Benefit voku to support a political prisoner & letter writing

By: börek - November 12th, 2024  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Thursday November 14, 2024, Benefit voku to support a political prisoner & letter writing. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

Come along for this voku, where we’ll be cooking to raise money for a political prisoner in the U.S. We will also provide the opportunity to write letters to them and other political prisoners.

We will share information on the so-called Budapest Antifascists, who are facing charges in relation to the ‘Ehretag’ (translation. honour day), the largest yearly gathering of neo-nazis in Europe, that took place in Budapest in February 2023. One of the arrestees has been extradited from Germany to Hungary, and the other person is facing extradition.

Our benefit will support Casey Goonan, an American anarchist facing 5-20 years in federal prison for the alleged firebombing of a UC Berkeley police vehicle. A campaign has been set up to support Casey, spread the word about their case and raise money for legal costs. An anonymous communique posted to Indybay took credit for the action in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and university occupations throughout California. Casey was arrested in June, more than two weeks after the alleged arson. They are being held in federal custody in Santa Rita jail in California and are facing the highest federal charges in relation to the pro-Palestine movement in the U.S. so far.

Casey has a long history of organizing mutual aid in Chicago and supporting prisoners throughout the so called United States. They continue to study and organize behind bars and have already engaged in a hunger strike to demand better conditions for their cellmates.

Updates from the Casey Support Committee
– update from July 13, 2024 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/07/16/18868038.php
– update from August 12, 2024 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/08/13/18868663.php

Come eat to show solidarity, write letters and learn more about these cases.
[…Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Changing Skins (Andreas Dresen, 1997)

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

Sunday 4 February 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: RAUS AUS DER HAUT * 1997 * (Changing Skins) * Directed by Andreas Dresen * 90 minutes * In German with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

The setting is mid 1970s East Germany, and our story revolves around two high school students, Anna and Marcus, who are inspired by news reports coming from West Germany. What are they excited by? Some new product on the western market, or a Hollywood film? No, they are captivated by the real-life terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof who were robbing banks and kidnapping corporate executives. When their teacher threatens to demote them, which would prevent them from entering university because of their unruly behavior, they decide to drug their teacher, kidnap him, and keep him hostage in a cellar until after they graduate. This little gem is a ‘feel-good’ terrorist film by the East German director Andreas Dresen. It is a romance, but with a sharp wit and sense of humor. Personally, I adore this little gem, and it’s totally unknown.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, few directors from the former East bloc were able to make films in the new ‘united’ Germany. They were mostly run out of the industry, and thrown into unemployment. They were treated as if they had been contaminated by the plague. Andreas Dresen is one of the few voices in cinema that can accurately portray the life and dreams of his former East bloc GDR. And he does this with magic and charm…. and in the process he dispels many of the myths people in the West have about East Germany.

This is a mind-opening flick, with a series of wild twists and turns, but also a down-to-earth sense of humanity that was typical of the GDR. Here there is no trace of the arrogance of big-budget American movies that seem fueled by cocaine and cash. This is a low budget flick with a beautiful sensibility. Even within Germany this film is extremely difficult to see, and outside Germany it is utterly unknown. That makes this an extremely rare screening of this discreet masterpiece.

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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Benefit voku for Lützerath

By: börek - January 8th, 2023  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Thursday 19 January 2023, Benefit voku for Lützerath. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

The small village in Germany called Lützerath is located on coal, which the cooperation RWE wants to burn. This would break the Paris climate agreement because not burning this coal will help ensure the 1.5 degrees goal.
Thousands of riot police marched into Lützerath and cleared the last activists from the village. At the protest on Saturday 14 january 2023, police violence was brutal. There are several reports of severe head injuries. The demonstration paramedics tried to help the people who were injured at the protest.
Due to the massive material consumption, they need money. The money we collect with the meals will be donated to the demonstration paramedics of Düsseldorf. We are looking forward to seeing you at Joey’s Garage on Thursday.
sources: Demosanis Düsseldorf, Lützerath Lebt https://luetzerathlebt.info/

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.

