Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)

By: börek - September 5th, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 September 2017, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: ACE IN THE HOLE, 1951. Directed by Billy Wilder. Black and White. 111 minutes. In English. Doors open at 8.30, film starts 9pm. Free admission.

This hard-hitting masterpiece is about the American way of turning any tragedy into a sensationalized media circus… complete with rides, cheese burgers and merchandise. It is about hyped-up media frenzies where only bad news, not good news, makes money. Just look at the news today: 95% tragedy, fear and threatening situations. This film is about the media’s ability to manipulate and control the public opinion.

Billy Wilder was a European director who is best known for creating some of the very best movies in the history of Hollywood, like the classic Some Like it Hot and The Apartment. This is an early effort by Wilder, and you can see his willingness to go against the grain, to tackle controversial themes, and to hold a mirror up to the American public and show what is really going on.

Despite the fact it was openly attacked by critics and the public, Ace In The Hole is right up there with Wilder’s best noirs (Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity). Our main protagonist, the opportunistic reporter Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas, who just turned one hundred years old!), gets a lead about a treasure hunter who is stuck in a cave. Tatum races there to exploit this event to the fullest… turning the poor man, who’s slowly running out of air, into an headline-grabbing attraction. He turns the situation into a sort of Disneyland of fake compassion, sentimentality and dull entertainment devoid of any moral concern. Understandably, American audiences were not amused by this cynical tone which revealed the nation’s obsession for sensationalistic tabloid-like news. Dark, cynical and straight… Wilder brings the story to the screen without pulling any punches, a visionary film that would leave it’s impact on later directors like Spike Lee and Oliver Stone.

This will be a high-definition screening.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Doors open at 8pm, film begins at 9pm, free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net

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“HyperCoup. Rise of the Troll Nation”. Movie screening and discussion

By: börek - June 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

“HyperCoup. Rise of the Troll Nation”
A dystopian sci-fi horror action documentary based on a real story.
70 minutes. 2017. Language: English, some parts Turkish; English subtitles

Movie screening on Friday 16 June 2017. Doors open at 7pm with food. Film starts at 8:30pm followed by a Q&A/discussion with the producers.

HyperCoup: Rise of the Troll Nation

What would you do if you could troll the entire world, while you get shit tons of money and an army at your disposal? What would you think if someone already did it? How could that be possible?

How has Turkey replaced the modern leviathan of state with a hypernormal troll state? How did in July 2016 a living dead army of trolls come to take over the streets of Turkey within their self-perpetuating panmedia environment? How was this troll army controlled by the government using a hypercentralized communication network? How did the Turkish state (which was portrayed as ‘moderate’ just a few years ago) come to dominate social media (which was portrayed as the ultimate liberatory medium just around the same years) and how deep does this go? How to make a coup and get away with it as if you fought and won against a “coup attempt”? How to conduct a political genocide while everyone is watching and still get to call yourself democratic? How did Turkey lead the way by example into the post-truth-trump world? How to survive the coming shitstorm?
… and hopefully much more with your participation in the virtual live interview with persons from the internet.

What the fuck is going on in Turkey?!

Looking for an overview of the situation and a critical media perspective, we asked this question last autumn.
We wanted to know what had happened since the so called military coup attempt. Soon it became clear that talking about this spectacle on July 15th 2016 only made sense in the bigger picture of Turkey’s political and social development within the last years; a development that we can now call the rise of the troll-nation state.
Starting from this point, our fellow ‘HyperNormalisation’-influenced media activists and cyborgs started retracing the story of the troll nation with the help of their own memories, experience and their best friend and external brain: the internet.

If you dare to know, what you will get is an explosion of footage, piecing together hundreds and thousands of documents and media particles which seem more or less random at first – but in their compilation and coming with a connecting story-telling, they outline the official state narrative with it’s overflow of media use and manipulation; as well as presenting many silenced voices, censored reports and the stories disrupting the official perception management.

Warning: some scenes are extremely disturbing and we assure you all of that really happened (it’s actually getting worse out there).

https://hypercoup.blackblogs.org/

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport, 1995)

By: börek - June 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 11 June 2017, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: From the Journals of Jean Seberg. Doors open at 8.30pm, Programme starts at 9. FROM THE JOURNALS OF JEAN SEBERG, 1995 Directed by Mark Rappaport, 100 minutes, In English.

