Our Friendships are Constructed on the Basis of Conflict: Collectively Made Film and Video, April 13-17
Posted April 12, 2011 by molly_fair in Events
This Wed. kicks off a series of collectively made film and video presented by Red Channels and Spectacle Theater!
April 13-17, 2011
Spectacle Theater
124 South 3rd Street (between Bedford and Berry)
Brooklyn, NY
We decided to do this series out of our interest in the collective process, and what happens when artists intentionally share authorship of their work (how this actually plays out may be different, will egos be crushed?). The programs feature the work of artists from around the world and span over a century! See the full schedule here. Later in the week we are screening work by Paper Tiger, Black Film Audio Collective, Newsreel, the Bernadette Corporation, and many more!
Screening Wed., April 17:
All films are silent with live musical accompaniment
7PM
—San Francisco Earthquake and Fire 1906 – Red Channels, 2009, 17 minutes
—La Commune – Armand Guerra, La Coopérative du Cinéma du Peuple, 1914, 19 minutes
—Yamamoto Senji’s Farewell Ceremony - Prokino, 1929, 2 minutes
—Yamamoto Senji Watanabe Masanosuke Worker-Farmer Funeral - Prokino, 1929, 11 minutes
—Twelfth Annual Tokyo May Day - Prokino, 1931, 7 minutes
—Workers Film and Photo League newsreel, TBA
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes | Digital Projection
Live Music by
Yuriko Huguchi (tenor saxophone)
Coralie Lonfat (laptop electronics)
Chuck Bettis (laptop electronics)
Joe Merolla (violincello)
9PM
—Cinétracts – 1968, 75 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes | Digital Projection
Live Music by
Ras Moche (saxophone)
Ken Silverman (guitar)
Films and Collective Bios:
—San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906 – Red Channels, 2009, 17 minutes
Members of the arts collective Red Channels reassembled footage of the "San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906" created by an unknown production company. This film shows the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the devastation resulting from the subsequent three-day fire. The 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck and resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 people, the collapse of buildings, a water shortage, and several large fires. The scenes in the film are preceded by titles, many of which are sensationalized. One entire scene showing a family eating in the street was almost certainly staged for the camera.
—La Commune – Armand Guerra (Le Cinéma du Peuple), 1914, 19 minutes
The first film depicting the story of the 1871 Paris Commune, directed by anarchist Armand Guerra, and produced by Le Cinéma du Peuple, an anarchist film cooperative. This historical reenactment depicts the rise and fall of the Commune, which grew from growing unrest among workers and the lower classes, and fear of a royalist majority in the government, and anger over the defeat in Franco-Prussian War.
Newsreels by the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino) - This left-wing film organization, known as Prokino for short, active in the late 1920's and early 1930's in Japan and was made up of many prominent members of the proletarian arts movement. It primarily used small gauge films such as 16mm film and 9.5mm film to record demonstrations and workers’ lives and show them in organized events or, using mobile projection teams, at factories and mines. The movement was eventually suppressed by the police under the Peace Preservation Law, but many former members became prominent figures in the Japanese documentary and fiction film industries.
—Yamamoto Senji’s Farewell Ceremony- Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), 1929, 2 minutes
On March 3, 1929 activist Yamamoto Senji was killed by a right wing assassin. Yamamoto Senji was the son of a famous ryotei in Kyoto. He was a doctor and scientist, and known for promoting birth control. After an autopsy at Tokyo University, a procession took his body to a public hall for a funeral. This is a documentary recording that procession.
—Yamamoto Senji Watanabe Masanosuke Worker-Farmer Funeral- Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), 1929, 11 minutes
After cremation, Yamamoto’s ashes were taken back to his home at Kyoto. Around the same time as Yamamoto’s death, another left-wing leader, chair of the Communist Party’s central committee, Watanabe Masanosuke committed suicide during a arrests. A combined funeral procession for both leaders was held in Kyoto. Along the route Prokino members from both Tokyo and Kyoto shot the footage for this film.
—Twelfth Annual Tokyo May Day- Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), 1931, 7 minutes
Iwasaki Akira coordinated the entire Tokyo Prokino organization as it photographed the 1931 May Day celebrations. A 16mm print was circulated around the countryside by mobile projection units, and a 35mm print was shown at Soviet film nights in Tokyo and Osaka.
— Workers Film and Photo League newsreel TBA- The Workers Film and Photo League in the United States was part of an extensive cultural movement sponsored by the Communist International and its affiliated national parties in the 1930's. Since capital was not available for studio production, emphasis inevitably came to be placed on low cost documentary and especially newsreel forms. Their footage of mass demonstrations of the unemployed during the Great Depression, the Hunger March, and the attack on workers at the Detroit River Rouge plant by guards and police are some of the only surviving film evidence of these struggles from the point of view of the Left.
—Cinétracts – 1968, 75 minutes
Chris Marker, Jean Luc Godard and Alain Resnais collaborated in making and distributing “Cinétracts” one reel silent 16mm promotional pieces with inter-titles intended as “news bulletins” for and about students and workers during and around the May 1968 revolt. They were intended as an alternative to the media that was censored and controlled by the state. Due to the anonymous and collective approach of the directors involved, no credits are given to identify who made each one.
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