Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ogro (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1979)

By: börek - April 2nd, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 7 April 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Ogro * 1979 * Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo * 111 minutes * In Italian with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

Directed by the legendary Gillo Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers) this film focuses on the Basque struggle in the last years of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. As always with the films of Pontecorvo, the film methodically follows an oppressed community and their attempts to push back against power.

This film unfolds the background of a real life event that happened in 1973. A group of committed Basque ETA freedom-fighters decide to assassinate a fascist military leader named Luis Carrero Blanco, who was Franco’s strongest supporter. Director Gillo Pontecorvo is sympathetic to the Basque cause, and paints a vivid picture of their oppression. They are not seen as unreasonable bloodthirsty murderers, but as radical humanists.

Although it precisely documents the actual preparations that lead to the assassination, it also raises questions about how one achieves social change: by radical violence or by patient determination? For example, although it was an outright murder, many people felt that Blanco’s assassination led to the fall of the dictatorship in 1975. This movie was made less than five years after the actual event, and doesn’t take a firm position on either side, it just raises all these questions.

It stars the always wonderful Gian Maria Volonté, along with Ángela Molina (Buñuel’s This Obscure Object of Desire), and Eusebio Poncela (Almodóvar’s The Law of Desire)… and an original music score by Ennio Morricone.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: five obstrructions

By: börek - March 10th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 March 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: five obstrructions * 87 minutes * In Danish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

If the pandemic revealed anything to me, it is our difficulty to be creative anymore. This entire thing could have given us the possibility to get back to our senses, and it could have been a catalyst to find creative solutions to the problem. Instead what resulted for the most part was a lack of reflection, a total shut-down of the imagination and paralysis. In a way, one of the most intriguing movies ever made by the Danish director von Trier is this constructed documentary… and it shows us how limitations can be used in a positive sense rather than a negative, self-defeating one.

So what is this movie about? One of the artists Lars von Trier looked up to most was a fellow Dane named Jørgen Leth, who was famous for a short movie he made in 1968 called “The Perfect Human”. Von Trier says he watched that film more than twenty times, and found it fascinating. So he decided to approach his mentor, and challenge him to remake his legendary movie five more times, but this time around with a new set of five difficult obstructions that von Trier would give him. In this flick we see Jørgen Leth accept the challenge, how he struggles with it, and when restricted into a corner, how he pushes back with creativity. In this battle von Trier shows how rules and boundaries can be used to spur one’s spirit, rather than deflate it.

We are becoming more and more complacent and dependent on products and gadgets to do things for us. In the process we are losing many of our natural skills. For me, it’s clear we are locked in a mechanism of consumerism and technology that is robbing us of our imagination and spirit. We are addicted to convenience, and given the choice we will always push the easy button. We recently went through a pandemic that confronted and limited us in many ways, but maybe it wasn’t devastating enough. It seems it wasn’t severe enough to unlock us, to free us—it didn’t force us to be creative again. This film is an incredible experiment, a documentary about filmmaking and the nature of creativity itself.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags:

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Changing Skins (Andreas Dresen, 1997)

By: börek - February 1st, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 4 February 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: RAUS AUS DER HAUT * 1997 * (Changing Skins) * Directed by Andreas Dresen * 90 minutes * In German with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

The setting is mid 1970s East Germany, and our story revolves around two high school students, Anna and Marcus, who are inspired by news reports coming from West Germany. What are they excited by? Some new product on the western market, or a Hollywood film? No, they are captivated by the real-life terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof who were robbing banks and kidnapping corporate executives. When their teacher threatens to demote them, which would prevent them from entering university because of their unruly behavior, they decide to drug their teacher, kidnap him, and keep him hostage in a cellar until after they graduate. This little gem is a ‘feel-good’ terrorist film by the East German director Andreas Dresen. It is a romance, but with a sharp wit and sense of humor. Personally, I adore this little gem, and it’s totally unknown.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, few directors from the former East bloc were able to make films in the new ‘united’ Germany. They were mostly run out of the industry, and thrown into unemployment. They were treated as if they had been contaminated by the plague. Andreas Dresen is one of the few voices in cinema that can accurately portray the life and dreams of his former East bloc GDR. And he does this with magic and charm…. and in the process he dispels many of the myths people in the West have about East Germany.