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Divided Heaven (Konrad Wolf, 1964), GDR series

By: börek - August 31st, 2022  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 11 September 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Divided Heaven / Der geteilte Himmel (GDR series), 1964 adaptation of Christa Wolf’s novel by Konrad Wolf, 109 minutes, in German with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

This film is part of the GDR / Why Women Had Better Sex under Socialism series

Based on the famous novel by Christa Wolf about two lovers who are torn apart as the Berlin Wall is about to be constructed, dividing the country in two. Rita has a lover, but over the course of their relationship it becomes clear they have different political points of view. The movie is great in laying out excellent arguments for both sides… the socialist East Bloc and the consumer-orientated West.

The film embraces the structure of the novel, which begins with a woman waking up in a hospital, and through flashbacks, recounts the recent events that got her there. This wild structure matches well with the film’s French New Wave feel. It is often quite experimental – using angular photography and scenes overlapping between the present moment and the past. The cinematography is crystalline, with an endless array of exquisitely composed black-and-white images. The soundtrack is also bold, with an experimental electronic music score giving the story a modern, ‘in transition’ sort of mood.

It makes sense that since each character is a different gender, they make different decisions. In the West men are in control and have more advantages… and Rita stays in the East where there was much more gender equality. But the real argument is much more than that, it is more about if a person should fight for a cause, or just live as easy as possible.

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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Soli voku for legal costs in Berlin. United we stand with Køpi and Køpiplatz. Rebetika Night

By: börek - October 24th, 2021  Filed under: Benefiet, Muziek, Volkseten/Voku

Monday 25 october 2021, Soli voku for legal costs in Berlin. United we stand with Køpi and Køpiplatz. Rebetika Night. Volkseten Vegazulu. Food served from 7pm till 9pm, no reservation.

Soli voku for legal costs in Berlin with updates about the current situation in Berlin. We’re coming back on the eviction of the Køpi wagenplatz on 15 october and the events around such an eviction. https://koepi137.net/
Rebetika Night, music on the stage from 9pm with Charis Konstantinou (guitar and vocals) and Jaap Faber (guitar).

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Starting from 19:00 until 21:00, 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 if 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.

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Die Beunruhigung / Apprehension (Lothar Warneke, 1982)

By: börek - May 2nd, 2019  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday May 19th 2019, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Die Beunruhigung / Apprehension (Lothar Warneke, 1982). 100 minutes. In German with English subtitles. Doors open at 20.00, Jeffrey’s intro and film start at 20.30

These days we have such a prejudiced view of the former East Bloc, as if it was totally a one-sided thing that never changed, and in our arrogance, we demonize it without the slightest idea what we are talking about. Believe it or not, in the former East Germany there was an effort to make a cinema that was free of propaganda – both the so-called ‘Soviet realism’ of Russia, but also the fake romantic propaganda of Hollywood. And in two areas the East German cinema thematically excelled – they were ‘anti-war’ and ‘pro-women.’ So in the GDR there was an entire genre exploring the real-life situation of women. By contrast, in the so-called “democratic” west women were mostly relegated to side roles in movies – often as secretaries or housewives or love interests. Today we have female super-hero films, but they are as ridiculous as the former roles, and are about as empowering as a shot of arsenic. Because of the recent ‘me too’ movement, there have been a few more films highlighting the female situation… but they don’t hold a candle to what was happening in East Germany 40 years ago.

What is this film about? It doesn’t have a huge overarching story, but rather focuses more on a specific situation. Our main character Inge is a mid-thirties social worker and a single mother, magnificently portrayed by actress Christine Schorn. She is told she has breast cancer, possibly malignant. The entire film is about her thoughts and emotions, her conversations and behavior. It is based on an autobiographical novel by the popular GDR writer Helga Schubert. The style is stripped-down, allowing real discussions to occur about real things. In a way, this film is like a cinematic detox session that cuts the audience off from all spectacle, cheap tricks and quick thrills. Personally, I found it exhilarating. It’s a biting flick, made even more heart-wrenching by its unsentimentality, and Its documentary-like edge also makes it valuable as a poignant document of East Berlin in 1981.

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

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