The 2012 Programme.........

Sunday 12 February 2012

10.30am for 11am, at the Renoir Cinema.

JUST DO IT

Emily James, UK 2011 [12A], 88 mins

Emily James spent a year within the environmental movement documenting the clandestine activities of the major players. In this feature documentary, she presents an insider's account of the new global movement, an independent group funded by volunteers; inspiring, anarchic individuals with inventive strategies challenge the multi-nationals, frustrate the police and create confusion. This film shows what one group of committed individuals can achieve.

NOT IN OUR NAME

Gabrielle Tierney, Ireland/UK 2009 [Advised 18], 30 mins

Nine men were totally acquitted of their £350,000 criminal damage to the International Arms manufacturer in Derry in 2006. The decision became a legal benchmark; an act of deliberate civil disobedience recognised as a weapon in the fight for peace. This film documents the victory and their solidarity with the people in the Lebanese town of Qana; knowledge of the production of those weapons and their use in the Israeli massacre became an impetus for the men to act.

Discussion led by Emily James, Gabrielle Tierney and Anne-Marie O’Reilly, Outreach Co-ordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade


** Dochouse Thursdays is a weekly screening of other award winning international documentaries between the Richmix, Tricycle and Riverside cinemas. Check them out at www.dochouse.org 

Sunday 11 March 2012

10.30am for 11am, at the Renoir Cinema. 

 JAFFA: THE ORANGE’S CLOCKWORK

Eyal Sivan, Belgium/Germany/France/Israel 2010 [Advised E], 86 mins, French/Arabic/Hebrew/English with EST

Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan peels back the orange skin to expose the history and layers of meaning in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict through the Jaffa brand, a globalised image reproduced in the media and authenticated by historians as the symbolic life-affirming fruit of the 'Holy Land'.  The image of the orange, rebranded by the Palestine Liberation Organisation as a grenade, is the fruit dripping with the blood of the lost lands and its people.

 BARKING ISLAND

Serge Avédikian, France 2010 [Advised 12A],15 mins

In 1910 the Turkish authorities rounded up 30,000 stray dogs in Constantinople and transported them to die on a deserted island in the Bosporus. The haunting images and soundtrack in this animation foretell the genocide of the Armenian people which was initiated by the Turks in 1915.  This film won the Palme D'Or in 2010.

Discussion led by Sarah Colbourne, Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Frank Barat, Co-ordinator, Russell Tribunal on Palestine and co-author of Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation (Pluto 2011), and Vaughan Pilikian, filmmaker (Hammer and Flame)

Sunday 15 April 2012

10.30am for 11am, at the Renoir Cinema.

COME TO MY COUNTRY: JOURNEYS WITH KABIR AND FRIENDS  (Chalo Hamara Des)

Shabnam Virmani, India 2008 [Advised 12A], 98 mins, Hindi/Malwi with EST

Shabnam Virmani  illuminates the world of Kabir, the 15th century mystical poet of north India through the friendship between Indian folk singer Prahlad Tipanya, a ’low caste’ Dalit singer, and an American academic Linda Hess.  Using poetry and song the film juxtaposes familiar concepts of urban and rural, classical and folk music, and secular and fundamentalist thought in the weaving of the wisdom of the ancient world with a contemporary secular one.

THE LAST RITES

Yasmine Kabir, Bangladesh 2008 [Advised E], 17 mins

Yasmine Kabir, in this silent film takes us to the shipbuilding yards of Chittagong, Bangledesh, where thousands of men, driven by poverty, each year seek jobs.  She links the ‘last rites’ rituals of ship breaking with the survival of a community willing to work in an environmental wasteland of toxic waste and asbestos. The film won the top award at the Film South Asian Festival in 2009 where it was compared with Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran.

Discussion led by Ayub Aulia, of the Pakistan Writers’ Guild, writer, poet, art critic and musicologist

Sunday 13 May 2012

10.30am for 11am at the Renoir Cinema

OFFSIDE

Jafar Panahi, Iran 2006 [PG], 93 mins, Farsi with EST

A group of girls disguised as boys fail in their attempt to watch the World Cup qualifier in Tehran's Azadi Stadium but hear the closing victory en route to the regime's vice squad to receive punishment for transgressing the moral code.  In this witty and funny film, football is a metaphor for criticism of the regime and the symbolic changes foreshadowed by its young people;  meanwhile the director is held in prison and denied both personal and professional freedom.

