Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)

Sunday 12 June 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002), 97 minutes, in English with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Scottish director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk about Kevin) proved to be the boldest of all female European filmmakers when she blasted into the scene with her compelling early short movies and her haunting debut feature Ratcatcher. Morvern Callar was her second feature film, and we find her covering radically different territory yet again, with a story about a woman in Scotland whose boyfriend has committed suicide on Christmas Day. She then breaks away and takes off on a trip with her female friend to Spain. Actually, there is a lot more to this story than what I am telling, involving many levels of deception, intrigue, questions about art and forgery, and hidden secrets, but it’s better to let the story unfold itself. And although there is a story, I would say it isn’t a movie for a story-driven audience, one that is looking for thrills and spills… but rather for an audience that can pick up on ambience, the sensuality of the human face, and quiet subdued moments rather than overblown ones.

This is an absorbing portrait of the main heroine portrayed by Samantha Morton, and if you allow yourself to be open, it will suck you into its vast world. The cinematography hits you over and over again with its atypical framing and focusing, which is immersive and revealing. These images are fused with a wide-ranging soundtrack including music by Aphex Twin, Broadcast, German Kraut-rockers Can, Stereolab, Ween, the Velvet Underground, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, etc. The film is based on the debut novel by Scottish author Alan Warner, who dedicated his book to musican Holger Czukay, so of course some of his music also emerges in several scenes. The free-form approach and unrushed speed of this flick, devoid of the normal identification gimmicks, means you won’t connect to our main character like you would in ‘normal’ movies…. she stays independent and mysterious. A poetic stream of both rough and lush textures, with an astounding performance by actress Samantha Morton that is absolutely mesmerizing.

This will be a high-definition screening.

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

Open Garage VoKu: No Borders Lesvos

Thursday 9 June 2022, Open Garage VoKu: No Borders Lesvos. Food served from 7pm, no reservation. From 9pm, live music on the stage.

VoKu with info talk and live music!!! Delicious Vegan food on donation, presentation about migration and related issues on the Island of Lesvos, and live Music by the Artist Formerly Known As Peike.
No Border Kitchen Lesvos https://noborderkitchenlesvos.noblogs.org/

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

Benefit for evicted Italian feminist squat, La Magni*fica

Monday 6 June 2022, voku to raise money to cover the legal expenses faced by the transfeminist comrades of La Magni*fica in Florence. Food served from 7pm, no reservation. From 9pm, acoustic jam session on the stage.

The transfeminist squat La Magni*fica was evicted in september 2020 by the neoliberal municipality of Florence. As feminist comrades, we really think these kind of feminist experiences are very important and we’d like to support them.

This is what happened to La Magni*fica:

On September 18th 2021, as a queer transfeminist group in Florence, we decided to occupy the abandoned building of the Tuscany Region, giving birth to the Magni*fica squatted queer transfeminist women’s house. The motivations behind our occupation of the building stem from the total lack of safer spaces for women* and LGBTQIA+ identities, migrants and excluded from society. The lockdown exacerbated the contradictions we live every day, where we were forced to stay at home even in cases when it meant being locked in with abusers and homotransphobic relatives. Not to mention the lack of attention to those who had no home, those who found themselves without jobs and protections overnight. So we decided to enter an abandoned villa owned by the Tuscany region and we transformed it into a collective place, of meeting, creation and self-determination.

On September 22nd, the day after the regional elections, hundreds of police, political police, firefighters and municipality personnel arrived at the Magni*fica.The eviction was carried out in a forced and violent manner, destroying the space that had been laboriously, but with determination and joy, inhabited and built by hundreds of people who had rushed in. In 4 days, a study room, a listening desk under construction, a communal kitchen, a cineforum room, and a welcoming space for all those affected by patriarchal violence were already active. 12 people who were inside at the time of the eviction were reported for occupation, some of whom were also hit with the fascist order of the “foglio di via”: an undignified repressive measure in which those affected must leave the city within 48h for 3 years. These same people faced trial, thus incurring heavy legal costs.

This is the message that the comrades sent us:

**FUCKING SUPERINTENDENT YOU’RE NOT OUR MOTHER!

The “foglio di via” is a device of repressive preventive measures put in place by the police to suppress social movements, even before they can become a threat to the oppressors. Created under the Fascist Rocco Code, it restricts the freedom of individuals without the need for a crime committed. In Florence, as elsewhere in Italy, the revival of these measures began a few years ago, especially with the issuance of “fogli di via” to comrades.

After the eviction of the first Magni*fica squat, the police headquarters attempted to give 8 expulsion orders to the feminist comrades inside the squat, restricting the freedom of individuals without the necessity of a crime committed.

In the militarized city of Florence, opening a self-organized women’s home becomes a crime, collective action becomes a moral contest in crime, and not having residence in the city a valid reason to kick you out.

Despite some of these expulsions were not enforced, the police headquarter made an appeal to the State court. We have decided to oppose this appeal, which is gonna be an expensive action, since we will have to go to civil courts and other lawyers in addition to those who already defend us also with much more sympathetic prices. This is why we are doing a benefit campaign.

It will not be a man wearing a uniform to decide where and with whom we should live!

Against all repressive measures, with anger and love!
The comrades of La Magni*fica, queer transfeminist women’s house florence!

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

Movie Night: Arna’s Children (Juliano Mer-Khamis & Danniel Danniel, 2004) + Benefit for the Freedom Theater in Jenin

Sunday 5 June 2022, Movie Night: Arna’s Children (Juliano Mer-Khamis & Danniel Danniel, 2004) + Benefit for the Freedom Theater in Jenin. Film Language: Arabic & Hebrew (English subtitles). 84 minutes. Doors open at 8pm, film starts at 8:30pm.

The film tells the story of a theatre group that was established by Arna Mer. She comes from a Zionist family and in the 1950s married a Palestinian Arab. On the West Bank, she opened an alternative education system for children whose regular life was disrupted by the Israeli occupation. The theatre group that she started engaged children from Jenin, helping them to express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear. Arna’s son Juliano, co-director of this film, was also one of the directors of Jenin’s theatre. With his super 8 camera, he filmed the children during rehearsal periods from 1989 to 1996. Now, he goes back to see what happened to them. Yussef committed a suicide attack in Hadera in 2001, Ashraf was killed in the battle of Jenin, Alla leads a resistance group. Juliano, who today is one of the leading actors in the region, looks back in time in Jenin, trying to understand the choices made by the children he loved and worked with. Eight years ago, the theatre was closed and life became static and paralysed. Shifting back and forth in time, the film reveals the tragedy and horror of lives trapped by the circumstances of war.

The film will be presented by the son of the co-director of the film.

The Freedom Theater in Jenin still exists to this day in Jenin refugee camp. All money donated during the screening will go to the Arna’s theater in Jenin. https://thefreedomtheatre.org/

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

June 2022 at Joe’s Garage