- Artists
The Militant Image programme of film screenings and discussions engages with militant filmmaking practices of late twentieth century liberation struggles. Curated by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray, the programme is presented by Iniva at Rivington Place in collaboration with The Otolith Group.
The point of departure for The Militant Image is the special issue of the journal Third Text entitled The Militant Image: A Cine-Geography edited by Eshun and Gray in 2011. The four day programme explores aesthetics, affiliations and strategies of militancy in the production and circulation of the moving image.
The Films
Director José Filipe Costa introduces and discusses his documentary Red Line (2011) about the making of the 1975 film Torre Bela by Thomas Harlan. Torre Bela documented the occupation by impoverished workers of a vast hunting estate owned by one of Portugal’s aristocratic families, following the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Costa’s Red Line explores how the making of Torre Bela became critical to the unfolding of the event. (25 November, 6:30pm)
Robert Kramer’s Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (1977) also responds to events in the region. The film documents the Left’s intense fight with a variety of class barriers, paying attention to politics in everyday life. The screening is introduced by Luís Trinidade, Lecturer in Portuguese Modern Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London. (29 November, 2:30pm)
Nicole Brenez, Professor of Film Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, presents a selection of films by director René Vautier, whose body of work constitutes one of the most significant cinematographic contributions to anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggle. Vautier’s 1950 film Afrique 50 was made under conditions of severe political repression and censorship and has been hailed as the first French anti-colonial film. Other films by Vautier will include Frontline (1976) and Le Glas (1964). (26 November, 2:30pm)
Margaret Dickinson will introduce her film Behind the Lines. Made in 1971 in a ‘liberated zone’ in Niassa province in Northern Mozambique, the film was one of the defining films about FRELIMO’s (The Liberation Front of Mozambique) armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. (30 November, 6:30pm).