Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, 2004)

By: börek - January 7th, 2025  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday January 12, 2025, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: TURTLES CAN FLY * 2004 * (کیسەڵەکانیش دەفڕن, Lakposhtha hâm parvaz mikonand) * Directed by Bahman Ghobadi * 96 minutes * In Kurdish with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00 * intro & film start at 20:30.

Set in a Kurdish refugee camp near the Iraqi-Turkish border, the movie focuses on its orphans. For them life is temporary, fleeting, and always shifting. The fact that any human being is forced to live in such a volatile situation is crazy. These homeless kids makeshift everything, and life can be finished at any moment if you step on an American landmine. Many of the children who act as extras are actually real Kurdish refugees, and many of them are missing arms and legs. In other words, the issue of landmines isn’t just a narrative device for this film – it’s a reality that these people live with every day. But at the same time, bringing up facts like this doesn’t prevent the film from also achieving a kind of poetry.

This movie is so far removed from our daily lives here in the western world, that it takes on an almost surreal edge even though it’s based in a reality far away. For us a scenario like this is otherworldly, and it opens up so many questions. For example, for me, one of its interesting reflections is about the nature of communication. One of the boys in the camp seems to be a clairvoyant and can foretell mysterious prophecies that seem to come true. But then, on the other hand, we have other Kurds who are desperate to watch television thinking it will tell them what is going to happen next. Our main character, whose name is Satellite, realises that the blitzkrieg of sensationalistic information, music videos, and Fox news reports on the television are mostly a distraction and provide little to help understand the situation. Even though the lives these people live are desperate, they are at least rooted in a reality that is stripped down and understandable. Once the characters in this movie get a hold of a working television set and start flipping around all the channels, we feel like we have entered a world of total chaos.

This is a movie that brings up urgent issues, both political and on a human level. It has a strong emotional impact, but one that helps us contextualise a part of the world that we otherwise can’t comprehend. It doesn’t try to get us to take sides and any issue, but instead it is simply conjuring up a tragic situation with all its complexities.

As you have probably noticed, one of the reasons why I’m showing movies is to explore the world around us. Through movies we can see how people feel, think, and approach life in countries we will never reach. Cinema can help break down prejudices, and I always encourage people to use movies to listen to the other side of the story. Right now the entire Middle East, which was carved and divided up largely by Europeans after World War I, is now rapidly changing. To understand these changes a movie like this can shed some light. It is about a displaced Kurdish community at the Iraqi-Turkish border, and was the first movie to be made in Iraq after the American invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. It’s insightful and poignant, and what might shock you is that it’s an Iranian movie, and one that I feel will surprise many.

Other movies from Bahman Ghobadi screened at Joe’s Garage: https://joesgarage.nl/archives/tag/bahman-ghobadi

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ecstasy of Angels (Kōji Wakamatsu, 1972)

By: börek - December 2nd, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday December 8, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ecstasy of Angels * 1972 * (天使の恍惚, Tenshi no kōkotsu) * Directed by Kōji Wakamatsu * 89 minutes * In Japanese with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00 * intro & film start at 20:30.

Japanese director Kōji Wakamatsu was a wild cat, and was the primary director that fused together radical politics along with transgressive sexuality. He had made a link between these two things that was, in a way, revolutionary. He didn’t believe in breaking down barriers only on a single issue or theme, but through an explosion of freedom he sought to destabilize Japan’s colonized, regulated, conservative society that was imposed by America after World War II.

These were wild days in Japan, with student protests, occupations, psychedelic music and a lot of experimentation. This movie is a byproduct of that time, a snapshot of his zeitgeist, a call for freedom. It is a pink political flick, meaning it’s politically charged. The story is about a group of left-wing revolutionaries who break into a US military Depot to steal weapons and ammunition. As they make their getaway they come into a conflict with soldiers, leaving some Americans dead. The movie takes off from there.

Right around the time when Kōji Wakamatsu made this movie, he went to the Palestinian territories and filmed a radical left-wing group training there, he was instantly put on a blacklist by three major organizations – the Japanese government, Interpol, and the American government. In fact, he was banned from entering the United States for the rest of his life.