This is a mind-opening flick, with a series of wild twists and turns, but also a down-to-earth sense of humanity that was typical of the GDR. Here there is no trace of the arrogance of big-budget American movies that seem fueled by cocaine and cash. This is a low budget flick with a beautiful sensibility. Even within Germany this film is extremely difficult to see, and outside Germany it is utterly unknown. That makes this an extremely rare screening of this discreet masterpiece.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Sexmisja (Juliusz Machulski, 1984)

By: börek - January 10th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 14 January 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Sexmission (Sexmisja) * directed by Juliusz Machulski * 1984 * 116 minutes * In Polish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

This is easily the most popular comedy to come out of Poland in the 1980s. Because Poland was still in the Eastern block at that time and couldn’t confront their government openly and directly, they instead created indirect attacks…. innuendos that could bypass the censors and reach an audience who could decode and understand them. They were creating their own language of cinema through a specific style of black humor.

Sexmission was one of the major films in this genre, and once again, it’s a film that’s rarely been screened here in the west. The story of this film? Two men kept in hibernation for 50 years learn they are the only surviving living specimens of the male gender in a new underground society run by women. The female archeologist who digs them up concludes that she has found the missing link between women and apes! These two surviving men face harsh treatment from their female guards, and will do anything to save their skin and to re-establish a male dominated population. This is such a wild flick that when viewed today it has the power to offend almost everyone… but I’ll do my best to re-insert it back into its original context to reveal its true meaning. A crazy East-Block black comedy that operates on many levels, starring Jerzy Stuhr (a favorite of Krzysztof Kieslowski).

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Nakba film

By: börek - December 4th, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 December 2023, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Nakba film * free screening * doors open at 8pm * intro & film start at 8.30

At the beginning of this flick, the director comes across a man who tells the story of a secret that everyone else denies and says is a fabrication. But as audio tapes and photographs are taken out of cardboard boxes, the horrible truth of what happened in the village is reconstructed. Additional archival film material, including unused news material that was shot by the BBC, is also brought in to help uncover the tragedy.

Now a cosy gentrified place, the very name of the town becomes tainted, the place feels like a horror story. This is a dynamite documentary that almost feels like a detective story at times, and one that is absolutely crucial to understand current events today. Besides laying out historical events, we are set on a course to wonder at the power of collective amnesia, or rather the forced-amnesia of an entire population. So in that light, although the film is about Israel in 1948, it could also be applicable to many places around the world. For example, it’s similar to how people in America treat their history of the Native American Indians, or the dropping of atomic bombs on civilian targets in Japan. And since we are living in Holland, I would extend that also to how Jews were treated here during World War II when 82% of the Jewish population were sent to death camps, and yet Holland only likes to talk about its almost nonexistent “resistance movement”.

Events are not isolated. History is always contextual or not at all. One has to always look at the bigger picture and not simply emotionally respond to a single incident, otherwise it makes no sense. So in order to understand something that burst out two months ago in Israel and Palestine, you have to also take into account an incident that happened in 1948. Today, as Gaza shifts from an “open air concentration camp” to a death camp, it’s important to understand what kick-started the problem. In 1948 Israel waged its ‘war of independence’, which meant hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed to make room for the new state of Israel. This film examines one small village – – and uses it as a microcosm for a larger tragedy that happened all across Palestine known as “Al Nakba” – the disaster. The film also explores why recognition of the “Nakba” is taboo in Israeli society. And before we jump to any conclusions, let’s keep in mind that the director of this film is Israeli.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)

By: börek - November 10th, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 12 November 2023, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: SAMBIZANGA * 1972 * Directed by Sarah Maldoror * 97 Minutes * In Lingala and Portuguese, with English subtitles * Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

