Through the struggle for the struggle: Series of films from April 25th to May 14th

Cinema Parenthèse and Goethe-Institut Brüssel present a series of screenings that explores the relationship between film and radical politics. The title of this series, taken from Red Army Faction (RAF) member Holger Meins’ last letter perhaps in some measure is able to anticipate the films included in the program. Or perhaps not. Struggle takes on various meanings as we navigate through the program.

There is first and foremost, a self-struggle, then a moral and a formal struggle that are intrinsic characteristics of for example Straub and Huillet’s films, then there is a historical registration of struggle, for those who were ushered away from Germany and France by the Nazis, followed by the struggle between memory and history, image and text, isolation and reckoning.

This series, via the screenings and associated discussions around the films, will provide a perfect opportunity to thoroughly investigate the many possible relationships between stratas of political thinking and film, associations between television and cinema, the critical possibilities of film history on film and the grounds for convergence between literature and cinema.

25.04.2019, 19:00, Cinema Galeries
Cesare Pavese. Turin – Santo Stefano Belbo
Renate Sami; Petra Seeger (D 1985, 60 min, DE,IT / ST EN, 16mm)
Introduction by Carolin Weidner

The author Cesare Pavese was born in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a small town in the mountains between Turin and Genoa. He lived and worked in Turin, where he committed suicide in 1950. These two places also play a part in his last two novels — Turin in “Tra donne sole” and Santo Stefano Belbo in “La luna e i falo” — and so we will walk through these two places, arriving at the station just like the main characters in both novels. There are two interviews — one with Massimo Mila, a writer and Pavese’s friend in Turin, the other with Pinolo Scaglione, a carpenter and cooper and his friend from childhood in Santo Stefano Belbo. (Renate Sami)

Carolin Weidner is a German film journalist. Since 2017 she is a member of DOK Leipzig’s Selection Committee.

26.04.2019, 18:00, Ciné Club de l’INSAS
Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance)
Danièle Huillet; Jean-Marie Straub (D/IT 1979, 105 min, IT, NL, FR, D / ST EN, 35mm)

Dalla nube alla resistenza, based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese’s “The Moon and the Bonfires” looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; “Dialogues with Leucò” is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history. (Barton Byg)

08.05.2019, 19:00, Cinema Galeries
Filmemigration aus Nazideutschland – Teil 1
Günter-Peter Straschek, (D 1975, D / ST EN, 60 min, 16mm to Digital)
Introduction by Volker Pantenburg

Roughly five-hour long Film Emigration from Nazi Germany was broadcasted on Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) on successive Tuesdays in 1975. The entire series comprising of about fifty interviews recounts emigration from the German film industry during the Nazi years. The film intercuts testimonials of various individuals, some who were forced to leave, and some who found it unbearable, with archival footage from various films made during the time to present a harrowing account of Fascism, forced exile and the perpetration of violence. The first of the five parts will be shown in the program.

Volker Pantenburg is Professor of Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on essayistic film and video practices, experimental cinema, and contemporary moving image installations.

11.05.2019, 19:00, Cinema Galeries
Fluchtweg nach Marseille
Ingemo Engström; Gerhard Theuring (D 1977, D / ST EN, 217min, 16mm to Digital)

The theme of the film is the escape route of the German emigrés in France in 1940/41. It describes a research of the past against the background of landscapes and towns which once were scenes of persecution. The leitmotif of the journey is Anna Seghers’ novel “Transit”. The film is dedicated to the landscape of the resistance. (Ingemo Engström/Gerhard Theuring)

14.05.2019, 19:00, Cinema Galeries
Cellule 719
Annik Leroy (B 2016, 15 min, EN, digital)
Es stirbt allerdings ein jeder, Frage ist nur wie und wie du gelebt hast. Holger Meins.
Renate Sami (D 1975, 60 min, D / ST EN, 16 mm)

For Annik Leroy Cellule 719 is only an intermediate stop in a longer process, a study of the historical RAF and, even more so, into the psychological mechanisms of terror, and the personality structure of a public figure who is left alone in complete isolation with her most private self. (Edwin Carels)

Holger Meins started studying film in 1964. When he was arrested in 1972, he was accused of being a terrorist and died in prison while on a hunger strike in 1974. He was thirty-three. In my film, I interviewed a friend who lived with him for a while, a young woman who was part of a student group. Holger Meins and Günther Peter Straschek were working on a film project aimed at helping the young ones articulate their problems and translate them into film. (Renate Sami)

Practical Information

Dates: 25.04.-14.05.2019

Location: Cinema Galeries & Ciné Club de l’INSAS

More information: Here.