Accompanying the exhibition Spacecraft Icarus 13 is a film-based program of screenings and discussions that presents alternative accounts of the impact of socio-political changes brought about by western-driven discourses of progress and modernity in the Third World. These filmic voices from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, which emerged after decolonization, are also known as “Third Cinema.” Distinctively different in technique and content from mainstream cinema, the variety of formats presented within this program spans from documentaries to epics, and highlights the articulation of aesthetic and political concerns within Third Cinema from the 1960s to the present day. Using cinema as a space of self-representation and transformation, these films articulate cultural and political critiques of today’s realities and reflect on historical processes such as projects of nation-building, which are often seen as a continuation of the West’s imperialistic impulses. As a counter voice, these practices elicit new models and possibilities in articulating other visions of the past, present, and future. The program is curated by Christina Li and organized within the framework of the project FORMER WEST.
Venue for all activities (unless otherwise noted): Het Utrechts Archief, Hamburgerstraat 28, 3512 NS Utrecht
Reservations are required; please send an e-mail to info@bak-utrecht.nl to reserve a seat.
Bypasses to Modernity
08.10.2011, 14:00–18:00 hrs
Bypasses to Modernity considers various narratives of modernity in contrast to the singular western view. Looking at the political and socio-economic conditions that have unfolded in China and other peripheries in the Global South as they undergo different turbulent passages to “development,” and at the same time reflecting upon the recent revolutions in the Middle East, this day’s program considers the conditions in which transformative forces are incubated on a societal level and speculates about an alternative order beyond the western-led hegemony and dominant neoliberal economic and political discourses currently in operation.
Lecture by Wang Hui (Professor, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University, Beijing): 30, 60 and 100 years of Chinese transformation – The dialectic between autonomy and opening
Film screening, Nick Deocampo, Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song, 1987, 50 min., followed by a discussion with Nick Deocampo (filmmaker, film historian, and director of the Center for New Cinema, Manila)
Film screening, Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina, The Vampires of Poverty, 1978, 30 min., followed by a discussion with Luis Ospina (filmmaker, Cali, Colombia)
(20:00 hrs: Opening of the exhibition Spacecraft Icarus 13: Narratives of Progress from Elsewhere, BAK, Lange Nieuwstraat 4)
Against Amnesia and Apathy
22.10.2011, 11:00–19:30 hrs
Lav Diaz’s epic films reflect on the bitter oligarchic political realities that continue to prevail in the Philippines through his portrayal of characters often caught in between acts of resistance and moments of defeat against the ruling political machinery. Centered around three characters undergoing a radical process of amnesia to cope with the forced disappearance of their loved ones in their struggle against the government, Melancholia is an exemplary work which elucidates Diaz’s belief in the political responsibility of a filmmaker in relation to the historical shifts in Philippine society and in response the repressed memories that follow.
Film screening, Lav Diaz, Melancholia, 2008, 480 min.
Excavating a Cinematic Future
05.11.2011, 14:00–17:00 hrs
Various instances of filmmaking by local and expatriate amateurs in South East Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century—prior to the professionalization of filmmaking practices—have been discovered by recent research into scattered film archives in the region, recovering histories that would otherwise been overlooked. By bringing together some of these examples and considering them in light of new film education initiatives in the area, both a new cinematic history and a future where filmmaking could be seen as a constructive vehicle of self-representation begin to take shape.
Presentation and screening by Keiko Sei (founder of Myanmar Moving Image Center (Yangon, Burma), writer, and curator, Bangkok) on recent developments in Burmese film history.
The Political Carnivalesque
19.11.2011, 14:00–17:00 hrs
The work of Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1939–1981) took on forbidden themes such as social inequality, political corruption, and the economic exploitation of the region by foreign powers. The film Entranced Earth addresses these issues in the guise of a chaotic political drama that unfolds in the fictive Latin American country Eldorado in the late 1960s. Drawing from her ongoing research on Brazil and Rocha’s oeuvre, artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh sketches out the socio-political circumstances being critiqued in the film.
Film screening, Glauber Rocha, Entranced Earth, 1967, 106 min.
Lecture by Wendelien van Oldenborgh (artist, Rotterdam) on the work of Glauber Rocha
Revisions of African Representation
03.12.2011, 14:00–17:00 hrs
Invested in developing an alternative vision of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa through proposed historical revision and fictional reconstruction, artist Kiluanji Kia Henda presents a number of films that are rooted in rigorous questioning of the formation of national identity in Africa, and in his native country of Angola in particular.
Film afternoon curated by Kiluanji Kia Henda (artist, Luanda), whose work is on view in the Spacecraft Icarus 13 exhibition