THE GREAT TRADE ROBBERY

Grant Gilchrist, UK 2008 [12A], 7.5 mins

This incisive animation produced by Manic Films Production and the World Trade Movement presents familiar arguments about the balance of power in the globalised world.  Addressing the dominant players in Brussels, the capitalist wolf outlines to an audience how the global market strategies in tourism, finance and energy can create wealth but is foiled by the sharp sheep's exposé of the moral issues and an alternative strategy.

Discussion led by Majid Beheshti, Iranian film critic and magazine editor, Azar Sephr of the Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR) and Megan Dobney, Regional Secretary, Southern & Eastern Region TUC and Executive Member of the National Assembly of Women.

Previous Programmes

Sunday 8 January 2012

10.30am for 11am start at the Renoir Cinema. 

LOCKED OUT

Joan Sekler, US 2010 [12A], 60 mins

The multinational, Rio Tinto group, historically known for draconian measures, attempted to severely cut the pay and conditions of 570 borax miners in the isolated, desert town of Boron, California, in 2010.  Joan Sekler, independent filmmaker, crafts the course of the miners' action during the 107 days of a lock out. With solidarity at local and national level and the support of their community the miners agree to a new contract with the majority of their benefits intact.

UNDER THE CRANES

Emma-Louise Williams, UK 2011 [12A], 56 mins

Director Emma-Louise Williams has collaborated with Hackney poet and resident Michael Rosen to produce a film-poem that explores the inter-connection between ourselves and where we live, based on his play Hackney Voices.  The changing face of Hackney and its residents emerges through current images, urban sounds and rare historical footage, and Rosen's voice illuminates and questions the threats and the choices fostered by the dubious activities of Hackney Council and the regeneration of the area.

Discussion led by Emma-Louise Williams, Michael Rosen and Shane Enright - Amnesty International UK Trade Union Campaigns Manager/ AI Global Trade Union Adviser.

Sunday 11th December

10.30 for 11am start at the Renoir Cinema.

THE COCA-COLA CASE

German Gutierrez/ Carmen Garcia, Canada 2009 (E) 80 mins

Labour rights lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth are activists for the 'Stop the Killer-Coke campaign,' which has seen Ray Rodgers put the Coca-Cola empire on trial. Coca-Cola stands accused of the drying of water wells in India and the torture/ murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Columbia, Guatemala and Turkey. Predictably, two courts have already dismissed their claims but the struggle continues to make the giant multinational drinks company accountable for policies of profit over people.

VILLAGE LIVES, DISTANT POWERS

Peggy Froerer, India/ UK (E) 32mins.

Produced by Margaret Dickinson

Focusing on one village in central India, this film asks why the poor are routinely deprived of basic services; how does a culture of bribery impact on their everyday lives. The story is told from the perspective of the anthropologist/ filmmaker who takes up a problem with a senior civil servant and soon finds herself also paying court to a politician. It poses sharply the potential contradiction in the idea that an anthropologist is a 'participant observer.'

Discussion led by Tony Benn, filmmaker Peggy Froerer, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University, and writer and filmmaker Margaret Dickinson.

*Tickets for this event must be obtained as usual but they will be issued free. We appreciate donations to cover venue and other expenses.



Sunday 13th November

10.30 for 11am start at the Renoir Cinema.

UK PREMIERE

DEADLY DUST (TODESSTAUB)

Frieder Wagner, Germany 2006 (E) 93 mins

In a science-based documentary, we accompany Prof Gunther, epidemiologist and specialist in tropical diseases, and his expert colleagues as they explore the effects of depleted uranium ammunition used in Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia, though banned by the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Winds can carry them clear across our planet, leaving behind a path of destruction. The surge in post-war birth defects indicates an epidemic of reproductive abnormalities. We express our gratitude to Frieder Wagner for facilitating today's premiere.