Wakamatsu is a great example of guerilla filmmaking, knocking out radical, imaginative films, and all budgets. In fact, Wakamatsu said the reason he became a film director in the first place was because “in movies, you can kill as many police officers as you want and not get caught.”

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Net – Unabomber, LSD & Internet. The hidden side of the Internet (Lutz Dammbeck, 2003)

By: börek - November 8th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday November 10, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Net – Unabomber, LSD & Internet. The hidden side of the Internet * 2003 * Directed by Lutz Dammbeck * 121 minutes * In English and German, with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00 * intro & film start at 20:30.

This is a wild documentary made by a German filmmaker who goes down a strange rabbit hole starting with American avant-garde artists of the 1960s like musician John Cage and experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas. The structure of the whole movie reflects our modern internet world, because while he is looking around collecting information about those artists, he comes across links that lead him in another unexpected direction. As things unfold, the movie shifts into several directions that seem to be linked. One thread involves cybernetics and the development of computer technology, another is the covert operations of the CIA and their use of LSD. All these things are tied together with the story of a man named Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Una Bomber.

Ted Kaczynski had been a professor of mathematics who abandoned the university system and began living in a self-built cabin in the remote countryside. He felt the world was going in a totally dystopian direction, an increasingly technological world of mass surveillance, endless wars and the destruction of nature. He resorted to targeted violence in order to get his message across, and managed to have his manifesto printed on the front page of the New York Times before he was arrested in 1996.

Of course the documentary raises questions about the uncontrovertibly negative side of Ted’s actions, but it also shows something else that isn’t talked about often enough – the almost religious zeal of Silicon Valley and big tech executives, and how they turn a blind eye to the destructive sides of what they are doing and refuse to take any responsibility whatsoever. These megalomaniacs are uprooting society across-the-board, creating polarizing divisions, the scattering of people’s attention, rampant addiction and surveillance.

The Net has become a cult classic in the last several decades, revealing an untold history. Today we live in a world where memory is largely obliterated, and we tend to think of the internet as something that just happened ‘organically’ without a plan or history. This movie argues differently, and digs up the history of how Internet was sculpted punch by corporate punch. What it uncovers is pretty shocking in its relevance to the world we live in today. Along the way on this cinematic journey we also come across many 60s icons, such as Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary. This documentary opens up a world you might not have known even existed. Hell, it even features narration by legendary German actress Eva Mattes. An underground classic, marginalized for good reasons.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Inkubo (Leslie Stevens, 1966)

By: börek - October 13th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday October 13, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: INCUBUS (Inkubo) * Directed by Leslie Stevens * 1966 * 78 minutes * In Esperanto with English subtitles * doors open at 20:00 * intro & film start at 20:30.

Once there was a guy named Zamenhof who lived in Russia. In 1887 he decided to make a second language that could be spoken by everyone. His aim was to make it easier for international communication, by avoiding division which led to war. The language he invented was simple to learn, and it was called Esperanto. It’s High Point perhaps with the 1960s, an era when people wanted to end war and misunderstandings, unlike today. There is only one movie in the history of cinema that was spoken totally in Esperanto, and it’s this one.Holy cow, what planet was this movie made on? Not only is the language exceptional, but the whole mood, story and orientation is so otherworldly and oddly mysterious. We are thrown into a world without a history, with people speaking this familiar but at the same time strangely unidentifiable language. The landscape where everything takes place seems out of context, and perhaps in that way it’s like an early Jodorowsky movie. The film is surreal, pagan and supernatural. In a way, we find ourselves thrown into a bizarre world, one that works by different laws, which pits the human soul against powerful forces of nature.
Another bizarre thing about it is that it has an actor who a year later would become totally famous in the original Star Trek TV series – William Shatner. Yep, it seems he actually spoke Esperanto. Shatner was a strangely committed actor who often did movies that he believed in.
The whole movie is an incredible trip, and even though it was obviously extremely low budget it has great cinematography, and some of the images are absolutely astounding. It was thought to be lost for decades, and only recently has there been a copy discovered in archives in France.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Nov Lituania

By: börek - September 3rd, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday September 8, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Nov Lituania * 98 minutes * In Lithuanian with English subtitles, doors open at 20:00 * intro & film start at 20:30.

