I samband med symposiet “Slowly learning to survive the desire to simplify – a symposium on critical documents” på Iaspis i Stockholm 15–17 september så presenterar Produktionsenheten ett filmprogram. Under augusti och september visas i samarbete med olika nordiska konstinstutitioner, fyra filmer som relaterar till historieskrivning och dokumentära strategier. Alla visningar har fri entré.
6 sept:
18.00 Lavorare con Lentezza – Guido Chiesa 111 min
20.00 The Gladiators – Peter Watkins 90 min
7 sept:
18.00 This Day – Akram Zataari 90 min
20.00 The revolution will not be televised – Kim Bartley 74 min
Symposiet är initierat och sammanställt av Produktionsenheten. Det stöds och produceras av Iaspis och Nifca. Projektet genomförs med stöd av Nordisk Kulturfond. Produktionsenheten är ett nätverk för konstnärer som arbetar med dokumentärt historieberättande, mediekritik och narrativa experiment. Projektet fokuserar på en kritisk analys av historieskrivning, samt hur berättarstrukturer och undersökandejournalistik används för politiska motiv.
Produktionsenheten består av: Petra Bauer, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Johanna Gustafsson, Sara Jordenö, Conny Karlsson, Runo Lagomarsino, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen och Ylva Westerlund.
För ytterligare info se www.iaspis.com och www.nifca.org.
Synopsis of films
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Chavez: Inside The Coup
Directed and photographed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain Ireland, 2003, Spanish with English subtitles, 74 minutes
“We (the coup organisers) had a deadly weapon: the media.”
Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, speaking on Venevision, a private channel, April 11, 2002
Hugo Chavez, was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. Two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace on April 11, 2002, when he was forcibly removed from office. They were also present 48 hours later when, remarkably, he returned to power amid cheering aides. Their film records what was probably history’s shortest-lived coup d’état. It’s a unique document about political muscle and an extraordinary portrait of the man The Wall Street Journal credits with making Venezuela “Washington’s biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba.”
Lavorare Con Lentezza (to work slowly)
Directed by Guido Chiesa. Writing credits, Guido Chiesa and Wu Ming.
Italy, 2004, In Italian with English subtitles, 111 minutes
Italy. The 70’s. Along with the birth of a free Radio in Bologna (Radio Alice) and the political developments of the radical Italian left, two young men get in touch with a new consciousness which is spreading among the youth. Getting by daily and refusal of given destiny is their way of life, while tragedies surround them. (During a rally a student is shot to death in front of them (real story), a friend of them is sent to prison for the beating up of a moneylender). Directed with a subtle touch, no rhetoric, no stereotype. There’s no judgment, the only aim is just to tell a story. The Italian Seventies are righteously described without taboo. Just watch it and have a two-hours-real-good-time!
This Day
Directed and written by Akram Zataari.
Lebanon, 2003, with English subtitles, 90 minutes.
Shot between Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, this essay superposes modes of transportation, video, and photography to comment on our society’s relationship to iconography, modernity, and questions the meaning and value of documents.
The Gladiators
By Peter Watkins
The Peace Game / Gladiatorerna, Sweden, 1969, with English subtitles, 90 minutes.
‘The Gladiators’ is a bleak satire set in the near future, in which the major powers of the world, East and West, aligned and non-aligned, recognize the possibility of a major world war within our lifetime, and try to forestall it by channeling man’s aggressive instincts in a more controllable manner. They do this by forming an International Commission along the lines of the United Nations, dedicated to fighting a series of contests between teams of selected soldiers from each country. These competitions, which can be fought to the death, are called ‘Peace Games’, and are broadcast on global television via satellite – complete with sponsors and commercials. The film follows Game 256, which is being ‘played’ in the International Peace Game Centre near Stockholm, under the controlling eye of a highly sophisticated computer, hired out to the International Commission by the (neutral) Swedish Army. The international group of officers watching Game 256 decide to eliminate a man and a woman from opposing teams who reach out to each other, because they decide that such forms of communication would be the gravest threat of all to the stability of the existing world-system.
Films screened courtesy of the filmmakers, Sandrews, and Power Pictures.