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

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

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

Colombian film night

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Moi, un noir (Jean Rouch, 1958)


Sunday March 18th 2018, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Moi, un noir (1958). Directed by Jean Rouch. 73 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Today the name of ethnographer Jean Rouch is barely even whispered in cinema history, which just goes to show that history is always recorded by the winners. Today the winner is Hollywood… but perhaps tomorrow an influence like Jean Rouch could shatter the glass menagerie of American filmmaking. Who knows?

In this cinematic gem Jean Rouch traveled to Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast of Africa, with no predetermined concept. He wanted to make a film with the local people, to record their everyday lives and their dreams. So Rouch starts to hang out in Treichville – one of the poorest neighborhoods of Abidjan – and spends a week with immigrants from Niger who have come to the big city hoping to become successful. Now here is where the real importance of this film begins to shine… these down and out people are doing hard labor (for us here in Europe) and trying to scrape enough money together to buy a bowl of soup, but have re-named themselves after stars in western movies. One calls himself Tarzan, another Edward G. Robinson and another is Eddy Constantine. One even plays an FBI Agent. At night they hang out in bars and try to drink away their misery, and when they go to sleep we follow their dreams of an idealized world. The movie then submerges into poetic mode as we enter these dream-sequences.

The result is a cinematic fusion called “ethnofiction.” Director Jean Rouch had an explosive impact on cinema back in the 60s, and many in the French New Wave, like Jean-Luc Godard, would name him as one of their major influences. Jean Rouch took narrative cinema and fused it with anthropology and sociology: sometimes his films were documentaries tinted with fiction, and at other times they were fiction tinted with documentary.

The magic of this movie is how it nails down the way imperialism works today… less with guns and tanks, and more with the overtaking of dreams. It is clear the local dreams of these people in Africa have been hijacked by foreigners – so what we are talking about is a colonization of the subconscious. I daresay the same is true in Europe today, which has been robbed of its own dreams and replaced by those of the Yankees. Another rare screening of a neglected masterpiece.

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: The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934)

Sunday March 11th 2018: Movie night: The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934). Silent | Chinese intertitles with English subtitles | 85 minutes. Doors open at 8pm, film starts at 8:30pm.

In Shen nu (The Goddess), the legendary Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu plays a single mother driven into prostitution to pay for her young son’s schooling. Her best efforts to maintain some personal dignity run aground on social hypocrisy and male misogyny. It’s a 1934 silent film, but nonetheless described as “a film of startling modernity.”

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

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Black Cat Cine presents: Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)

Sunday March 4th 2018, Black Cat Cine presents: an 80’s Cult Classic, Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984). This screening starts at 20:00.

One-of-a-kind minimalist masterpiece starring jazz musician John Lurie, former Sonic Youth drummer-turned-actor Richard Edson, and Hungarian-born actress Eszter Balint.
Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net

Black Cat Cine presents a Pitch Black Comedy

Sunday February 18th 2018: Black Cat Cine presents a Pitch Black Comedy. Doors open at 19:30, film starts at 20:00.
Two Belgian farmers hitchhike to Finland in their wheelchairs in this hilariously absurd and dark comedy / road movie. Fasten your seat belts and enjoy a good laugh!
Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net