This is a pretty unusual film for when it was made, and actually it’s a pretty unusual movie to be made in America at any time. It presents us with a situation that we are increasingly becoming familiar with – lack of housing, food prices rising like crazy, and not being able to afford anymore to live in big cities. The story takes place in the 1930s during the great depression, a time when the bankers went too far with their wheeling, dealing and money grubbing, causing a disaster.

Our main characters are a couple who have no place to live anymore but are offered a worthless piece of land in the countryside. Their idea is to create their own Eden, but when faced with difficulties they realize that they are city people and have no idea how to do things like farming. The solution to the problem is by inviting other unemployed people to join them, and thereby creating a cooperative.

A film about collectivism and community and alternative societies, I think we are sadly missing these days. It’s been called an anti-cynical film and no matter what you think of it, its enthusiasm whips up a semi-socialist alternative that includes exchange of labor, sharing food, bartering and solidarity. All of this is presented as an alternative to the dog eat dog capitalism and monopolization that was tearing apart the country. Some viewers have even aptly compared it to the early Russian-Ukrainian movies Alexander Dovzhenko.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934)

By: börek - August 5th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday August 11, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: OUR DAILY BREAD * 1934 * Directed by King Vidor * 80 minutes * In English * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

This is a pretty unusual film for when it was made, and actually it’s a pretty unusual movie to be made in America at any time. It presents us with a situation that we are increasingly becoming familiar with – lack of housing, food prices rising like crazy, and not being able to afford anymore to live in big cities. The story takes place in the 1930s during the great depression, a time when the bankers went too far with their wheeling, dealing and money grubbing, causing a disaster.

Our main characters are a couple who have no place to live anymore but are offered a worthless piece of land in the countryside. Their idea is to create their own Eden, but when faced with difficulties they realize that they are city people and have no idea how to do things like farming. The solution to the problem is by inviting other unemployed people to join them, and thereby creating a cooperative.

A film about collectivism and community and alternative societies, I think we are sadly missing these days. It’s been called an anti-cynical film and no matter what you think of it, its enthusiasm whips up a semi-socialist alternative that includes exchange of labor, sharing food, bartering and solidarity. All of this is presented as an alternative to the dog eat dog capitalism and monopolization that was tearing apart the country. Some viewers have even aptly compared it to the early Russian-Ukrainian movies Alexander Dovzhenko.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)

By: börek - July 1st, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday July 14, 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: CHOCOLAT * 1988 * Directed by Claire Denis * 105 minutes * In French with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

French Director Claire Denis grew up in west Africa, where her father was a civil servant. The family moved to a different country in Africa every several years because they wanted her to understand culture and geography. This is why much of her work deals with the spiritual and psychological impact of colonialism, especially in West Africa. This was her debut film, and it is about a French woman reflecting on her childhood in a colonial outpost in French Cameroon as a 7-year old girl.
So as you might expect the film is largely autobiographical, recounting her own memories and emotions while she was growing up, and in this case the film has a special focus on her relationship with her family’s African servant.
This film isn’t restless, like so many movies today. It sinks into the world of west Africa, and moves at an ambient pace… allowing sensuality to surface. The film is about identity, memories, and a romance that tries to navigate racism and complicated social structures. This is different from a Hollywood film also because it doesn’t try to exploit our emotions and treat us like children by making things black-and-white. Instead it is a film full of mystery.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966)

By: börek - June 4th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 9 June 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (La muerte de un burócrata) * by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea * 1966 * 85 minutes * In Cuban Spanish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

A key black comedy in Cuban film history, directed by one of its maverick filmmakers Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment, Strawberry and Chocolate) who chose to stay in post-revolutionary Cuba and supported its socialist cause but never thought twice about criticizing the regime’s shortcomings.

In this film director Alea lampoons the stuffy and insane world of bureaucratic red tape. The journey begins when a widow realizes there was an important document in the pocket of her deceased husband who has already been buried, and needs an official permit to have the body exhumed. This starts an absurd chain of events with a razor-sharp Buñuelian sense of black humor.

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

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