Films on offer:

Helke Sander Double Bill
Sat 10 May only
Helke Sander • West Germany  • 1h38m • DVD • German with English subtitles • 12A
Cast:
"If you think about things, you become radicalised." (Helke Sander)
As a filmmaker and author, Helke Sander has shaped the women's movement in Germany. She translates challenging themes, such as women's 'double burden', and the contradictions between political consciousness and personal action, into unconventional film with a new, experimental filmic language.
Helke Sander will introduce the films and participate in a Q&A session after the screening.

Break the Power of the Manipulators! (Brecht die Macht der Manipulateure!)
Helke Sander, 1967/68, 48 min
Sander's film not only documents but also reflects on the campaign of the German Left against the right-wing publishing house Springer, which in the heated sixties tried to instigate public opinion against the student movement.

A Bonus for Irene (Eine Prämie für Irene)
Helke Sander, 1971, 50 min
In a television factory, Irene and her female colleagues are angered by the monitoring gaze of surveillance cameras. The film examines the social organisation of male power and critiques the 'Berlin worker's film', which followed conflicts in the workplace but was solely concerned with the male worker. 

Cinétracts
Sun 11 May only
Various • France 1968 • h20m • 16mm • French with English subtitles • 15
Cast:
Made by politically committed filmmakers to serve as agit-prop for the events of May '68, these films rely exclusively on stills rather than documentary footage, yet the sense of contrast and movement is very strong and the films very effectively make their point, they attempt to catch the spirit, rather than the fact, of the May Revolution. And although made anonymously, one can detect the hands of Godard, Marker et. al. (LUX)

Screening introduced by Frédérique Devaux and followed by an open discussion about the issues raised by the films.

Le Soulèvement de la jeunesse – Mai 68
Sun 11 May only
Maurice Lemaître • France 1969 • h28m • 16mm • 15
Cast:
Maurice Lemaître was one of the key members of Lettrism, a literary and artistic movement created by Isidore Isou in the 1940s. In this film, documentary footage of the riots are set to a varied soundtrack, in which Isou's economic theory of 'le soulvèment de la jeunesse' (the uprising of youth), delivered by Lemaître, is accompanied by the voices of général de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou and the rhythmic chants of the Lettrist poets.
 

Détruisez-vous
Sun 11 May only
Serge Bard • France 1968 • 1h15m • DigiBeta • French with English subtitles • 15
Cast:
Filmed a month before the outbreak of the student riots in May 1968, Serge Bard's striking film, the first to be produced by the Zanzibar group (which included, amongst others, Philippe Garrel and Jackie Raynal), takes its title from a '68 slogan "Aidez-nous, détruisez-vous" ("Help us, destroy yourselves"). Its loose narrative, which centres on the monologues of its disenchanted characters, played by Alain Jouffroy and Caroline de Bendern, is periodically interspersed with visual shocks and unsettling theatrical tableaux that anticipate the violent call to action that came shortly after.
 

Saturday 10/5/2008

Helke Sander Double Bill (98mins)      18:00(2)                        
    

Sunday 11/5/2008
                  
Détruisez-vous (75mins)      13:00(2)                        
Le Soulèvement de la jeunesse – Mai 68 (28mins)      15:00(3)                        
Cinétracts (20mins)      15:00(3)                        
Scenes From New York (85mins)      18:00(3)                        
               
 

The Edinburgh Filmhouse writes in its email update:

Diversions / May 68
From Thursday 8 - Sunday 11 May Filmhouse hosts Diversions, a festival of experimental film and video. This unique new event brings together some of the most important experimental film and video works from the 1920s to the present. Over fifty short, medium and feature-length films in four days! The programme has a historical slant, drawing parallels between groundbreaking avant-garde classics and contemporary practice, ranging from the French political films of May '68 to recent film and video works from Britain, America, France and Finland. We've also got some great guests lined up, including experimental film historians Al Rees and David Curtis and filmmakers Frédérique Devaux, Pip Chodorov, Sami van Ingen and Peter Rose. For further details about Diversions, including talks and events at the University of Edinburgh, please visit http://www.diversionsfilmfestival.co.uk

May '68 is a season of films that reflect and represent the cultural and political upheavals in France and Germany during 1968. Along with the societal and political change of this time, an aesthetic revolution was also taking place, especially in film. The films which emerged from the circumstances of '68 are testimony to an advanced conflict about the possibilities of political revolts, and the question of how cinema reacts to this. The programme includes a variety of films, from the Anti-Heimatfilm I Love You, I Kill You to the political documentary Reprise, up to the sociocritical auteur film Yesterday Girl.

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Other films in the series seem to be:

• Even Dwarfs started small
• Les LIP
• Sept Jours Ailleurs