APRIL's SCREENING: Don’t Touch The White Woman!

Sunday 12th APRIL
3pm at 56a Infoshop

Paris no longer exists. The destruction of Paris is only one striking example of the fatal illness that is currently wiping out all the major cities, and that illness is in turn only one of the numerous symptoms of the material decay of this society. But Paris had more to lose than any other. Bliss it was to be young in this city when for the last time it glowed with so intense a flame.
- Guy Debord, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni



******THIS FILM IS ALSO BEING SHOWN 21st MARCH 2PM AT THE RIO CINEMA WITH GUEST SPEAKER (WRITER/FILM-MAKER) NEIL GRAY******


Marco Ferreri, Touche Pas a La Femme Blanche / Don’t Touch The White Woman! (FR, 1973) 109 mins.

Following in the wake of his first considerable success, La Grande Bouffe (1973), Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri decided to reunite

his ensemble cast and commence filming his next feature, Don’t Touch The White Woman!, right in middle of “le trou des Halles”, a crater formed by the demolition of the ancient market quarter in the centre of Paris. The crater, with its jagged precipices, sculpted by excavation machinery and dynamite, oddly resembled the panoramic canyons depicted in classical westerns.

The plot revolves around a droll and war-crazed General Custer (Marcello Mastroianni), arriving in France with the mission of “pacifying” and removing the natives, in order to clear the area for the construction of railroads (which happens to be the same reason for the actual dismantling of old Les Halles). The location’s particularity provided the locus for Ferreri to apply his particular vision of combined histories by overlapping alternate times and spaces in recent U.S and French history. Thus the natives stand in for the poor inhabitants of Paris, but also refer to the insurgent Vietnamese and Algerians fighting colonial power. War and capitalism, financial speculation and state intervention are connected in a farcical costume drama enacted in midst of the very present creative destruction of urban Paris.

">An essay on the film by Miljenko Skoknic:
http://marcoferreri.weebly.com/ferreri-femme-blanche.html

Script of Debord's In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni:
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/ingirum.htm

An invisible world of work?

I made this pamphlet to accompany Sunday's screening, but unfortunately ran out of time to print it in sufficient copies to distribute on the day. It will be available to download here and may be distributed at future screenings.

Michael Glawogger's film, Workingman's Death, makes the argument that in the 21st Century gruelling physical work has not disappeared completely but rather, by a post-fordist sleight of hand capital has shifted East and South away from a de-industrialising West to seek out cheaper labour in unregulated, non-unionised markets.

This online pamphlet seeks to raise the question of the representation of work. Bringing together two texts, one by Richard Pithouse and one by Sergio Bologna, each with completely opposing views of work, representation and social reproduction, this pamphlet is intended to critically question assumptions about an invisible but 'hegemonic' cognitariat labouring in the service economies of the Global North and an impoverished and aestheticised sub-proletariat labouring in the Global South.

Download the pamphlet
http://www.divshare.com/i/6813821-aab

MARCH's SCREENING: WORKING MAN'S DEATH

SUNDAY 15th MARCH
3pm at 56A Infoshop










Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible?
Where can we still find it in the 21st century?
Workingman's Death follows the trail of the HEROES in the illegal mines of the Ukraine, sniffs out GHOST among the sulfur workers in Indonesia, finds itself face to face with LIONS at a slaughterhouse in Nigeria, mingles with BROTHERS as they cut a huge oil tanker into pieces in Pakistan, and joins Chinese steel workers in hoping for a glorious FUTURE.

Meanwhile, the future is now in Germany, where a major smelting plant
of bygone days has been converted into a bright and shiny leisure park.




Work can be many things. Often it is barely visible; sometimes,
difficult to explain;and in many cases, impossible to portray.
Hard manual labor is visible, explainable, portrayable.
This is why I often think of it as the only real work.
Michael Glawogger






Concept and Realization: Michael Glawogger (FILMOGRAPHY)
Austria/Germany 2005 / 122 Min. / 35mm / 1:1,85 / color / DOLBY SRD-EX
Produced by: Lotus Film GmbH/Vienna and Quinte Film/Freiburg
with arte G.E.I.E.


http://www.workingmansdeath.com