This flick takes place during the Portuguese occupation of Angola and focuses on the liberation struggle of African people living under a dictatorship and secret police force. And although there are freedom fighters that are being rounded up and arrested, this film was directed by a woman and therefore she gives it a more unusual and personal perspective. Different from most movies about colonialism, this one is much more intimate, moves at a human speed, and follows the plight of a single mother’s experience when her husband is arrested and disappears. She goes from police station to police station, from prison to prison, searching for him and what she experiences is a labyrinthine Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

It is based on the 1961 novella The Real Life of Domingos Xavier by José Luandino Vieira. When the film was made Angola was still under a dictatorship, and therefore the film had to be shot in the Congo. Many of the so-called actors in the film are real people that were working in the liberation movements at the time. Two years after the film was made a left-wing coup overthrew the government and liberated the country from the Portuguese. This film created an incredible historical president, helping people to understand what was happening on a grass-roots cultural level. Although the situation is harsh, director Sarah Maldoror was able to create a film of pure poetry. The cinematography shimmers, and one critic compared it to a Caravaggio painting.

This will be a high definition screening.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Nola Darling (Spike Lee, 1986)

By: börek - October 13th, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 15 October 2023, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: NOLA DARLING 1986 * Spike Lee * 82 minutes * In English * Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

Maybe the best feature film by Spike Lee is the one he made at the very beginning, the one that has been kind of dumped, left behind and forgotten about. The one before he started getting more money, and before he started doing the Hollywood shtick (שטיק). In a sense, it is an ode to the spirit of women, and the right for a woman to own her own body and decide her own fate.

The main character of this movie is Nola Darling, who has an ongoing relationship with three different men. It must’ve been almost impossible to find an unknown actress that would be able to handle a role like this, and Tracy Camilla Johns absolutely sparkles in an incredibly naturalistic way. This being a Spike Lee joint means that it is also about urban black culture, but that is actually in the background in relation to the film’s real focus – Nola Darling’s struggle for autonomy. It’s a surprisingly playful film, not only in its content, but also in its style and structure. Like I said, this was made before Spike went straight. Having said that, there is one sensitive scene that was rushed through insensitively, and Lee says in hindsight he regrets it. Once again, the great thing about these community cinemas is that it gives us the opportunity to discuss these issues after the screening.

It was shot in shimmering black-and-white, and there is a kind of lush sensuality in its camerawork, giving respect to the human body in ways that we don’t see in cinema much these days. It keeps its rough edges and is leagues away from a glossy CGI’d, photoshopped look, offering us a great alternative to the Barbie sham that is being hyped at the moment. This first film by Spike Lee was considered to be groundbreaking when it came out and a triumph of independent cinema, but for years now it’s been almost impossible to see. It’s snappy, clever, charming, and creative, but it’s Tracy Camilla Johns’ disarming performance as Nola that ignites the entire project and sets it ablaze.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: ,

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Air-doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)

By: börek - September 3rd, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 September 2023, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: AIR DOLL * (空気人形, Kūki Ningyō) * Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda * 2009 * 116 minutes * In Japanese with English subtitles * Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

The premise of this flick is quite simple. A middle-aged man has a life-size sex doll he calls Nozomi at home that he makes love to every night. He doesn’t only have sex with Nozomi, he also dresses her up and has dinner with her. What can I say? People are lonely in this overcrowded modern world we live in, especially in big cities like Tokyo that are ironically packed with people. Seems like a contradiction, but is certainly true.

Then something unusual happens – one day the lifeless doll begins to come to life, as if she is suddenly filled with human feelings and a soul. Once this doll starts breathing and moving, she is as confused as anyone else about who she is. Since her owner is away at work, she goes out for a walk trying to understand the world around her, and the story unfolds from there.

As you approach the film, you must remember this is not an American film, which would take cheap shots with such a story and exploit it. Instead, this flick is weirdly humanist, with a sort of melancholic bent. It is Japanese director Kore-eda’s way of mapping out modern life, an attempt to help us see the world around us differently. Starring Korean actress Bae Doo-na as the titular air doll.

This will be a high-definition screening.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Tags: , ,