UK PREMIERE

WITH THE LINCOLN BRIGADE IN SPAIN

Henri Cartier- Bresson/ Herbert Kline, US 1938 (E) 18 mins

Internationally acclaimed photographer Cartier- Bresson filmed the Brigade, which had emerged in response to the US policy of non intervention. Drawn from all wakes of life and thought to be the first military unit commanded by a black officer, the volunteers trained alongside Spanish troops and became known for their bravery. In 2010 the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive discovered, restored and re-released this cinema treasure.

Discussion led by Rae Street, CND Council member and active in the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, John Green, former documentary filmmaker, and Helen Graham, Professor of Modern European History at Royal Holloway University of London.

The November programme was co-sponsored by CND and the International Brigade Memorial Trust.  

Sunday 9 October 2011

10.30am for 11am, at the Renoir Cinema.

SYLVIA PANKHURST: EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE,

Ceri Dingle/Viv Regan, UK 2011 [E], DVD, 90 min

The contribution made by campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst to human rights is contextualised in this documentary researched and produced by over 100 volunteers. The film contains interviews with her son Richard Pankhurst and his wife Rita as well as suffrage historians and rare archival footage. While her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel focused on a limited suffrage of upper class women, Sylvia devoted her time to improving women’s lives during the war in the slums of East London. Initially establishing nurseries and a free clinic, the movement for universal suffrage encompassed the women’s struggle, the Irish struggle and the anti war movement and aroused the wrath of politicians.

AWRA AMBA: UTOPIA IN ETHIOPIA,

Paulina Tervo, Ethiopia 2010 [E], DVD, 28.5 mins

Awra Amba is a model village nestling in the hills of northern Ethiopia promoting radical politics in a conservative culture:  gender equality, sharing the workload and rejecting traditional religion.  Filmmaker Paulina Tervo brings us the vision of its founder, local farmer Zumra Nuru and the project to build a new senior school to government standards. The fundraising events will have a boost in the autumn with the Great Ethiopian Run, a campaign to provide scholarships for young women in the Horn of Africa. The Sylvia Pankhurst scholarship is one of their partners.

Discussion led by Ceri Dingle and Mary Davis, Professor of Labour History at London Metropolitan University.

Sunday 11th September 2011

10.30 for 11am, at the Renoir Cinema.

PICCADILLY, 

Ewald André Dupont, UK 1929 silent [PG], DVD, 108 mins

Ewald Andre Dupont, a German émigré, voices the sexual and racist tensions in this London based melodrama of the late silent cinema. Set in a night club, Sosho, the dishwasher attracts the attention of the club owner with her striking dancing and the resentment of the lead dancer, the club owner’s former lover. The black and white tones tinged with amber and blue tinted scenes glide between fashionable jazz age London and the underworld of Limehouse.  We screen now to the newly commissioned score by Neil Brand, recorded by some of UK’s leading jazz players.

A PALACE FOR US: 

Tom Hunter, UK 2010 [Advised E], 18 mins

The artist and filmmaker Tom Hunter entices us to look afresh at the Woodberry Down Estate in East London.  Filmed in and around the Estate, the memories and experiences of residents, who have lived there since it opened are beautifully re-captured through dramatisations and evoked through sound and image. The film challenges the negative stereotypes of working class culture; these residents present the hopes and dignity that the newly formed welfare state had offered to communities reeling from the poverty and anxiety of the 30’s and 40’s.

Discussion led by Bryony Dixon, Curator of Silent Film at the BFI National Archives, Tom Hunter, Senior Research Fellow and lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and Lizzie Woods, Public & Commercial Services Union (PCS) organiser, with the Royal Cleaners’ Campaign for the London Living Wage

9 January 2011

Full details of our January to May programme are available.

10.30 for 11am SUNDAY 9 JANUARY 2011

MICKEY MOUSE GOES TO HAITI

National Labor Committee, US 1996 [E]

DVD, 17 mins

This video documents the harsh conditions in which some of the Disney Company's garments and products are manufactured in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Workers are intimidated and will be fired if they try to unionise. While a living wage would only cost the corporation 58 cents an hour to pay the contracted factory workers, the wage doesn't even come close to that.

