Movie night: Revenir (David Fedele and Kumut Imesh, 2018)

Thursday July 5, 2018, movie night: Revenir (To Return), a documentary film by David Fedele and Kumut Imesh, 2018, 83 minutes, English subtitles.  Doors open at 19pm with food. Screening and discussion from 20:30. On that screening, David Fedele will be also on-line after the screening to discuss the film with Kumut and the audience. This event one of the four screenings with Kumut Imesh in different locations in Amsterdam from 5 till 8 july.


REVENIR – synopsis (EN): For years, the stories of West African migrants and refugees have been told through the lenses of foreign journalists. Now there is a story from the inside. Part road-trip, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Revenir follows Kumut Imesh, a refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in France, as he returns to the African continent and attempts to retrace the same journey that he himself took when forced to flee civil war in his country … But this time with a camera in his hand. Traveling alone, Kumut will be documenting his own journey; both as the main protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it, revealing the human struggle for freedom and dignity on one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world. A controversial film experiment, a courageous journey and a unique collaboration between filmmaker and refugee; which is not without consequences. […Lees verder]

Rosa Luxemburg (1986)

Sunday 17 June 2018, Movie night: Rosa Luxemburg (1986). Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg, by Margarethe von Trotta. German with English subtitles | 123 min.
Doors 20:00 | Film 20:30

“Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919): german-polish socialist, docorate in a time when women couldn’t graduate on German universities, speaker of the Left in the Labour Partry 20 before women in Germany gained the right to vote, co-founder of the Spartakus group, icon of the student movement in Germany. Margarethe von Trotta’s film “The patience of Rosa Luxemburg” tells her story, but als paints a clear picture of the economic and social situation in Germany before the First World War.

Von Trotta didn’t work to on the basis of the ledgend. She didn’t deal with the different views of her, didn’t explain anything, didn’t justify anything. She lets Rosa Luxemburg speak for herself. The basis of the scenes and dialogues in the film are mainly the 2500 letters Luxemburg send to friends and comrades. The film only shows what can be documented in such a way – the film is radical and subjective because it is only commit to one truth: the truth of Rosa Luxemburg herself.

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

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

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

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

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

Movie night: Girls in Uniform (1931)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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