Avatar has become a pop culture nexus for Palestinian rights activists.  The film portrays the struggle between a heartless interstellar corporation and the Na’vi, lithe and luminescent aliens indigenous to a planet rich in the lucrative mineral “unobtanium.” The Na’vi live atop a rich deposit of this shimmering ore, so the corporation and its thugs want to remove them, by any means necessary. For activists, the film is an apt analogy to Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory. So what do these idealistic youth do? Dress up like the aliens.

The protestors appeared in Bil’in, a Palestinian town cut in half by the Wall (whatever adjective, security or Apartheid, no one on either side disagrees that the structure is a wall) and Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem which Israeli settlers have laid claim to and from which Israeli authorities have evicted Palestinians.

When I was in Bil’in in April 2009, the buzzword on the banners was “Occupation Flu,” play to the now-almost-forgotten H1N1 craze. Demonstrators gathered every Friday after prayer to confront Israeli soldiers who meet Palestinians’ stones with tear gas and flash-bang bombs. I was there to write a story, here, which explains more about this weekly protest.

A protestor shields his nose and eyes from the effects of tear gas.

The most striking aspect of this re-appropriation of a distinctly American, Avatar meme, is the irony. And right across the barbed-wire fence opposite from Bil’in are Israeli soldiers whose weapons supplied by American taxpayers. So, as Joseph Nye would explain, that’s an example of U.S. “hard power.”. Then, on the other side, the Palestinians to score by appropriating imagery siphoned with sophistication from the mighty currents of American “soft power.”

One of my favorite artistic movements is Czech New Wave cinema.  The movement was deeply embedded in Czechoslovak politics of the period, particularly De-Stalinization which permitted political and cultural reforms such as state support for the film industry and increased artistic freedom generally.  The filmmakers objective was “to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all.”

Perhaps the international success of such films was due to Cold War curiosity about Central and Eastern Europe and these films offered the outer world a rare look at art from a communist country with relatively little censorship.  Two New Wave films received Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, The Shop on Main Street in 1965 and Closely Watched Trains in 1967.

New Wave films are characterized by dark humor, unscripted dialogue and often center around misguided youth.  My favorite is Vera Chytilová’s Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966), perhaps the movement’s most radical and surreal film.  The two main characters, both named Marie, realize that the world they live in is corrupt and decide to go corrupt themselves.  The narrative follows Marie I and Marie II as they justify their ‘bad’ behavior because ‘the world has gone bad.’  While Marie I and Marie II destroy social norms, Chytilová’s approach to cinematic form destroys conventions, reinforcing the audience’s shock.

Some argued Daisies is apolitical and void of substance (Jean-Luc Godard did), but I believe that any film from this era defying socialist realist aesthetics is inherently political.  Chytilová is clearly working in response to the political reality of Czechoslovakia; exploring morality, anarchy, gender roles and automatism.  I could go on and on, but I hope you’ll judge for yourself.

It’s great to hear new work from this poet/survivor, and generator of the radical meme: “The revolution will not be televised.”

The video is of Scott-Heron’s cover of Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil and is included on his new album which can be heard on his website.

Here’s an animation by Ineke Goes of Johnson’s original song.

Scott-Heron’s Message to the Messengers.

BBC interview.

The Banff Centre
Walter Phillips Gallery
Glyde Hall, St. Julien Way
Banff, Alberta, Canada

January 30 – April 18
Ragnar Kjartansson: The End

“A self-described radical post-romantic, the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson traveled westbound towards the Rocky Mountains in search of the epic. Working primarily as a performance artist, Kjartansson is known for his spectacular and humorous stagings of extreme character types, from the knight and rock outcast to the lonely crooner. In Banff the artist sought to create a cacophonic folk-country music video in the guise of a Davy Crockett-clad outlaw. Drawing on the nostalgic representations of nature found in sources as varied as paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and the cover of the Supertramp album Even in the Quietest Moments, his work is a dramatized engagement with Canada’s frontier.

The End — Rocky Mountains is a five-channel video installation synched together as a single disfigured country music arrangement in the chord of G. Produced with the support of The Banff Centre for the Icelandic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the piece was developed by Kjartansson in collaboration with Icelandic musician Davíd Thór Jónsson at the Centre in February 2009.”

Artist’s Talk: January 28, 4 p.m.
Opening Reception: January 29, 7 p.m.
Country & Western Hour: Friday, January 29, 9:30 p.m.

[text and graphic from gallery website. Caption: "Ragnar Kjartansson production shot The End (2009) Photo: Laura Vanags. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York; and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik." Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

A new documentary, Coal Country, directed by Phyllis Geller and shot by Jordan Freeman, tells the story of how coal mining has permanently deformed the Appalachian landscape and society. Here’s the trailer.