On Friday September 14, 1979 a group of mourners assembled in Paris’s Montparnasse Cemetery, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, decorating a casket with lilies, daises and yellow roses. This was the burial site of an extraordinary woman who was attractive, intelligent, famous and independent. A person who thought she was free, until she crossed the line and was put on the FBI hit-list. She was singled out, isolated, the victim of a smear campaign that destroyed her. The term for this is “character assassination” but it often leads to literal assassination.
Actress Jean Seberg, the American star of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave hit Breathless, was a woman who was trying to do the right thing. She was married to the famous French author and diplomat Romain Gary, and both of them supported liberation causes in the 60s. In particular, Jean Seberg sided with the Black Panthers. This lead to a full attack against her by the FBI, who were out to destroy her at any cost. In the book Seances, I included a released FBI memo detailing their targeting of Jean Seberg as a subversive, and their intentions to ruin and “neutralize” her… including publishing fake news stories about her in the international press, such as Newsweek. This is no conspiracy theory, it is out in the open and a matter of fact.

‘Journals’ is a creative documentary that charts the life of Jean Seberg – from bright eyed actress who fought to be independent, to a woman doomed by a world of men. When Seberg was put on the government’s hit-list, she entered a dark world of undercover harassment, including burglaries, smear campaigns, wiretapping and stalking. Nico, the singer of the Velvet Underground, who was a friend of Seberg said “Jean was very beautiful and very intelligent, but she had a sad life … She pointed out the FBI men who were constantly following her around. Have you ever seen FBI men? They were exactly what you expect. Vulgar. Can you imagine such a thing? What tragedy…”

Narrated by Mary Beth Hurt (the star of Woody Allen’s Interiors), this is a piercing journey into the dreams of Jean Seberg, but also into the world of ruthless politics. A world where people who follow their heart are destroyed by men with dark agendas that wield their power. It’s that simple, and that tragic.

This will be a rare screening of this explosive documentary.

the trailer: https://www.fandor.com/films/from_the_journals_of_jean_seberg […Lees verder]

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Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani, 2009)

By: börek - June 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 4th June 2017, Movie night: Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani, 2009). 120 minutes, Language: Arabic and Hebrew. English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

The film contains five story lines, each of which is presented in a non-chronological fashion. Some events are shown multiple times from varying perspectives. A young Israeli Arab boy, Nasri, who lives in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, narrates the film.

The film borrows from the techniques of Gomorrah and the Mexican new wave as typified by, say, Amores Perros, in weaving characters and storylines to create a tapestry of lives. The drama is kickstarted by a drive-by shooting that kills an innocent boy, mistaken for one of the main characters. It’s the result of a vendetta between two crime clans and revenge for the shooting of a Bedouin weeks earlier.

Using non-professional actors, Ajami’s strands give an unusually nuanced insight to life in Israel, its confusion of identities and passions. Intelligently, the directors offer no glib solutions or sermons and allow the considerable energy of its images to sweep viewers along. Age-old prejudices and hatreds surface every now and then, but the main aim is the politics of day-to-day survival.

Movie trailer: https://vimeo.com/15503260 […Lees verder]

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Screening: The Strange World of Gurney Slade (1960)

By: börek - May 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

gslade1Sunday 28th May 2017, Screening: The Strange World of Gurney Slade (1960). Written by Sid Green and Dick Hills.. We’ll be screening three episodes at 9pm.

The bizarre adventures of a frustrated actor, who walks off a tired family sitcom into a world of talking dogs, and dancing advertisements. One of television’s genuine oddities, The Strange World of Gurney Slade was a whimsical ‘comedy of thought’ following one ex- (or so he thinks) actor’s meandering journey through a fantasy world. On the back of a burgeoning pop career, Anthony Newley was offered free reign to create of a six-part comedy series in collaboration with comedy scriptwriters Sid Green and Dick Hills (who would later write for Morecambe and Wise). The result, to the bemusement of ATV’s Lew Grade, was not a series of pop shows, but an off-beat, stream-of-consciousness comedy.

Unusually, the series was shot on film, marking it out from the largely studio-bound, live, theatrical drama of its time. The first episode sees actor Gurney Slade, in protest against a hackneyed sitcom script, abandoning the studio set for the streets of London. What follows is a fantastical journey unlike anything on television by 1960: Lewis Carroll-style linguistic invention, conversations with dustbins and dances with Hoovers, culminating in Gurney’s entering a home to find an average TV viewing family (his former acting colleagues) watching his show. […Lees verder]

“Cinema Perpetuum Mobile” Short Films

By: börek - May 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond, Volkseten/Voku

1 lomi lomi_3Thursday 25th May 2017, “Cinema Perpetuum Mobile” Short Films. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm. Short films from 9pm.

