Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: I cannibali (Liliana Cavani, 1970)

By: börek - August 17th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 14 August 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Year of the Cannibals (Liliana Cavani, 1970), 87 minutes, in Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:30, film starts at 21:00.

This is a wild offbeat plunge into European cinema of the 70s… a time when everything was up for grabs and bold experiments were being forged by visionary directors… in this case Liliana Cavani (The Night Porter). As I have mentioned before, female directors were emerging here in Europe in this period, a phenomena that would pretty much be dashed in the 80s. This bizarre document was made during the social protest years of 1967-69 and stars Britt Ekland along with the uncompromising Pierre Clémenti. It’s loosely based on the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, but this version has been updated into a surreal-symbolic Italian sci-fi of the 70s.

We enter a situation where the city streets are littered with the copses of hundreds of boys and girls, who were probably demonstrators beaten by the police. The bodies are left there as a warning against rebellion by the government, and no one is allowed to touch them. The story centers on a woman who wants to bury her dead brother, and together with her friend Tiresias, they conspire to break the law and bury the dead. The thunderous music score is by Ennio Morricone.

Ironically the cityscape strewn with lifeless bodies anticipated a bomb which exploded in a Milan bank a few months later. First blamed on leftists, it was later discovered it had been planted by neo-fascists. The bomb blast killed 18 and wounded 80. Director Liliana Cavani would later call her film a “tragic prophecy.”

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: Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

By: börek - July 2nd, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 July 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000), 89 minutes, in English with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:30, film starts at 21:00.

The director of this film Jonathan Glazer says that he based it upon an old Greek myth about a man who thought he was happy and the Gods sent him the unhappiest man on earth. That seems to be a good way to look at this wild story about a British gangster (Ray Winstone) who wants nothing more than retire and enjoy his wealth. He lounges at his villa on Costa del Sol, with not a care in the world, until his Mediterranean paradise is interrupted by Logan (Ben Kingsley), who wants him to be involved in a London heist and won’t take no for am answer. That’s the volatile set-up for this raw drama that explodes into surreal proportions.

Especially Ben Kingsley’s infamous character, as a goateed, shaved-headed pit bull of a gangster is a classic, and its a direct contrast to his earlier academy award winning incarnation of Gandhi. In fact in this film he plays a kind of anti-Gandhi….a pushy gangster type which you will never forget. Director Glazer is best known for his inventive video work for bands like Massive Attack and Radiohead, and here he takes cinema head-on in this “high-voltage crime thriller that crackles with chilling style and wit.”

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: Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)

By: börek - June 5th, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967)

By: börek - May 1st, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 29 May 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967), 68 minutes. In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Once again we will be screening another early film by the amazing Dušan Makavejev. In outline, this is the story of the romance between a young telephonist and a middle-aged rat exterminator that goes haywire. Yet in Dušan Makavejev’s hands, this film isn’t just a strange story, but becomes an innovative, free-form exploration on the themes of love and freedom… laying the groundwork for a razor-sharp look at relationships in sixties Belgrade. Breaking away from traditional ideas of narrative storytelling, the film often shifts away, for example, to interviews with a sexologist and a criminologist giving their crazed opinions… or suddenly we find ourselves listening to a poem about exterminating rats. This film is based on a true story, and includes some of the most elegant dramatic filmmaking of the director’s career.

A free-wheeling movie that mixes romance and satire, documentary footage, melodrama and tragedy. And as always with Makavejev, what we are left with is a bizarre cocktail of Yugoslavian-styled surrealism. This is a true cinema of the imagination. It’s one of the crucial films from the Eastern block in the 60s, and it’s a very rare screening, so I hope to see you there!

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969)

By: börek - May 1st, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 8 May 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969), 111 minutes. In English with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

This is Haskell Wexler’s legendary movie documenting the explosive course of events in America during the 60s. In 1968 Haskell Wexler was one of the world’s best cameramen, and he had lensed films like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But the film industry was changing fast, and he became disillusioned with the commercialization of American cinema, so he decided to direct his own low-budget film about racism and the inherent violence in the US. His plan was to take a fictional story with actors, and mix it with documentary situations… and therefore blur the line between a feature film and documentary. He wanted to create a new kind of cinema, one that was more grounded in real everyday life.

His plan was to finish the film by taking his crew to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. This real-life event ended up turning into an apocalyptic “police riot”, with officers beating anyone they could get their hands on. Suddenly the director and the crew were engulfed in a fierce battle, with tear gas flying all around them… as they attempted to still film the actors amidst all the swinging police clubs.

