Movie night: 20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, 2023)

By: börek - January 10th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 21st January 2024, Movie night: 20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, 2023). Documentary with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

During the Russian siege in 2022, unspeakably gruesome and bloody images of the countless dead and wounded victims of bombings and shootings in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol were seen around the world—thanks in part to the work of Ukrainian AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov. With great difficulty in this city lacking electricity and internet coverage, he managed to share these shocking and now-iconic images, such as the pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher from a bombed-out maternity clinic.

This documentary offers an even more powerful and mind-boggling impression of the siege—if such a thing is possible. The crystal-clear quality of the video footage makes for an almost 3D viewing experience. The camera captures the entry into the blasted clinic, the hurriedly dug mass graves containing dead children, and emotional exclamations from the doctors working in operating rooms.

The footage is pin-sharp, though sometimes jittery due to the explosions. In his soft-spoken voice-over, we hear Chernov talking about his emotional response to the 20 days that transformed this normal city into a shattered ruin.

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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Black and White Movie Night: The General Line (Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, 1929)

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

Sunday 13 February 2022, Black and White Movie Night: The General Line, also known as Old and New, by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, 1929, 121 minutes. Doors open at 19:30, Film starts at 20:00.

100.000.000 peasants – illiterate, poor, hungry. There comes a day when one woman decides that she can live old life no longer. Using ways of new Soviet state and industrial progress she changes life and labor of her village. A young peasant woman (Marfa played by Marfa Lapkina) is striving for collectivization of farming in her village. In so doing she is confronted with resistance of the older farmers.
The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual practice of emphasizing groups by concentrating on a single rural heroine. Eisenstein briefly abandoned this project to film October: Ten Days That Shook the World, in honour of the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. By the time he was able to return to this film, the Party’s attitudes had changed and Trotsky had fallen from grace. As a result, the film was hastily re-edited and sent out in 1929 under a new title, The Old and the New. In later years, archivists restored The General Line to an approximation of Eisenstein’s original concept. Much of the director’s montage-like imagery—such as using simple props to trace the progress from the agrarian customs of the 19th-century to the more mechanized procedures of the 20th—was common to both versions of the film.

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 imprisoned Russian activists

By: börek - November 1st, 2018  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Thursday 29 November 2018, Benefit voku for imprisoned Russian activists. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

On the eve of the presidential elections and the World Cup, repressions began in Russia. Activists are being kidnapped, beaten up, electrocuted and forced to sign and learn investigative evidence and false confessions by heart. Besides tortures and battery, detainees are threatened to be imprisoned for a long time: the secret service FSB are accusing the jailed anarchists and antifascicts in participation in a mythical terrorist organization called “Network”.

There are currently eleven people behind bars. Their investigation period was just extended until January of 2019 by court decision. The cases need international attention and support – the situation is unbearable. Repression of anarchists and antifascists needs to be stopped.

Come for a delicious three-course solidarity dinner at joe’s on the 29th of November to support the detainees!

For more info and updates on the cases –> https://rupression.com/
All donations for the dinner will go to Rupression, a collective that is working on spreading information about the cases and is helping them with legal costs. […Lees verder]

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A solidarity voku for Russian antifascists

By: börek - October 1st, 2018  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Monday 8 October 2018, A solidarity voku for Russian antifascists. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

“In the run-up to presidential elections and the FIFA World Cup, repressions against antifascists and anarchists started in Russia. In Autumn 2017, 6 people were arrested in Penza; several of them had weapons and explosives planted on them. FSB officers then tortured the antifascists right in the detention facility: they applied naked wires to the activists’ various body parts and turned the electricity on, they beat them up, hanged them upside down. While torturing them, the agents made the activists learn by heart the story the FSB needed: they were supposed to confess of having founded and belonging to a terrorist organization called “The Network”. In late January 2018, two more antifascists were arrested in Saint-Petersburg. They, too, were beaten up, tortured with electric current, and forced to incriminate themselves by confirming they were members of the ‘Network’.” [https://rupression.com/]

Currently, eleven people are behind bars and facing long sentences. Most of them are accused of being members of a non-existent terrorist organization and planning violent attacks against the state. It is clear, that the crimes the imprisoned people are charged with, are fabricated by the Federal Security Service. By inventing the story about the “Network” and torturing people to the point that they have no other option, than to make false confessions, the secret police are aiming to frame Russian anarchists as terrorists. The imprisoned antifascists and anarchists need support with legal costs and with drawing attention to the cases – the repression they have faced needs to stop.