Cinema Perpetuum Mobile (CPM) is an annual international short film festival. Founded in 2011 in Minsk (Belarus) by a cinephile community Kinaklub.org. CPM sticks to its goals:
– promoting films by young and independent Belarusian authors in Belarus and internationally
– searching for new forms and tendencies in cinema on the edge of amateur and professional film-making;
– exploring social issues via cinematographic language
– develop and strengthen connections between film-makers and film-making communities all around the world

Cinema Perpetuum Mobile reaches the audience not only in Belarusian regions and cities, but in other countries as well. It is you who help us bring independent cinema to more and more people, and our community is growing due to the principles we incorporate in our mission: decentralization (horizontal structure of the festival), self-organization (volunteer basis, grassroot initiative), transparency (possibility to join the community at any time, and contribute to festival organization).

At the 6th festival of Cinema Perpetuum Mobile will show 12 programs of short films from around the world. The main Belarusian program includes 3 documentary and 6 gaming works created by young independent authors over the past year. In addition to the traditional genre competition sections (game, documentary, experimental cinema, animation), the organizers prepared two sets of works at the junction of various types of art: multimedia, social networks, video blogging and computer technologies.

For the second time at the festival there will be a Visual Music show devoted to audiovisual works from around the world. This year the organizers decided to experiment and collected a selection of Belarusian works synthesizing video, photography, blogging and clip culture and performance.

Cinema Perpetuum Mobile: http://filmfest.by/en/ […Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: El Pico (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1983)

By: börek - May 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

170514_el_pico_smSunday May 14th 2017, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema. El Pico (1983) by Eloy de la Iglesia. 105 minutes. In Spanish and Basque, with custom-made English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begin at 9pm. Free admission.

This is the key movie of a much discussed genre called /cine quinqui/, which dealt mostly with heroin-use and small-time criminality.  While Europe seemingly only produced a handful of heroin dramas like Christiane F., in Spain the genre caught on like wildfire. Most of the films were low budget, rough and gritty in a wonderful Blaxploitation kind of way.

El pico is the culmination of the quinqui movement, but it is also much more than that. No longer a low-budget affair, this movie is a full-fledged political thriller set in the Basque country. At the time, Eloy de la Iglesia’s denunciation of the Guardia Civil’s involvement in the heroin trade sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory. It would take another fifteen years for the Supreme Court to endorse the accusations made in this movie (Caso UCIFA, 1997). Much like the CIA’s involvement in the Cointelpro heroin deals to hush down, frame or kill the ‘black power’ communities, the Guardia Civil worked hand in hand with drugdealers to stifle a rebellious unemployed Basque youth, who were still joining the ranks of ETA and nationalist parties.

If this wasn’t enough, El pico is also a film about homosexual emancipation. Quique San Francisco plays a brave, politically engaged, deeply humane gay character, and in the role of the beautiful young junkie we find Eloy de la Iglesia’s long-time lover Jose Luis Manzano, one of the many heroin celebrities of the time. As a teenager, Manzano had tried to mug the film director, but ended up starring in several of his films. Like many cine quinqui stars, the talented non-actor spent his life going from rehab to filmshoot to court-hearing, and he died of a bad heroin dose just a decade after this movie was shot.

The movie was a massive box-office success, despite the horrendous reviews by film critics in Spain. it was soon followed up with El pico 2, which presented drug use in a slightly more realistic way.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Doors open at 8pm, film begins at 9pm, free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net

[…Lees verder]

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Other Cinema: Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989)

By: börek - May 1st, 2017  Filed under: Filmavond

Tongues_Untied_Marlon_RiggsSunday May 7th 2017, Other Cinema: Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989). length: 54 mins. Doors 20:45, Film 21:00. Discussion afterwards

“Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act”
Marlon Riggs’ essay film Tongues Untied gives voice to communities of black gay men, presenting their cultures and perspectives on the world as they confront racism, homophobia and marginalization. It broke new artistic ground by mixing poetry (by Essex Hemphill and other artists), music, performance and Riggs’ autobiographical revelations. The film was embraced by black gay audiences for its authentic representation of style, and culture, as well its fierce response to oppression. It opened up opportunities for dialogue among and across communities. […Lees verder]

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