The UWM Union Theatre presents a unique retrospective of the rebellious
and
highly influential filmmaking of the Situationist International! The event
begins Monday, October 17th and runs until Thursday, October 20th. Here is
the complete list of programming with descriptions for your consideration.
ALL SCREENINGS ARE FREE TO ALL!
Writer, filmmaker, translator and SI archeologist Keith Sanborn will be in
attendance on Monday, October 17 to introduce the evening and provide a
talk-back session after the film.
Monday, October 17 - 7pm
The Society of the Spectacle (La société du spectacle)
Situationist founder Guy Debord's own 1973 adaptation of his 1967 book by
the same name. Enormously influential in France, the film is an
astonishingly sophisticated and coherent response to the experience of May
1968. A filmic essay, based primarily on "detourned," that is pre-existing
and recontextualized, images, including: sequences from Hollywood features,
East Block features, news footage, documentary footage, tv commercials,
pornography, and a vast number of stills, some of which seem to have been
shot explicitly for this film. The film also makes use of intertitles which
include both acknowledged and unacknowledged detourned quotations from
Dante, Hegel, Marx, Meister Eckhart, Shakespeare, Cieszkowski, von
Clausewitz, Pouget and others. While this film is a considerable
achievement
in the domain of cinema, it is not just a film; it is a conscious attempt
to
change the world. English subtitles by Keith Sanborn.
(Guy Debord, France, 90 min., French w/ Eng. St., Film on Video, 1973)
preceded by:
Refutation Of All Judgments Which Have Up To Now Been Brought Whether In
Praise Or Hostile To The Film Called "Society Of The Spectacle"
Debord's response in film to the written critiques which greeted his film
The Society of the Spectacle. (Guy Debord, France, 20 min., French w/ Eng.
St., Film on Video, 1975)
Tuesday, October 18 - 7pm
Venom & Eternity (Traité de bauve et d'éternité)
Poet and founder of the Lettrist Movement, Jean Isidore Isou wrote, scored,
photographed, directed and starred in Venom & Eternity - a self-described
"revolt against cinema." In the film Isou attempts to discuss what was
wrong
with the cinema and goes on to show examples of what he thinks it should
consist of. Featuring an appearance by Jean Cocteau, who, musing as to the
film's future, would ask: "Is VENOM a springboard or is it a void? In fifty
years we'll know the answer...The day will come, perhaps, when Isou's style
will be in fashion." Causing riots and stomp-outs during its initial
screenings in France and the US, the film went on to influence a generation
of avant-garde filmmakers including, most profoundly, a young Stan Brakhage
- declaring Venom & Eternity as a "portal though which every film artist is
going to have to pass." (Jean Isidore Isou, France, 90 min., French w/ Eng.
St., 16mm B&W, 1951)
Wednesday, October 19 - 7pm
Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (La Dialectique peut-elle casser des briques?)
Annouced as "the first entirely détourned film in the history of cinema,"
Viénet and Cohen transformed a typical kung-fu film into an examination of
class and intellectual sectarianism. According to Viénet: "The cinema,
which
is the newest and most serviceable means of expression of our era has been
marking time for 3/4 of a century. By way of review, let us say that it has
in fact become the '7th art' dear to cinephiles, ciné-clubs, PTA's. Let us
state that for our purposes the cycle has come to an end.... Let us
appropriate the stammerings of this new writing; let us appropriate above
all its most achieved examples, the most modern ones, those which have
escaped artistic ideology even more than American B-movies: newsreels,
trailers, and above all advertisements." Informed by nearly twenty years of
theoretical reflection and practice by the SI, Can Dialectics Break Bricks
is also of product of Viénet's extensive interest and knowledge of China.
English subtitles by Keith Sanborn. (René Viénet & Gerard Cohen, France, 90
min., French w/ Eng. St., Film on Video, 1973)
Thursday, October 20 - 7pm
Guy Debord, His Art and His Times (Guy Debord, son art et son temps)
A portrait-testament, made at the request of the writer-philosopher-artist
during the year 1994, when he realized his end was near due to a painful
illness eating away at him. In this work Guy Debord sums up his life,
emphasizing the importance of his films and his attraction for painting,
then pays homage to his friends Asger Jörn, Gil Wolman, Alice Becker Ho and
others. Debord also offers a commentary on our society through a succession
of extracts from televised reports, important moments of the last ten
years,
"torpedoed" by the author's written commentary inscribed on the screen like
the pages of a book. (Brigitte Cornand, France, 60 min., French w/ Eng.
St.,
Video, 1994)
Thursday, October 21 - 8pm
The Girls of Kamaré (Les Filles de Kamaré)
Proudly wearing the mantle of "the first subversive Japanese porno film,"
The Girls of Kamaré presents itself as a detournement-read subversion-of
Noribumi Suzuki's A Pair of Panties for Summer. In this film, René Viénet
furthers his exploration of Sadean women in head-on collision with all
legal
and moral restraints, which, left unopposed, give rise to the survival
sickness experienced by most of the world. The legacy of colonialist
torture, the flatulence of Sartre, and the Orientalism of Barthes and de
Beauvoir are all mercilessly critiqued. By utterly transforming the
sadistic
genre conventions of the Japanese girls' reform school film, The Girls of
Kamaré becomes the vehicle for the expression of a revolutionary rage
against the very constraints from which aficionados of the genre take their
pleasure. English subtitles by Keith Sanborn. (René Viénet, France, 75
min., French w/ Eng. St., Film on Video, 1974)
<http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/theatre>
**********************************
Luke Sieczek
Program Manager -- Union Theatre
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
2200 E. Kenwood Blvd, #323
Milwaukee, WI 53211
Office: UWM Union, Third Floor, #323
Phone: (414)229-4070
Fax: (414)229-6709
Union Theatre Website: http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/theatre