Come express solidarity with the Russian antifascists and eat at Joe’s garage on the 8th of October! There will be more information available about the cases and a chance to write postcards or letters to the prisoners if you wish. All donations for the food go directly to rupression – a collective, that has been active in spreading information about the “Network” cases and supporting the tortured antifascists.
[…Lees verder]

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Movie night: Strike (Eisenstein, 1925)

By: börek - February 1st, 2018  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday February 11th 2018: Movie night: Strike (Eisenstein, 1925). Doors open at 8pm, film starts at 8:30pm.

Eisenstein’s first feature film the story of a bitter strike under Tzarist rule in 1903. Made just before Battleship Potemkin, this film introduces his style of dynamic juxtaposed editing, the focus on the individual and the crowd. Waves of movement, and poltical idealism.
Before the feature we’ll also watch “Gulmov’s Diary” a 4 minute short that was Eisenstein’s first film.

Silent | English intertitles and Russian intertitles with English subtitles | 89 minutes

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

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Black and White movie night: The Heart of a Dog (1988)

By: börek - May 1st, 2016  Filed under: Filmavond

The_Heart_of_a_DogSunday May 29th 2016, Black and White movie night: Black and White movie night: The Heart of a Dog (Vladimir Bortko, 1988). 136 minutes, in Russian with English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

The film is set in Moscow not long after the October Revolution where a complaining stray dog looks for food and shelter. A well-off well-known surgeon Phillip Phillippovich Preobrazhensky happens to need a dog and lures the animal to his big home annex practice with a piece of sausage. The dog is named Sharik and well taken care of by the doctor’s maids, but still wonders why he’s there. He finds out too late he’s needed as a test animal: the doctor implants a pituitary gland and testicles of a recently deceased alcoholic and petty criminal Klim Chugunkin into Sharik. Sharik proceeds to become more and more human during the next days. After his transition to human is complete, it turns out that he inherited all the negative traits of the donor – bad manners, aggressiveness, use of profanity, heavy drinking – but still hates cats. He picks for himself the absurd name Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, starts working at the “Moscow Cleansing Department responsible for eliminating vagrant quadrupeds (cats, etc.)” and associating with revolutionaries, who plot to drive Preobrazhensky out of his big apartment. Eventually he turns the life in the professor’s house into a nightmare by stealing money, breaking his furniture, a water ballet during a cat chase and blackmailing into marriage a girl he met at the cinema. The professor with his assistant are then urged to reverse the procedure. Sharikov turns back into a dog. As Sharik he does remember little about what has happened to him but isn’t much concerned about that. To his content he is left to live in the professor’s apartment. […Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Taxi Blues (1990)

By: börek - October 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

TaxiBluesSunday October 11th 2015, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Taxi Blues (Такси-блюз) directed by Pavel Lungin, 1990, 110 minutes. High-definition screening. Free admission. Door opens at 20:00, Film starts at 21:00.

This film explores many aspects of modern Russian life by centering on the lives of two very different people, and what happens when their destinies intersect. Ivan is a tough hard-working Moscow taxi driver who is nostalgic about the days of Communism. One night he picks up Lyosha who belongs to the new generation of Russians… he is pessimistic, westernized, an alcoholic jazz saxophonist and totally irresponsible. Because of the turn of events, a long-term connection is formed between the two that is a bit like a bizarre love-hate relationship, and its fascinating to watch it twist and turn, develop and unfold, die down and explode.

The movie is wonderfully shot, both bleak and passionate… and beyond being only a story about two polar opposite men, it is also a moody piece of work about Russia during the latter stages of Perestroika… and the collision of old Russian values against the new Russia. The film stars Piotr Mamonov who is the leader of the new wave band Zvuki Moobut… but he is also a poet and performer. The lush but desolate free-jazz music score for this film is by Vladimir Cherkasin.

Taxi Blues is considered by many to be one of the central masterpieces of contemporary Russian cinema, and it won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. And, like usual, this is an extremely rare screening of this haunting movie.

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

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Benefit for Ukrainian comrades

By: börek - March 11th, 2014  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Monday March 31st 2014, Benefit for Ukrainian comrades, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

During the recent Maidan ‘revolution’, anarchists comrades have been calling for support as they were caught between state repression and attacks from fascists groups. Now Russia and the western world still have to negotiate about the volatile ukrainian-russian border, we’ll try to have an update about our comrades there, how were their Maidan days. Your financial contribution is very welcome. […Lees verder]

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