Besides its innovative approach to filmmaking, the movie is also important as a sharp analysis of the mass media in general, and how it was being used to manipulate audience opinions. An incredible time capsule of the social unrest of the late 60s with a soundtrack by Mike Bloomfield (Dylan’s guitarist… Like a Rolling Stone), The Mothers of Invention (Zappa), and Love.

“A definitive document of the political tumult in late-1960s America.”

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Acción mutante (Álex de la Iglesia, 1993)

By: börek - April 1st, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 2 April 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Acción mutante (Álex de la Iglesia, 1993), 97 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

This was the debut feature movie of director Alex de la Iglesia, who would later become a staple in Spanish cinema. It was produced by queer arthouse provocateur Pedro Almodóvar who went out on a limb to give this first time filmmaker a chance, a completely unknown cartoon-drawing geek with a punky attitude who had almost no filmmaking experience. Although Pedro was supposed to only produce it, he couldn’t keep himself from interfering with the creative side of the project—exactly the behaviour he despised in other overbearing producers that tried to control his own films. Pedro did however bring in his colourful entourage of off-beat celebrities to help out with the acting—for example, transgender legend Bibi Andersen, or the unforgettable bizarre-faced model Rosy de Palma.

This is a sort of sci-fi horror film, but one with a lot of low-budget imagination. The film plunges us into a world in the future, a fully European paradise where everyone is beautiful and glamorous. But unrest is festering in this future Eden, when society is confronted with an uprising of terrorists battling for the rights of ugly people. This movie was a game-changer in many ways. Since there were no Spanish special effects crews back in the early 90s, some had to be brought in from France. Since director Alex de la Iglesia was busy as a comic book illustrator, he brought that entire zaniness into his futuristic vision. With its wild set decors, bizarre futuristic costumes, bold cinematography, and a dynamite concept, this flick splashed into the counterculture scene in Spain, breaking the doors open for a new kind of cinema. It was an intoxicating cinematic cocktail—equal parts comic book, sci-fi, black comedy, and a colourful version of steampunk. The punchy theme song is by Def Con Dos, one of the earliest hip hop duos in Spanish history.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Die endlose Nacht (Will Tremper, 1963)

By: börek - March 3rd, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 20 March 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Die endlose Nacht (Will Tremper, 1963), 83 minutes. In German with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

There is thick fog over Berlin-Tempelhof Airport, and an announcement is made that all flights to West Germany are canceled. Since the airport is in East Germany, many people are not allowed outside and so they are left stranded, hoping in the morning things will clear up.

This film follows six of the people who are caught up in the building, walking aimlessly through the near empty airport. The film is made up of their encounters, and their attempts to make something interesting happen. In some ways, it has a bit of the mood of the pandemic and all the lockdowns… suddenly thrown into a void, a bit lost, with plenty of time to kill, and not knowing how long it will take.

The people who are drifting around are from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and therefore meeting each other for the first time, both suspicious of the other side. To further this East-West connection, the theme song is a tune by the Andrzej Trzaskowskí Quintet, a wicked Polish jazz band featuring the vocals of Wanda Warska.

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

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Gundermann (Andreas Dresen)

By: börek - February 3rd, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 6 February 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Gundermann (Andreas Dresen), 118 minutes. In German with English subtitles. Doors open at 19:30, Film starts at 20:00.

This is a biopic about the DDR singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann (1955-1998). It is directed by Andreas Dresen, one of the very few East German filmmakers that was allowed to make movies after the fall of the Berlin wall. I love his films because he always sees things from a different angle than West German filmmakers. There is a kind of humanitarianism in Dresen’s films that is missing from West German because they try to be too sensational, too ‘cool’, too controversial or overly sentimental. For Dresen cinema is never a commercial trick or a gimmick.

Our main character Gerhard Gundermann had a job as a crane operator in an excavation site. It’s 1970s and during the day he digs for coal, but at night he was forming rock bands to play music. His songs were thoughtful, touching, rebellious, and hopeful. But after the Berlin wall fell, it turned out he had a contradictory past, and had a secret life working undercover. So what emerges in this flick is a complex portrait of a highly unusual character. Although we like to see the world in black-and-white terms, things are not always so easy… usually reality is in shades.

This film shifts back and forth in time – into the seventies, to the fall of the Berlin wall in the late 80s, and the reunification of the 90s… showing how Gundermann dealt with his double life in his later years.

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

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