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

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

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Air-doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)

Sunday 10 September 2023, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: AIR DOLL * (空気人形, Kūki Ningyō) * Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda * 2009 * 116 minutes * In Japanese with English subtitles * Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

The premise of this flick is quite simple. A middle-aged man has a life-size sex doll he calls Nozomi at home that he makes love to every night. He doesn’t only have sex with Nozomi, he also dresses her up and has dinner with her. What can I say? People are lonely in this overcrowded modern world we live in, especially in big cities like Tokyo that are ironically packed with people. Seems like a contradiction, but is certainly true.

Then something unusual happens – one day the lifeless doll begins to come to life, as if she is suddenly filled with human feelings and a soul. Once this doll starts breathing and moving, she is as confused as anyone else about who she is. Since her owner is away at work, she goes out for a walk trying to understand the world around her, and the story unfolds from there.

As you approach the film, you must remember this is not an American film, which would take cheap shots with such a story and exploit it. Instead, this flick is weirdly humanist, with a sort of melancholic bent. It is Japanese director Kore-eda’s way of mapping out modern life, an attempt to help us see the world around us differently. Starring Korean actress Bae Doo-na as the titular air doll.

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

Lebanese movie night: The Ugly One (Eric Baudelaire, 2013)

Sunday 19 February 2023, Lebanese movie night: The Ugly One by Eric Baudelaire (and Adachi Masao) * 2013 * 100 minutes * In multiple languages * subtitles in English. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30
Set in the Beirut of the 2010s, this movie follows two fictional paths to arrive at an intimately personal documentary. Baudelaire’s characters, or rather his ensembles of characters, are people whose history is intimately entangled with revolutionary movements. In this film, with the help of Adachi Masao he sketches a kind of brotherhood between two countries with intense political histories: Japan and Lebanon. It’s an entanglement that might seem unlikely. But that only makes it more poetic, it doesn’t make it any less real.

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images was in 2012 the first UK solo exhibition by French artist Eric Baudelaire whose work looks at the complexities of recounting the history of the Japanese Red Army (JRA), a radical group that emerged from the 1968 Tokyo student movement, settled in Beirut in the early 1970s, and engaged in sophisticated terrorist activities in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. As a filmmaker, Adachi devoted his life to images. During his years in Lebanon, he sought to advance his radical film practice by trading the camera for the rifle.

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

Black Cat Cine presents High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

Sunday 11 november 2018, Black Cat Cine presents: High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963). Door opens at 8:00, film starts at 8:30

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

Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010)

children_of_the_revolutionSunday March 1st 2015. Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010) by Shane O’Sullivan (Ireland, England, Germany, 2010, 92 minutes). In English. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary about Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, leaders of the German Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army weaves their lives together through the testomy of their daughters authors and journalists Bettina Röhl and Mei Shigenobu. A portrait of late-60s radicalism told from an unusual perspective. With capitalism once more in crisis, they reflect on their mother’s actions as the film asks: what were they fighting for and what have we learned?
http://www.childrenoftherevolution.co.uk/

[…Lees verder]

Movie Night: Lady Snowblood

Lady_SnowbloodSunday October 19th 2014, Movie night: Lady Snowblood (1973). Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm.

Lady Snowblood is a Japanese Samurai film directed by Toshiya Fujita and starring Meiko Kaji. Lady Snowblood is based on the manga of the same name and it is also the film that heavily inspired Quentin Tarantino to write and create Kill Bill.

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

Movie Night: Spirited Away (2001)

Sunday February 23rd 2014, Movie Night: Eenhorn Filmavond presents Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001). Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm.

Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With the narrative drive of a live-action feature and the imaginative leaps of East Asian manga, Japanimation B.O. phenom “Spirited Away” is an out-and-out charmer. Spirited Away is a story that both kids and adults can tune in to, a Niponese “Alice in Wonderland” with a totally convincing world of humans, ghosts, animals and other beings in which a 10-year-old girl spends a short period. […Lees verder]

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: ‘Pastoral: To Die in the Country’ (1974)

Sunday November 10th 2013, Movie night, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock. ‘Pastoral: To Die in the Country’ (田園に死す. aka, Denen ni shisu ), 1974, directed by Shugi Terayama, 104 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles. Door opens at 20:00, film begins at 21:00

Pastoral: To Die in the Country is another dazzling piece of surreal film-making from Shuji Terayama (*Throw away your Books*). Terayama was Japan’s infant-terrible of the turbulent sixties, an artist whose work is basically unknown here in the West. He was a photographer, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and poet… and in his time his work incited scandal and outrage, censorship and banning. Today in Japan he is considered a visionary cult hero. He is one of the favorite directors of the music group STEREOLAB and they called their 1996 album after his short film Emperor Tomato Ketchup. […Lees verder]