May'68 season in at 88, Lothian Road, Edinburgh this weekend
ab | 08.05.2008 10:08 | Culture | Education
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:
ab
Comments
Hide the following 8 comments
Go the Cameo
08.05.2008 14:58
IMScotland promote any article against the gentrification of Edinburgh, but the Filmhouse is one of the drivers of that gentrification. The establishment fund culture here to boost tourism and to appear a desirable place for the elite to invest in. It is no accident that the Filmhouse is where the financial district was later sited.
I am torn on this, but I think for sure you should edit the article title to remove the name of the cinema. I like the films the Filmhouse shows but I loathe the place. If I didn't like the films I'd have nothing good to say about the Filmhouse, like I find it easy to criticise government subsidies of opera because I loathe opera. I don't like how government and business fund elitist cultural venues when genuine local artists are left impoverished. I just prefered Edinburgh before it's working classes were exiled to the overspill estates. Nowadays it seems like even the activists have been gentrified.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Filmhouse to activists should be that facing Cinema 2 is a huge room the size of the cinemas that noone knows about. My best friends band played there once but it could also be used for politcal events using your green councillor pals. Of course, there is no need for a big hall if Edinburgh can't muster more than 30 activists for anything.
There are endless amounts of venues in Edinburgh that allow you to show any film you wish to screen for free. I don't like ACE but I could better understand if their regular film screenings were promoted here. In truth more and better activist films were shown in the Brass Monkey pub during the G8 than in every other venue combined, and crucially to a wider audience. And if we are allowed to name check Edinburgh businesses now, Avalanche Records have done more to promote and aid activist causes than the Filmhouse ever will.
dan
Re cameo
08.05.2008 17:04
Recuperation with a capital R.
Fly Posters
More genius logic
08.05.2008 18:19
...and which has been running for 60 years. I don't think gentrification of the city has anything like that long of a history.
But yeah, the Filmhouse, responsible for all Edinburgh's ills and provider of restaurant meals and hookers to Indymedia Scotland contributors...
Charlie Kaufman
Gentrification started when ?
08.05.2008 19:37
Thats your 'Genuis logic' is it ? You think gentrification is a new thing ? I wonder how you explain what the 18th century construction of the New Town was all about ? Gentrification is an aspect of Edinburghs story throughout history, one of it's major influences. This is universal but Edinburgh has to be a prime example of this. Explain why the Filmhouse gets funding that other local cinemas and arts venues are starved of if there isn't establishment backing for the Filmhouse ?
"But yeah, the Filmhouse, responsible for all Edinburgh's ills and provider of restaurant meals and hookers to Indymedia Scotland contributors..."
It's a fact AB could phone up the Filmhouse and blag their way in on the strength of this article. To prove this point a few years ago I name checked Suzies restaurant here and on other forums after another IM admin had advertised a company and I'd complained. I then took a printout to Suzies and asked for a free meal - which I got ! Mind you anyone smart enough to break into a military base is smart enough to break into the Filmhouse so I doubt that is the motivation behind name-checking the venue.
While Edinburgh has a terrible problem with prostitution I doubt any working girl has ever stepped inside the Filmhouse. To be honest, it is an upper class pick-up joint hardly conducive to prostitutes. The ugliest, poorest activist of either sex can be sure of getting chatted up and bought drinks there by someone much older, and much richer 'if you just get ino the car'. It is a generalisation I suppose, but apart from tourists and students, the Filmhouse is mainly populated by the pampered and hypocritical local bourgouis intelligensia.
Seemingly FREAK just had a meeting for another TAA up here.
Isn't that the sort of cultural event better suited to the IM newswire ? If they were in Edinburgh today, would the '68 Parisians really be sitting around in an upper class cinema or would they be taking their own art out onto the streets ? You don't learn about Situations by watching other people do them, you learn about them by creating your own.
dan
Cameo is part of a chain - Filmhouse isn't
09.05.2008 09:19
The Filmhouse receives public funding and has inititiatives and staff to be inclusive to community activism to provide space and screening opportunities.
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The reason for this article to be written and promoted is that theoretical education such as political history is as important as political practice, but is often neglected.
The series in The Guardian for example about 1968 seems to glorify the protests, but mainly by praising the current liberal intellectual elite who claim they have been part of the protests, though they have mainly been taken place on the continent and the US rather than Britain, and there is hardly any mention about the striking workers, who are e.g. the main topic of the films "Reprise Up".
The Filmhouse is not an activist space compared to ACE, Forest and so on but at least as commercial as Brass Monkey, who wanted a guarantee that for every screening organised there, at least 20 people would each buy at least one pint, which couldn't be guaranteed. Maybe they have loosened up their criterias recently, but that was the main reason not to use this pub for activist film screenings. However activist film screenings have been advertised when taking place in Nicol Edwards pub.
Whilst ACE provides interesting film screenings, its public appeal is not as wide and there is always the danger of the film screenings not being reliably provided, mainly because its run by volunteers, whereas the Filmhouse is able to rely on paid staff, meaning its organisation is a bit more reliable, but also people who go there don't feel they have their moral attitude judged by anybody or have to behave in a certain way etc.
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ab
who owns what?
09.05.2008 10:11
Whereas the Cameo is part of the Picturehouse chain:
who describe themselves as:
"City Screen is a limited company registered in England as company number 2310403 and its registered office is 5th Floor, 7/10 Chandos Street, London, W1G 9DQ"
More info:
ab
More on City Screen scumbags
09.05.2008 12:15
For details of last years strike by workers at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton in London, owned by City Screen, same as Cameo.
@
extremist scrape
09.05.2008 21:41
"The Filmhouse is not an activist space compared to ACE, Forest and so on"
Those aren't activist spaces. The Forest is just a students art cafe nowadays and is relies on grants and the patronage of the Green party, which is hardly Autonomous. Neither place produce any actions. You don't meet any working class people in either venue unlike the Brass Monkey.
"Brass Monkey, who wanted a guarantee that for every screening organised there, at least 20 people would each buy at least one pint, which couldn't be guaranteed. Maybe they have loosened up their criterias recently, but that was the main reason not to use this pub for activist film screenings."
Since at least 2004 if you take a movie along and everyone in the projector room agrees to it, they'll show it. I never had a single objection to some niche radical documentaries. So the pub does show activist screenings, it just doesn't allow half the pub to be taken over but a bunch of morose lifestylers who refuse to buy anything from them. If you don't drink you could buy a coffee, seems a fair exchange.
"EdinburghFilmhouse states that they are a registered charity"
Oh, sort of like every elitist public school in the UK is a charity ? Eton must be a great place to hang out eh, it being a charity and all ? Of course maybe there aren't many Etonians in your ranks when you try to stow out the pub. There are plenty of George Heriots alumni though aren't there ? Plenty of Steiner boys and girls in ACE and the Forest - and the Filmhouse.
Thought you were clever when you lit the fuse,
Tore down the house of commons in your brand new shoes,
Compose a revolutionary symphony,
Then went to bed with a charming young thing.
Hello-hurrah - cheers then mate - its the eton rifles,
Hello-hurrah - an extremist scrape - with the eton rifles.
dan