The Radical Film Network Returns
In May 2020, Clive Myer provided a playlist introducing us to the work of the Radical Film Network. He returns now with a follow up list to let us know that there are now over 150 films available, free of charge, to students, researchers, the academic community and the public at large on the Radical Film Network website.
To make them more accessible he has again collated a small sample of tasters/trailers and shorts placed within three areas of Political, Environmental/ Community, and Experimental:
POLITICAL
Injustice (Ken Fero and Tariq Mehmood, 2001)
In 1969 David Oluwale became the first black person to die in police custody in Britain. Many others have died since then. None of the police officers involved have been convicted of these deaths. In this documentary, the families of these victims ask “Why not?”Class
This is a blow by blow account of the relentless struggles of the families as they find out how they lost their loved ones in extremely violent deaths at the hands of police officers.
(full film at https://vimeo.com/34633260)
Right Now I Want to Scream – Police and Army Killings in Rio: the Brazil Haiti Connection (Cahal McLaughlin, 2020)
This cry of urgency is how Vanessa Félix, mother of 8 year old Ágatha, shot by the police in Rio de Janeiro, September 2019, closes her interview in this film that connects two worlds: the marginalised black communities of Cité Soleil and Rio. Others interviewed include community leaders from several favelas; experts from Fiocruz, the leading public health institute, the human rights NGO Conectas; and a Rio de Janeiro police officer.
COVID Transmission and Killer Workplaces (Reel News with The Hazards Campaign, 2020)
The workplace is the source of infection and the site of spreading infection. It’s being completely ignored – it really is the workplace stupid, and they are completely ignoring it.
This film, made with the Hazards Campaign, explains what you can do to keep yourself and your workmates safe – using the latest information about COVID-19, extensive case studies of superspreader events and successful collective struggles by well-organised workplaces.
COVID Transmission and Killer Workplaces: New Reel News film with Hazards Campaign released
Full film: https://reelnews.co.uk/2020/11/04/coronavirus/covid-transmission-and-killer-workplaces/
COMMUNITY/ENVIRONMENTAL
Good White People (Erick Stoll & Jarrod Cann, 2016)
In the Spring of 2001, the African-American community of Over-the-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati arose in protest after unarmed 19-year-old, Timothy Thomas, was killed by a white officer named Steven Roach. In the years following, in order to allure prospective residents, Over-the-Rhine was swept into a new narrative of safety and whiteness by the creation of an arts and brewery district for the creative class. While it’s “dangerous and inconvenient” Black history is revitalized from existence, property values rise with presence of police, tax abatements, and zoning amendments to serve and protect those properties.
Life After Terror (Ifeatu Nnaobi, 2020)
Stories of three Nigerian women who have been victims of Boko Haram. The Islamist Fundamentalist Terrorist group operating in parts of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroun. The short film features the testimonies of two women who were abducted by the group and forcefully married. They share their experiences of being held captive, escaping and trying to re-integrate into society.
Invasion (Franklin López, Full Length Film to Come in 2021)
In this era of “reconciliation”, indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people.
Yagé is Our Life (Sean Lovell, 2016)
For centuries the Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon have been using yagé (also known as ayahuasca) for the health, social cohesion and spiritual guidance of their communities. They are now facing many threats to their traditional way of life, including the commercialisation of their yagé medicine and foreign pressures on their homelands by industrialised civilisation.
EXPERIMENTAL
The Passion of the Non-Citizen (Moe Kaz, Projector Kollektivte, Iran)
A Music-Film marking the anniversary of the Iranian protests. It is an imaginary narration of a dream. A dream of the oppressed. A dream of the trial for being a non-being. A Non-citizen!
Art Class by Andrea Luka Zimmerman
The film tests the limits of access that working-class artists have to cultural production and to the relevant institutions circulating these outcomes. Alternately playful and provocative, serious and satirical, Art Class favours wit over weaponising and reflection over rhetoric but does not pull its punches when it comes to the real obstructions to working class creative progress, or to the strategies necessary to overcome such outmoded hindrances.
The film can be viewed or downloaded here: https://cp.sync.com/dl/74158e270/i4khapgt-8ccgfkjc-iudsdp4u-7gndyz7x
The Dialectical Image (Mike Wayne, 2020)
A film essay about experience and the aesthetic. The connections, relationships and differences between these two kinds of experiences as they are shaped by capitalism. The film rejects narrative in favour of association, argumentation, concepts, chapters, intertitles, metaphor and mood.[Ed: You can also read about the project here: https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/films/item/3541-the-dialectical-image]
iiiSYSTEM (Lizzy Deacon, 2019)
iiiSYSTEM depicts a community under a dictatorship. The relationship between the autocrat and mass is demonstrated through the behaviours of sex, feeding and construction. One of these interactions is exploited by a rebel, leading to the eventual assassination of the dictator.
https://vimeo.com/399313521
Drifting with Debord (David Archibald/Carl Lavery The Glasgow Glam Rock Dialogues, 2020)
The film channels the spirits of David Bowie, Suzi Quatro and Karl Marx to debate the life and legacy of Guy Debord, theoretical leader of the Paris-based Situationist International and author of ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ and ‘Theory of the Dérive’, to explore what a drifting cinema might look and sound like. The film itself is in dialogue with an article by David Archibald and Carl Lavery which is available to read for free here: Debord’s Drifting Cinema
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Clive Myer is founder and former Director of the International Film School Wales, The Film Academy at the University of Glamorgan, and the Skillset Screen Academy Wales. He established Ffresh, one of the most successful student film festivals in the UK, now in its 18th year and is Chair of WOW!, Wales One World Film Festival, now also in its 18th year and continuing to bring world cinema to Wales. He has produced and/or directed and photographed experimental drama and documentary films for over 30 years. With his partner Lynda Myer-Bennett, his most recent feature films include The Orchard (2013), Maurice El Medioni: The Birth of PianOriental (2016) and The Mire Archive (2020). His book, Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice, is published by Wallflower/Columbia University Press.