TROUBLE THE WATER

Karl Deal and Tia Lessin, US 2008 [15]

DVD, 90 mins

The day before Hurricane Katrina makes landfall-twenty-four year old aspiring rap artist Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. "It's going to be a day to remember," Kim declares. With no means to leave the city and equipped with just a few supplies and her hi 8 camera, she and her husband Scott tape their harrowing ordeal as the storm rages, the nearby levee breaches, and floodwaters fill their home and their community. Shortly after the levees fail, their battery dies.

Seamlessly weaving 15 minutes of this home movie footage shot the day before and the morning of the storm with archival news segments and verite footage shot over the next two years, directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal tell a story of remarkable people surviving not only failed levees, bungling bureaucrats and armed soldiers, but also their own past.

In addition to Jeremy Corbyn MP and Ben Sprung as discussion leaders, we shall have Christian Wisskirchen, Chair of the Haiti Support Group. Haitian guest Georges Werleigh is due to reach London on Sunday morning and may be able join us. We shall be greatly honoured if we are able to welcome him.

12 December 2010

11am screening at the Renoir Cinema, London.

The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time!
Jim Brown, US 1982
78 mins
[E]

Documentary about the blacklisted folk group, and the events leading to their triumphant return to Carnegie Hall: ‘The Weavers’ were Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman. They sang traditional folk
songs, blues, labour songs and ballads, selling millions of records at the height of their popularity and inspiring the commercial ‘folk boom’ of the 1950s and 1960s. During the McCarthy ‘red scare’ Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were denounced as Communists and the Weavers were banned from performing on television or radio, Decca Records terminating their recording contract in 1953 and deleting their songs from its catalogue. We are grateful to Jim Brown Productions for permission to screen this print.

Whose Conspiracy?
Chris Reeves, UK 2010

35mins

[Advised E]

After the 1972 building workers’ national strike twenty-four trade unionists were tried at Shrewsbury in a hostile act to criminalise picketing. Some were given severe prison sentences. Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson soon became known as the ‘Shrewsbury 2’. Des died following treatment meted out to him during his incarceration. Successive Governments, both Conservative and Labour, have remained unresponsive to the calls for these perverse judgments to be set aside, and for these men to be cleared. We première the film in support of a renewed campaign to right this miscarriage of justice.

Work in Progress on a Work in Progress
Margaret Dickinson, UK 2010
10 mins
[Advised E]

London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics turned a large area of the city west of Stratford into one of Europe’s biggest building sites. This film asks what the massive development will mean for construction
workers. Will the Olympic Delivery Authority be able to keep its promises about jobs and training? As the title implies, this is provisional material from an ongoing project. The purpose is to provoke responses that will feed into continuing work on a longer documentary about construction workers and the influence of the Olympic development on prospects, conditions and training.

Discussion led by Chris Reeves, Margaret Dickinson and Tony O’Brien, National Secretary, Construction Safety Campaign.

14 November 2010

11am screening at the Renoir Cinema, London.

Salt of the Sea (Milh Hadha Al-Bahr)
Annemarie Jacir, Palestine/France 2008
104 mins
[12A]

This first feature film by a Palestinian woman, won critical acclaim and numerous prizes. Michael Moore called it ‘absolutely one of the best films I’ve seen in years’. Soraya, a Palestinian refugee born in Brooklyn, fulfils her lifelong dream of ‘returning’ to Palestine after she discovers that her grandfather's savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian who longs to leave forever. Driven by frustration, they break the law, become fugitives and together search for the ruins of old homes and villages, icons of the Palestinian struggle that evoke loss and tragedy.

The Silent War: Israel's Blockade of Gaza
Kashfi Halford, UK 2010
10 mins
[E]

The film examines what the blockade means for the 1.5 million people of Gaza, as they struggle to rebuild their lives over a year after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

Discussion led by Betty Hunter, General Secretary, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, HE Prof Manual Hassassian of the Palestinian General Delegation UK and Andrea Becker, Head of Advocacy, Medical Aid for Palestinians.