The film focuses on the modern mining practice of Mountain Top Removal (MTR), which involves coal companies blasting off the tops mountains to reach the coal underneath. MTR is a cheap and convenient way of getting at the resource, but causes pollutants to spew into the air and spill into the water, poisoning miners and the general population. The film shows the civil strife between miners wary of losing their jobs and anti-mining activists, some of them former miners themselves, who want to preserve the environment and protect human health. The battle continues.

In debates about the developed world mitigating the effects of climate change, sometimes it is forgotten that the necessary dismantling of our carbon-intensive economy can’t happen simply with confident utterances, but rather in the excruciating uprooting of thousands lives and livelihoods. Science says that curbing the most disastrous consequences of climate change means the immediate cessation of carbon emissions. After seeing what’s happening in West Virginia, however, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Bijou Theater
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

October 25 – 7 pm
COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS
Directed by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McCleod

Produced by University of Iowa professorKembrew McCleod, Copyright Criminals is a documentary that poses the question: Can you own a sound? The film traces the history of sampling in the music industry and the increasing government regulation on the practice, featuring interviews from music legends like Chuck D, George Clinton, and Clyde Stubblefield.

Q&A session with producer Kembrew McCleod following the free screening.
Also showing in DC at the JCC.  More here.

[text from Bijou mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

The Yes Men

The Yes Men Fix The World

[graphic from Yes Men electronic mass mailing. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

Fifth Street School Auditorium
401 South 4th Street
Las Vegas, NV 89101

Friday, September 4 , 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Artist’s Lecture and Screening:

Christoph Draeger – Last Chance

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1965, Christoph Draeger is known for investigating the events and sites of disaster and, more recently, the utopian thought and culture of the late 1960s.

The evening’s program includes opening remarks by curator, Alise Upitis, followed by a screening and remarks by the artist. The screening includes:

Bunkerball,the tale of a man who believes himself the last surviving human. He passes his time by playing a one-person game of soccer in a fallout shelter, although he is all the while haunted by memories of the past. Pastoral images of Bavarian home life are inter-cut with the flashes of horror that may explain his lone status, such as masses of chickens infected with bird flu, chainsaw-wielding monsters, and scenes of both government and terrorist sponsored executions. It serves as a reflection on the hyper-media status of professional sports and the extreme disjunction produced by contemporary media practices.

Three other films will be screened.

Co-Sponsored by The City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the Contemporary Arts Center of Las Vegas, and the Swiss Arts Council

[text from City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs press release. Graphic from artist's website. Caption: "Still from Hippie Movie, 2008. Hippie Movie, shot in HD video and Super-8, is a funny, post-romantic documentary about a Hippie movement named Tropolicalia, which was founded by Christoph Draeger in Warsaw as an ironic remake of San Francisco's Summer of Love 1967. In the light of rising social injustice, an unpopular war in Iraq, ecological concerns and a new cold war looming, the film is a meditation on political, social and cultural behavior first coined in the 1960's by the Hippies, who protested and contested many issues that seem to make a comeback today. It is also a celebration of the inventions of 1960's rock music, and last but not least, a hallucinatory, post-psychedelic visual trip." Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

The Price of Pleasure, a recently released documentary by Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker, focuses on the pornography industry and its affects on society, sexuality and relationships. The Feminist Review has a great synopsis of the documentary, which is described as “abandoning the tired and often cyclical rhetoric on whether pornography is “right or wrong”. Instead, the film relies on the opinions of “college students, professionals, media makers, distributors, consumers and adult performers” to draw their own conclusions about how the once underground industry affects America and the world today.

While the film has received significant praise for presenting the adult entertainment industry in a new and ultimately less judgmental light, apparently many of the adult entertainers interviewed in the film felt they were misrepresented and there have been protests outside universities and other centers that have chosen to screen the movie.

Many opinions have been presented on the movie, some positive, some negative and most somewhere in between. Though I haven’t seen the movie myself, the part that I’m interested in most is the exploration of the choice of female porn actresses to participate in adult movies. It seems everyone likes to present the idea that women are often “forced” into the industry, and it is true that many of them are, however, many of them express that they willfully chose pornography as an occupation and have no regrets about that choice. I think it is important to hear that message as well.

(more…)

Hungry For Change?

If you’re in or around the District don’t miss this free screening of the new, eye-opening documentary, Food, Inc. Visually-stimulating and thought-provoking, this Robert Kenner film reveals what’s behind the packaging and labels of our food.  Featuring Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto), as well as farmers, entrepeneurs, families, and food safety advocates, Food, Inc. appeals to all audiences. It will leave even the newcomer to the issues of food safety and health, human and animal rights, environmental sustainability, and the political economy of agriculture ready to take action. Fortunately, as this film is a Participant Media production, viewers are provided with various resources to make a change.

So, whether you’re too broke from your latest splurge at the organic market or you would just rather not spend $10 on a documentary about food of all seemingly mundane things, here’s your chance to see Food, Inc. on someone else’s dime.  Tonight (July 15th) at Bethesda Row Cinema and tomorrow (July 16th) at E St. Cinema – both screenings are at 7:30 pm, but be sure to get there early!