get away. By doing so, he becomes a target himself. This alarming movie shows how the more radical elements of the May events would be hunted down afterwards.

An amazing little flick, wonderfully directed. In its own way it’s a masterpiece, but one that was never screened outside France. In other words, this is another outrageously rare screening.

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

Tags: ,

Movie and Conversation: Together We Defend Our Mother Earth: Documentary on the Commons of Tila, Chiapas, Mexico

By: börek - May 3rd, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond, Infoavond

Sunday June 3rd 2018, Movie and Conversation: Together We Defend Our Mother Earth: Documentary on the Commons of Tila, Chiapas, Mexico. Door opens at 8pm, event starts at 8:30pm.

The indigenous ch’ol community in the town of Tila in Southern Chiapas, Mexico, live on the the communal lands protected legally as an ‘ejido’ (roughly: Commons). They have their own forms of governance and live in peace with most of their non-indigenous neighbours — except the authorites, who wanted to take over part of the communal lands. Left with no other option, the commoners took action against the ‘bad government’ on their lands and started to build autonomy in line with Zapatista principles and forms of organization. The documentary was made together with the commoners, to give those who are not from there the opportunity to understand the commoners’ experience and their struggle. We will watch the film, get an update on recent developments, and have a ‘conversatorio’, a conversation, about commonality, territory, solidarity, and documentary-making.
https://poeticsofresistance.wordpress.com/2016/12/21/together-we-defend-our-mother-earth-documentary-on-the-ejido-tila-chiapas-mexico/

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

Tags: , ,

Movie night: Girls in Uniform (1931)

By: börek - May 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 27 May 2018, Movie night: Girls in Uniform / Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931).
German with English subtitles | 98 minutes.
Doors 20:00 | Film 20:30

At a boarding school that turns the daughters of soldiers into future mothers of soldiers, 14-year old Manuela falls in love with one of her teachers.
“Mädchen in Uniform” was groundbreaking in having an all-female cast; in its sympathetic portrayal of lesbian “pedagogical eros”; and in its co-operative and profit-sharing financial arrangements (although these failed). Unsurprisingly it was banned in Nazi Germany, and only re-released on television in 1977, some 20 years after a much toned-down remake with Romney Schneider.

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

Tags: ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Year 01 (1969)

By: börek - May 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 20 May 2018, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema.
L’AN 01 1969 MAY 68 Directed by Jacques Doillon, Gébé, Alain Resnais and Jean Rouch. 90 minutes. In French with English subtitles.
Doors open at 20:00. Intro starts at 20:30

This is a collective film, where each of the filmmakers worked separately, but all of them were influenced by a single source—a utopian comic strip devised by the legendary cartoonist Gébé. It’s a farce with a free-wheeling avant-garde approach to cinema, embracing a ludic spirit of subversion. Although this satire is loaded with humour, it is also very ‘engaged’ and can be compared to the experimental ciné-tract short movies that were shot on the barricades. It is unstructured in its form, and changes style as it drifts along, touching on issues connected to ’68—the ecology, rejection of authority, challenges to growth and productivity, anti-war, free love, pollution, communal living, rejection of private property and demolishing the idea of forced labor.

This flick is a fable, and one that proposes with gleeful abandonment the following utopian scenario: all of a sudden, all the ordinary people throughout the world stopped working and money becomes worthless. Once everything has come to a grinding halt, we could bring back—reluctantly—only the services and products we really need. What follows is a wide-ranging series of whimsical sketches, a bit like a Monty Python narrative, of how different people react to such a situation. For example, the contribution of anthropologist Jean Rouch is documentary-like and harpoons the domination of northern countries over the south, and the so-called first world over the third world—something that is still alive and kicking today.

The tone is festive and all of the passages are marked with the cutting-edged humour of Gébé. Among the cast of actors are illustrators Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut, who were both were killed in the January 7th, 2015 terrorist attack on the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Also on hand are several actors that would only later become well-known… Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou.

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

Tags: , , , ,

Movie night: Black Panthers (Agnès Varda, 1968), Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo, 1933)

By: börek - April 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 22 April 2018, Movie night: Black Panthers (Agnès Varda, 1968), Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo, 1933).

Open 20:00 | Black Panthers 20:30 | Zéro de Conduite 21:15 (start times approx)

We’ll watch a perceptive short film (29 mins) about a Black Panthers Oakland demonstration, using Agnès Vardas own inimitable personal style, it also make a powerful political statement. Then we’ll have a short break, before something quite different. Back with our Story of Film theme, Vigo’s anarchic story of rebellion in an authoritarian French public school from the 1930s (44 mins). It inspired the much more violent rebellion in Lindsey Anderson’s If… This much earlier film still shocked Bourgeois French society enough that it was banned for over 10 years.

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

Tags: , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Far from Vietnam (1967)

By: börek - April 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 15 April 2018, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema.
Doors open at 20:00. Intro starts at 20:30 LOIN DU VIETNAM 1967 (Far from Vietnam) Directed by Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard. 120 minutes. In French with English subtitles.

In the late 60s there was a movement to make films collectively as a group. This idea took several forms, and in this one Chris Marker asked six directors to all make their own short film based on the anti-war movement against America’s tragic destruction of Vietnam. I was talking to someone recently who was saying they felt things were getting better because the internet is informing people better than before. Really? Then where the hell is the anti-war movement today?

This flick shoots us back to the 60s, when people were fighting for what they believed in. The demonstrations and solidarity created a constant charge of moral electricity, and it ricocheted through an entire generation. This new wave was both political and cultural. All seven directors who contributed to this movie have their own take… some are more fictional, others like Joris Ivens, are more documentary. Today the result is considered by many to be the best document of those foundation-rocking times. But back in the 60s, the reaction to this film was volatile… when the finished movie was first shown in Paris, it resulted in right-wingers vandalizing theaters and slashing seats. This was a bold project headed by Chris Marker, giving the public a vastly different picture of what was happening in Vietnam than the “official story” that was being reported by the mass media.

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

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Movie Night: Hannah K. (Costa-Gavras, 1983)

By: börek - April 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 8 April 2018, Movie Night: Hannah K. (Costa-Gavras, 1983). 111 minutes. With English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film starts at 8:30pm.

Hanna K. is the story of Hanna Kaufman, a child of Holocaust survivors and an American-Jewish immigrant to Israel, who is a court-appointed lawyer assigned to defend a Palestinian, Salim Bakri, accused of terrorism and infiltration.

Pro-Israeli groups were concerned about the film’s sympathetic depiction of the Palestinian issue. An internal memorandum was circulated by a B’nai B’rith advising members about arguments can be made against the film. Hanna K. opened in several American cities and played for a short time to virtually universal negative reviews, and then was abruptly pulled from circulation by the American distributor of the film. Costa Gavras personally advertised the film in The New York Times at a cost of $50,000. Universal forbade him to use ads prepared for the film.
Edward Said said in a Village Voice review that “as a political as well as cinematic intervention, then Hanna K. is a statement of a great and I believe, lasting significance.”

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

Tags: ,

Colombian film night

By: börek - March 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday March 25th 2018. Colombian film night. Screening with English subtitles, 125 minutes. Doors open at 8pm, film starts at 8:30pm.

A unique black-and-white review – dreamlike exploration of the Amazon’s imperialist pollution. A mystical tribal shaman leads two western explorers through his disappearing world, in this psychedelic, politically tinged Colombian adventure. The film details the west’s obsession with exploiting indigenous life in stories of two white explorers, separated by decades.

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

Tags: