Film

Support Renata Hill of the NJ4 Thursday! Queer Docs Friday!

Posted November 19, 2008 by molly_fair in Events

One of the NJ4 defendants, Renata Hill is having a hearing tomorrow and FIERCE! is mobilizing a support crew:

Thursday November 20, 2008
10 AM
Meet outside 100 Centre Street
(Part 91 - 15th Floor)
Judge McLaughlin

On August 18, 2006, seven young African American lesbian women from Newark, New Jersey came to Manhattan’s West Village for a night out. A man named Dwayne Buckle harassed and assaulted the young women, making sexist and homophobic comments to them as well as lewd advances and telling one of the women that he would “F—k her straight.” A physical altercation ensued, and two men came to the aid of the women. One of the men stabbed Buckle, and then left the scene. The women continued on their way and were arrested shortly after. The trial that took place was a farce, the judge was condescending and offensive, the media demonized the women as a "lesbian wolf-pack", there was never a search for the two men who stabbed Buckle, requests for forensic testing on the supposed weapon were ignored as was footage from a surveillance camera that clearly showed Buckle was the perpetrator. After a year-long trip through the legal system, three women of the women- Chenese Loyal, Khymesha Coates, Lania Daniels took plea bargains and the other four were convicted of crimes and given shocking prison sentences in April 2007. Terrain Dandridge was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars; Venice Brown, five years; Renata Hill, eight years; and Patreese Johnson, was sentenced to an unbelievable 11 years. Terrain Dandridge’s case was overturned, all her charges were dropped and she was released on June 21st, 2008. She has recently been speaking out with her family and with supporters such as Angela Davis in San Francisco and in NY.

For more info, there is an excellent article Re-Thinking "The Norm" In Police/Prison Violence & Gender Violence: Critical Lessons from the New Jersey 7 in the most recent issue of Left Turn Magazine by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence & FIERCE! that addresses issues of violence and bias against queer youth of color and the struggle to make these issues visible.

To find out how you can support the NJ4 and for future updates check out:
FIERCE!, Justice 4 New Jersey 4, Free the NJ4

There is a screening of documentaries about the lives of LGBTQ youth in the West Village:

Friday November 21, 2008
Maysles Films
343 Lenox Ave/Malcom X Blvd.
NYC

7 PM film screening

Fenced Out dir. FIERCE! with Paper Tiger TV & The Neutral Zone (2001)

Fenced Out documents the fight for the Christopher St. pier, a long-established hangout and safe haven for New York City’s youth of color and lower-income, homeless, lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, questioning and two-spirited youth. In the summer of 2000, development for a state park began “fencing out” the kids, with support from residents of nearby waterfront properties. “You are lowering the property value,” notes one police officer bluntly. The video examines the clash between the groups that claim ownership of the pier, from the perspective of the youths who feel it is the only place where they belong. The documentary includes interviews with “pierets” about how important the pier is in their lives, and with LGBTQ activists about the history of the piers and their connection to the gay liberation movement of the 60’s. It explores how the struggle to save the pier connects to a larger historical and social movement, and develops a plan of action to save them.

Life on Christopher Street dir. Maria Clara, 2002

Through the eyes of these urban male youth, known as "Homolife on Christopher St. Thugs", we see gay rappers, "Blood" gang members, pimps, and sex workers in their struggle to maintain dignity. The film is an exposé of a rising subculture of Black and Latino gay youth born in the late 70's to early 80's, representing the Hip-Hop generation. These urban gay youth living on the most popular gay strip in the world maintain the aggressive hyper masculine image and attitude represented in the Hip-Hop culture, contradicting the stereotypical image of homosexuals.

8 PM Panel

Life on Christopher Street Director & Producer Maria Clara and Kimberly Gray, FIERCE!, RJ Supa and Steven Gordon of The Ali Forney Center (housing for homeless LGBTQ youth)

reception to follow

ChristieBooks Film Channel

Posted November 18, 2008 by jmacphee in Film

Stuart Christie has a lot under his belt: anarchist, former anti-fascist prisoner in Spain, founder of the UK Anarchist Black Cross, founder of Cienfuegos Press, and more recently publishing books under his own imprint ChristieBooks. For a number of years he has been building up an amazing collection of films on his website, which now contains hundreds of films and videos, including Spanish Civil War newsreels, Jean Vigo and Luis Bunuel features, anarchist biopics and more current radical news footage. If you are at all interested in anarchism and film, it is well worth taking a look. Check it out here.

In addition, Christie is working on a new anarchist journal, called Arena, which is being published in collaboration with PM Press and the first issue should be out early next year. The first issue is focusing on anarchist cinema, and is guest edited by Richard Porton, author of the fabulous book Film and the Anarchist Imagination, published by Verso.

Benefit for Political Prisoner Ojore Lutalo

Posted November 6, 2008 by molly_fair in Events

November 8 at 7:30pm
Sixth Street Community Center
638 E 6th St, between Avenues B and C, in Manhattan
Suggested Donation $8-10, refreshments will be served

Longtime New Afrikan Anarchist Prisoner of War, Ojore Lutalo, is set to be released after 26 years of confinement in the New Jersey State Prison, having completed the maximum amount of time the State of New Jersey could hold him. While his exact release date is not finalized, it will most likely be late November or December. Money is being raised to help Ojore secure housing, food and clothing to help with this transition.

Ojore Lutalo is locked down in Trenton, New Jersey for actions carried out in the fight for Black Liberation. According to Lutalo, he is serving a parole violation sentence stemming from a 1977 conviction for expropriating monies from a state bank and engaging police in a gun battle which took place in 1975.

Kazembe Balagun, writer, activist, teacher, and biographer of the late New Afrikan Anarchist freedom fighter Kuwasi Balagoon will be in attendance to talk about New Afrikan Anarchism of the past and future.

There will be a screening of the film Frame Up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre (1973)

Frame Up! follows the story of Afro-Puerto Rican political activist Martin Sostre who served time in Attica prison during the early 1960s. He was arrested in 1967, at his Afro-Asian bookstore in Buffalo for sale and possession of narcotics, riot, arson, and assault- charges later proven to be fabricated by COINTELPRO. He was convicted and sentenced to serve forty-one years and thirty days. Sostre became a jailhouse lawyer and regularly acted as legal counsel to other inmates, and won two landmark legal cases for the advancement of prisoner rights- Sostre v. Rockefeller and Sostre v. Otis.

A People in the Shadows

Posted November 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events

My friend Bani Khoshnoudi is doing a sneak preview of her new film A People in the Shadows next Friday in New York City. I'm really excited about the film, but unfortunately all of us Justseeders will be at our annual retreat in Milwaukee. Some of you will have to go and tell us how it was!

A PEOPLE IN THE SHADOWS (2008, 90 min.)
Friday, November 7, 7pm
at DCTV
87 Lafayette Street (south of Canal Street), 3rd Floor
NYC
(subways: N,R,W,Q,6 to Canal)

Almost thirty years after the revolution, and twenty since the end of the long Iran-Iraq war, A People in the Shadows takes us on a voyage into the heart of Tehran, a megalopolis of 14 million people. The city is still recovering from its past, as talk of sanctions and a possible American attack resonate. Using cinema direct methods, the film takes an intimate look at the way people live in this immense city today- caught up in the paradoxes and contradictions of their society, surrounded by images of past and future death, yet finding ways to juggle state propaganda and foreign threat on a daily basis.

The Great Depression

Posted October 31, 2008 by molly_fair in Film

Bill Daniel has a new photo and video installation up at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers called The Great Depression which is part of his Sunset Scavenger project. The gallery space has been transformed into a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, with projected video, large-scale still photography and several interactive installations complete with hobo shack. The show will be up until Jan. 10, 2009.

Sunset Scavenger is an on-going project exploring images and themes of social and environmental collapse in the last decades of the petroleum era. It's also the name of a '65 Chevy sailvan, and the video show that is projected on its sails, and the coast-to-coast tour that will bring the show to your town. The sailvan -- a 2-masted gaff-rigger schooner-- functions as tour vehicle, as well as projection screen. The video program is a 2-projector documentary-essay on low-down survival strategies in a world of ecologic and economic collapse.

Sunset Scavenger tells the real-world stories of ascendant down'n'outers and their earnest lessons of self-reliance in the face of civil decay. See and hear the anchor-outs, rubber tramps, off-the-gridders, desert rats, and punk river rafters that are today's true cultural vanguard.

This low-budget, non-linear, semi-documentary epic and morally beneficial apocalyptic allegory features the Abandoned RV starring in a hastily revised New Urbanism, and is supported by the surprise comeback of Advanced Woodworking and Basic Piracy. Here's what happens when there's more cars than houses, more bad weather than gasoline, and more poor people than cops.

Flood Teaser

Posted October 25, 2008 by jmacphee in Film

Long-time friend and collaborator of some of us Justseeders Todd Chandler has recently released a teaser clip of his current film project Flood. Flood was shot cinema verite style during the travels of Swoon and co.'s Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea. Members of the raft trip and his bands Dark Dark Dark and Fall Harbor make up the cast. Some of the shots are quite striking, looking forward to seeing this project develop. Check out the Flood website here.

FLOOD teaser from flood movie on Vimeo.

New York Screening of Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans

Posted September 5, 2008 by molly_fair in Film

The film Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans by Upheaval Productions focuses on the experience of the Latino community, one that seems to be overlooked unsurprisingly in the media and unfortunately by activist communities as well. This is not to be missed.

Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. This documentary focuses on those rebuilding this city through interviews with some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged in this area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans’ Latino community has mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure proportional to its size.

Take a look at how this community is organizing to defend itself against numerous injustices and the attempts to bridge the gap between themselves as new residents and the pre-Katrina population, all within the extremely unique and tragic context of post-Katrina New Orleans.

Presentado en inglés y español.

9/7 @7pm- Make the Road by Walking
301 Grove St, Brooklyn, NY

9/8 @7pm- Bluestockings
172 Allen St Btw Stanton & Rivington, New York, NY

They Live

Posted September 1, 2008 by molly_fair in Film

at BAM, Wednesday, Sept. 3

I gotta say that They Live is one of my favorite movies and I'm not gonna miss my chance to see it on the big screen. I mean come on- an entertaining critique of capitalism starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper of the WWF as our fearless blue collar hero leading the rev- what could be better? Also it has one of the most drawn-out, ridiculous fist fight scenes ever.

Part science fiction thriller and part black comedy, the film echoed contemporary fears of a declining economy, within a culture of greed and conspicuous consumption common among Americans in the 1980s. In They Live, the ruling class within the monied elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of subliminal media advertising and the control of economic opportunity.

"On Paper Wings" documentary screening

Posted August 11, 2008 by icky in Film

My friend and co-worker Ilana Sol will be screening her just-completed documentary, On Paper Wings, in Portland this weekend. Check it out if you're in town.
"In the spring of 1945, a Japanese balloon bomb claimed the lives of the only people killed on the continental U.S. as the result of enemy action during WWII. Forty years later, the decision to fold a thousand paper cranes would unite the Japanese and American civilians who were involved in and affected by this incident."

Her film is accompanied by "Passing Poston," a documentary about a Japanese-American internment camp in Poston, Ariz.

The Hollywood Theatre -
42nd and NE Sandy Blvd.
Portland, OR

August 11th-12th (Monday & Tuesday): 7:00pm
August 16th-17th: 12:15 & 3PM (Matinee Shows)