Screening 4 - Z by Costa-Gavra

In 1963, Grigorios Lambrakis, MD, a popular leftist Member of the Greek Parliament, was assassinated in Thesssaloniki, Greece by goons employed by the extreme Right. Eventually the right-wing establishment fell and a precarious democracy was established, only to lead to a coup on 21 April 1967, by a military junta. The colonels' dictatorship lasted for 7 years.
A Greek writer, Vassilis Vassilikos, recounted the events around the Lambrakis murder in a novel, Z, in 1966. The title comes from a combination of the sound of the Greek letter Z, which is pronounced approximately like "Long Live", and the English sound of Z, which means in Greek, " he lives, he is alive" . Such shouts were uttered by the record crowd which attended Lambrakis' funeral in Athens. (Some people think that Z symbolizes the end, but the last letter of the Greek alphabet is Omega. ) A Greek exile when he made Z, set in the country of his birth, Costa-Gavras is most interested in the motivations and misuses of power.
When the movie came out, the Junta was already in place. The film was made with French money. It could not, of course, be shot in Greece, so Algeria was used as a substitute. So we revisit Algeria in a way given our previous screening of the Battle of Algiers.

In Z, Gavras used a simple trick, so to speak, but a revolutionary one. His innovation was to combine European political awareness and commitment with the vigorous, dynamic, well-paced style of Hollywood action movies. The combination was unique and uniquely effective. There had been political films in Europe but these were in the intellectual mold or--in the case of the more familiar ones--in the shape of propaganda movies, whether Eisenstein's classics on the Russia Revolution (The Battleship Potemkin, 10 Days That Shook The World, etc. ) or Leni Riefenstahl's paeans to Naziism ( The Triumph Of The Will, Olympia) .

Directed by Costa-Gavras (Constantine Gavras). Written by Gavras & Jorge Semprun from the eponymous novel by Vassilis Vassilikos. Photography: Raoul Coutard. Music: Mikis Theodorakis. Cast: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin, Irene Papas, Charles Denner, Francois Perier, Marcel Bozzufi, Georges Geret et al. 127 minutes.

Z won an Oscar in 1970 for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Editing. Z is also the first of a loosely connected political trilogy which include The Consent (1971) and State of Siege (1973). Plans to show the State of Siege at a later date are already made.

You can read another introduction to the film as well as a recent interview with the director by Ian Christie (2004) here:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/interviews/costa-gavras.html

You can find an amateur copy of the script here:

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/z/z-script-transcript-costa-gavras.html

You can watch a short clip with actual footage from the period of the Junta in Athens here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SS1K34P0Yc8

Screening 3 - The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo

Director Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film The Battle of Algiers concerns the violent struggle in the late 1950s for Algerian independence from France, where the film was banned on its release for fear of creating civil disturbances. Certainly, the heady, insurrectionary mood of the film, enhanced by a relentlessly pulsating Ennio Morricone soundtrack, makes for an emotionally high temperature throughout. With the advent of the "war against terror" in recent years, the film's relevance has only intensified. The classic anti-colonial film. A fast-paced portrayal of the spitral of violence in the late 1950's and early 1960's that led France to pull out of its Algerian colony. Encapsulating the terrorist maxim that an act of terror will draw out a state reaction of greater brutality which will therefore justify in the eyes of the people a new terroristic outrage, Pontecorvo manages to convey the brutality of the terrorist as well as that of the state.
Shot in a gripping, quasi-documentary style, The Battle of Algiers uses a cast of untrained actors coupled with a stern voiceover. Initially, the film focuses on the conversion of young hoodlum Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) to FLN (the Algerian Liberation Front.) However, as a sequence of outrages and violent counter-terrorist measures ensue, it becomes clear that, as in Eisenstein's October, it is the Revolution itself that is the true star of the film.

