Collectively Made Film and Video Series, April 16 schedule
Posted April 16, 2011 by molly_fair in Events
Saturday is a full day for our series- come join the marathon with us! Our Friendships are Constructed on the Basis of Conflict: collectively produced film and video presented by Red Channels and Spectacle Theater:
Saturday, April 16
at Spectacle Theater
124 South 3rd Street (between Bedford and Berry)
Brooklyn, NY
3PM
A collective brunch- we will meet at the theater and probably go get breakfast burritos somewhere.
5PM
—Inciting to Riot – Pacific Street Films, 1970, 35 minutes
—Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law – Green Team, 1986, 58 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes | Digital Projection
7PM
—Mill-in – Newsreel, 1968, 12 minutes
—Ipimpi – Pacific Street Films, 1971, 10 minutes
—Help the Child, Help Your Country! – Voina, 2010, 2 minutes
—Por los circuitos de la Precariedad Feminina – Precarias a la Deriva, 2003
— and some other stuff!
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 74 minutes | Digital Projection
9PM
—Rhodia 4×8 – Groupe Medvedkine, 1969, 3 minutes
—Shut the Fuck Up – General Idea, 1984, 14 minutes
—Handsworth Songs – John Akomfrah, Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 58 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes | Digital Projection
Program description and collective bios:
—Inciting to Riot – Pacific Street Films, 1970, 35 minutes
Transcendental Students (TS) was a student activist and anarchist group created in 1969 at NYU in New York City. Its motto and philosophy was "insurrection through happiness". This is Pacific Street's NYU student film from their perspective as members of the group.
Childhood friends Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher founded Pacific Street Films in 1969 after studying under Martin Scorsese at New York University. During this time they had been filming undercover agents who showed up at protest rallies, and they themselves were harassed, photographed, and arrested. This experience became the basis for their first documentary, Red Squad, completed in 1971. Since then they have produced documentaries on social history and the radical Left.
—Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law – Green Team, 1986, 58 minutes
In 1949 the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) imposed a strict martial law on Taiwan, which lasted 38 years. Since this law was lifted in 1987, alternative media makers have joined farmers, workers and students to press for social and political change. In a show of force against the repressive state television system, the Green Team Video Collective took to the airwaves with a low power pirate TV transmission, which included scenes of a massive demonstration where dozens of TV sets were thrown at the gates of the Taiwan TV station.
The video movement in Taiwan made successful use of home cassette distribution, via both mail and street vendors. The Green Team collective pioneered in this effort with over 100 titles in distribution, documenting the struggles of farmers, students, workers and environmentalists.
—Mill-in – Newsreel, 1968, 12 minutes
In order to raise the consciousness of New Yorkers, anti-war demonstrators took to the streets on fashionable Fifth Avenue on Christmas eve. To the dismay of the shoppers, their action snarled traffic and stunted holiday consumption.
Newsreel was established in December 1967 as an activist filmmaker collective. This NY group grew to become a network with chapters across the US. Its different chapters produced and distributed short 16mm films covering the anti-war and women's movements, Civil and human rights movements, getting unique access to such groups as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party. The New York Newsreel became Third World Newsreel (TWN) in the mid-70s and strengthened its commitment to developing filmmakers and audiences of color. Today, TWN carries on the progressive vision of its founders, and remains the oldest media arts organization in the U.S. devoted to cultural workers of color and their global constituencies.
—Ipimpi – Pacific Street Films, 1971, 10 minutes
About police infiltration of the Black Panther Party.
—Help the Child, Help Your Country! – Voina, 2010, 2 minutes
Voina (War), was formed by students in the philosophy department of Moscow State University and led by Petr Verzilov and Oleg Vorotnikov. Their provocative public performances point out the corruption of the state and have included shoplifting while dressed as police and priests, and an orgy in the Museum of Biology, and an anti-homophobic and anti-racist faux-lynching. They were arrested and charged with "aggravated hooliganism" following an action in which they overturned some police cars.
—Por los circuitos de la Precariedad Feminina – Precarias a la Deriva, 2003
Precarias a la Deriva (Precarious women workers adrift) is a militant research collective from Madrid. It emerged from a feminist social center La Eskalera Karakola in response to the general strike in Spain in 2002. Faced with a mobilization which did not represent kinds of informal and invisible labor outside of, the collective decided to spend the strike wandering the city,"transforming the classic picket line into a picket survey": talking to women about the strike, work, and its conditions.
—Rhodia 4×8 – Groupe Medvedkine, 1969, 3 minutes
Groupe Medvedkine, started by Chris Marker, united workers with filmmakers in the spirit of the Mai '68 in an attempt to document the condition of workers at factories like Rhodia in Besançon, the Peugeot facility in Sochaux, and Kelton-Timex watch factory. In Rhodia 4/8 images of workers in the factories are accompanied by a haunting melody sung by Colette Magny, legendary French avant-garde protest singer.
—Shut the Fuck Up – General Idea, 1984, 14 minutes
"I don't want to be a media whore!" Using ironic and iconic excerpts from television and film from the 1960s, such as The Joker character from Batman and part of the historic footage of artist Yves Klein's painting and performance from Mondo Cane, General Idea examines the relationship between the mass media and the artist.
General Idea included artists AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, who forged a unique conceptual practice that deployed parody and irony to critique the art world and popular media culture. In performances, installations, video, photography, prints, and editions, they explored social phenomena ranging from the production, distribution and consumption of mass media images to gay identity and the AIDS crisis. General Idea worked together from 1969 until the deaths of Partz and Zontal in 1994.
—Handsworth Songs – Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 58 minutes
"There are no stories in the riots, only the ghosts of other stories". An experimental film essay on race and disorder in Britain, filmed in Handsworth and London during the riots of 1985 that erupted in reaction to repressive policing of black communities. It explores the history and circumstances leading to the riots through newsreel and archival material accompanied by an ethereal score.
The Black Audio Film Collective was formed at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1982 by sociology, fine art and psychology John Akomfrah, Reece Auguiste, Edward George, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, David Lawson and Trevor Mathison. It was one among many such collectives founded in Britain during the early- to mid- 1980s which produced works for Channel 4. Although dealing with contemporary events such as oppressive policing, riots, and unrest, inner city ghettoization and the clearing and destruction of working class enclaves, they were also responding to a more fundamental condition of the victims of colonization and slavery. Instead of making propagandistic films in response to these issues, they instead produced meditative works, experimenting with form and presentation their slide films, and exploring issues of memory, history, and identity through the use of archival footage and examination of radical icons such as Malcolm X. The group disbanded in 1998.
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