March Films (UPDATED!)
TWO special events! Plus, Japanese surrealism and more lesbians.
Note: This post has been updated with a change in time! The March 6th screening of Concerning Violence will take place one hour later, at 18:00. All other screenings will start at 17:00, as usual.
This month in Film Club: Lauryn Hill and archival footage recontextualizes Frantz Fanon’s seminal anti-colonial text, three minutes of video expand into infinity, childhood memories distort the Japanese countryside into kaleidoscopic surrealism, and a quiet Nevada ranch sets the stage for the greatest lesbian Western ever told.
If you’re interested in introducing a film yourself, contact us at uvafilmclub@gmail.com or @uvafilmclub on Instagram!
Thursday March 6th, 18:00 @ OMHP (Buzzhouse)
UVA FILM CLUB x ROSA x UVA INTIFADA: Concerning Violence (Göran Olsson, 2014)
Göran Olsson, 2014 - with an introduction by Bastian Baak
In Collaboration with Radical Organisation of Students in Amsterdam (ROSA) and UVA Intifada.
UvA Intifada is a student organisation, fighting for an academic boycott at the University of Amsterdam in solidarity with the Palestinian people. As students at the UvA, we are working to pressure the University of Amsterdam to cut all ties with zionist institutions, and divest from all zionist companies and their allies.
‘Concerning Violence’ depicts various decolonial movements and armed struggles in Africa during the mid-20th century. The documentary is based on archival footage from the 1960s and 1970s, primarily sourced from Swedish television archives. These visuals are paired with Frantz Fanon's work, 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961), specifically the chapter titled "Concerning Violence.”, and is narrated by US artist and activist Lauryn Hill. It is structured as a series of nine chapters, each focusing on different aspects of anti-colonial resistance and the broader context of colonial violence, oppression, and exploitation.
‘Concerning Violence’ received critical acclaim for its bold storytelling and its ability to connect historical struggles to contemporary issues of race, power, and inequality. It was praised for its use of archival material and its unflinching portrayal of the harsh realities of colonialism.
It excellently illustrates how decolonial struggles can turn to violence in order to reach their goals, and that it is often justified to use any means necessary to free the oppressed peoples of the world.
This documentary therefore teaches us a lesson about decolonial movements and the moral ambiguities of resistance. It also lets us reflect on how we view current struggles against imperialism, especially regarding Palestine. With the current events unfolding in Palestine, and the urgent need for international support of the Palestinian resistance movement against zionism, it seems like a good time to screen this documentary at the UVA Film Club.
Thursday March 13th, 17:00 @ Universiteitstheater
SPECIAL EVENT- Three Minutes: A Lengthening + Q&A With Director Bianca Stigter
Bianca Stigter, 2021 - in conversation with Michal Bilski
Join us on Thursday March 13th from 17:00 at Universiteitstheater for a special screening of THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING (2021) by Dutch filmmaker, historian, journalist and writer Bianca Stigter. Stigter, who recently received an honorary doctorate from UvA, will be present during the event and engage in a Q&A session after the screening.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a film essay that explores a surviving fragment of a family film shot in 1938 within a Jewish community in the town of Nasielsk in Poland, offering a poignant reflection on the Holocaust, the passage of time, and the deeper significance of film. The film is based on the book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (2014) by American musician Glenn Kurtz, whose grandfather David shot the footage. The short three minutes of the clip are lengthened in many unpredictable ways, zooming in and out, focusing on the most minute details of the frame. These fragments raise as many questions as much as provide answers. The poetic narration of Helena Bonham Carter guides us through the stories of the strangers and invites us to engage with its mysteries.
This event is free of charge and open to all UvA students, alumni, and staff. Make sure to reserve your place for this event here!
Thursday March 20th, 17:00 @ OMHP (Buzzhouse)
Pastoral: To Die In The Country
Shūji Terayama, 1974 - with an introduction by Gia Tue Trinh
“Based on Terayama’s autobiographical collection of tanka poetry, Pastoral: To Die in the Country entrenches itself in the framework of a child’s game—“those long games of hide and seek”—as a filmmaker seeks out his own sense of self within the faint sketches of his past, re-imagining the countryside of his adolescence. Fragmented and prismatic, Terayama’s surreal manifestation of childhood is a refracted mémoire of broken time, inhabited by carnival acts, provincial superstitions and a chorus of cloaked women. Shot in Terayama’s native Aomori against the backdrop of the haunted Mount Osore—a gateway to the underworld in Japanese mythology—Pastoral epitomizes Terayama’s unclassifiable brilliance. The film’s angura theatricality and phantasmagorical imagery are rich with symbolism, confronting the wounds of Showa’s imperial legacy, displays of the perverse amid sexual deviance and coupling desires, and the inevitable follies of youth.”
Text from Japan Society.
Thursday March 27th, 17:00 @ OMHP (Buzzhouse)
Desert Hearts
Donna Deitch, 1984 - with an introduction by Mel Ketelaars
Desert Hearts is a lesbian classic, showing a surprisingly tender and romantic love story between two women for its time in history. The movie is directed by Donna Deitch, who raised money for its small production budget and her investors largely consisted of women and queer people. Both in its content and in its making the film is a small triumph for women and queer people, putting out an alternative to depressing or highly censored films. In the film, literature professor Vivian Bell (played by Helen Schafer) comes to Nevada to divorce her husband, and meets Cay (played by Patricia Charbonneau), 10 years her junior, and they are immediately drawn to each other, getting closer and closer into each other’s orbit. The film shows an interesting push and pull in its location, the open and wide desert offering freedom, while at the same time being a place with prying eyes and conservatism. But the film does not shy away from this love story, making it one of the few that doesn’t, even compared to lesbian films made today.