The Washington Post Article on the screening of the film by the Pentagon for 'training purposes' that was raised in the discussions:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45136-2003Aug25.html

Screening 2 - The Gospel According to Matthew by P.P.Pasolini

Pasolini was drawn to Matthew's version of the Gospel because he found it "rigorous, demanding and absolute," and he would film it accordingly. Reconstructing events from the Annunciation to the Resurrection with none of the familiar sentimentality and spectacle of Hollywood's biblical epics, Pasolini employs the techniques of cinéma vérité (hand-held cameras, the zoom lens, an unadorned, austere, monochrome visual style) to create a remarkable sense of documentary-like immediacy. The realism is heightened by the southern Italian locations and an expressive, impressive cast of non-professionals, including Pasolini's own mother as the adult Virgin, and Spanish student Enrique Irazoqui (cast after Pasolini abandoned his plans to use the too-old Jack Kerouac) in a forceful, dominating performance as an intense, determined Christ. An eclectic musical score, ranging from Bach to Billie Holiday, is also used to great effect. Pasolini manages surprising fidelity to his source material even as he explores the relationship between politics and myth. The result is an astonishingly personal, vital and dynamic work.

Dedicated site, various resources:
http://www.pasolini.org/



Biographical, list of films and other texts: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/pasolini.html


Pasolini's texts, paintings and other material: http://www.karaartservers.ch/p.p.pasolini/pasolini.html


Dedicated Italian site: http://www.pasolini.net/

Screening 1 - The Road to Guananamo Bay by Winterbottom

If you missed the first screening you can download the film from the site below for free:http://www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatures/microsites/G/guantanamo/

A Profile of the Director can be found here: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/winterbottom.html

The Official site of the Film: http://www.roadtoguantanamomovie.com/

A Review of the Film by the New York Review of Books:The Prisoners Speak, By Jonathan Raban, Volume 53, Number 15 · October 5, 2006.

Read at: http://mpmail.bbk.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fetch.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nybooks.com%2Farticles%2F19356

Opening...

The Testimonies Group got organized spontaneously sometime in 2006. It is currently based at Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street. It is not a formal organization of the College, but it has found a hospitable caravan indeed.

The group brings together at an informal and social setting academics, postgraduate and undergraduate students and nonacademics from various fields. It was originally set up by an academic and some of his students at the law school of Birkbeck College, but it now comprises within its regulars friends from film studies, politics, psychology, literature, philosophy, science and the arts and so forth from various institutions in and around London. Anyone is welcome to join us. There is no need to get in contact, though if you like do so. Just show up at any of the planned events and do let us know of your email address so that we can enlist you on the contacts.

We do not wish to unite ourselves under a common umbrella. The only thing that brings us together is that we like to meet up and watch films of interest. We don't share a politics as such, either. But we seem to be all concerned with apathy, egocentrism, career-radicalism and the pseudo-humanity that surrounds us. We also do not seem to hold the academic platform as a necessarily liberatory one. This already entails questions that we seem to be concerned with.

The testimonies group's purpose lies in question then as well as in organizing meetings and events of interest in relation to four main areas of concern: politics, philosophy, law and film.

The primary activity of the group at the moment is the following:

• The Testimonies Group meets once every month on a Friday evening at 18.30 to screen and discuss each time a film and matters that arise in relation to it, as to politics, film, philosophy, law and our everyday lives.

We are concerned with four main initial questions:

What does it mean to act? And to act ‘politically’ anylonger for that matter?

What does it mean to bear witness to an event?

When and how are subjects formed and deformed in our everyday lives?

When it comes to considering a ‘testimony’, where does its authority, if any,

come from?

The actual screening starts at 630. You are welcome to bring some drinks with you if you like. We then usually follow this up with someone's short introduction to the discussion and an informal discussion open to all. You are welcome to just attend the screening if you prefer. The screenings are staged for educational and discussion purposes and not for any commercial gain.

You can contact the group by writing to: BirkbeckGroupTestimonies@googlemail.com