Wednesdays with Cinema at MCF – “Projection to the Doubt”

Wednesdays with Cinema at MCF
MCF in the line of its overall contribution to the art lovers of the city of Athens with the cooperation, as well as the support of New Star, the independent distribution company for specially selected films and Velissarios Kossyvakis, establishes an informal Cinema Club, every Wednesday at 21:30, with the entrance free of charge, in the Foundation’s high standards Cinema Hall. Films by acknowledged and new filmmakers, films which shape a well-built cinematic language with evident mark of each director, films which have contributed to the specific image as well as the progress of that cinema which illustrates the diverse, which shapes horizons, entertains and at the same time focuses on humans and situations, relationships and events of wider interest.

Every Wednesday at the foundation’s ground foyer, short performances preceding the “Screenings with Classic Cinema Masterpieces”, introduce each movie through their individual artistic angle, half an hour ahead of each screening’s start with admission free of charge.

A round of events dedicated to the work and the artistic expression of the young generation’s potential.

Directed by: HERBERT J. BIBERMAN,
Screenplay: MICHAEL WILSON
Produced by: PAUL JARRICO
Cinematography: SAIMON LAZARUS
Music: SOL KAPLAN
Starring: ROSAURA REVUELTAS,JUAN CHACON, WILL GEER,
DAVID WOLFE, MERVIN WILLIAMS, DAVID SARVIS

Synopsis
Based on an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico, the film deals with the prejudice against the Mexican-American workers, who struck to attain wage parity with Anglo workers in other mines and to be treated with dignity by the bosses. The film is an early treatment of feminism, because the wives of the miners play a pivotal role in the strike, against their husbands’ wishes. In the end, the greatest victory for the workers and their families is the realization that prejudice and poor treatment are conditions that are not always imposed by outside forces. This film was written, directed and produced by members of the original “Hollywood Ten,” who were blacklisted for refusing to answer Congressional inquiries on First Amendment grounds. – Written by Bob Shields
Source – http://www.imdb.com

SALT OF THE EARTH, shot on a low budget, mostly with local non-actors, was branded as “communist propaganda” during the infamous McCarthy “Red Scare” and was boycotted by the cinema industry and the Press during that time. The crew and the cast accepted numerous threats and attacks by Kou Klux Klan and other similar groups, while the Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas was arrested before the end of the shooting and was deported from U.S.A., because she was supposed to have passed the borders illegally. The movie was hardly shown in USA when first released. However, the film was widely exhibited in Europe, where it was lauded with acclaim. It wasn’t until 1964 that the Salt of the Earth was projected in USA.

Zabriskie Point – USA – 1970 – Color  – 110′

Film Review
Antonioni’s sorrowing, stranger’s-eye view of modern America is sadly flawed by the way his ‘story’ (a rambling, jumbled and mumbling mess scripted by a variety of writers including Sam Shepard, Tonio Guerra and Claire Peploe) is bogged down in the mood of student revolt dogging the nation in the late ’60s. Frechette, suspected of shooting a cop during a campus riot, steals a plane, meets Halprin, and makes love with her in Death Valley before returning to give himself up; she meanwhile goes off to meet prospective employer and capitalist pig Taylor. It’s clear that the director’s interest in America was less political than visual: the painted slogans and billboards seem important less for their content than for their appearance, just as the repeated metaphor of the desert is picturesque rather than telling. That said, the final explosion of a house and its contents in slow-motion is a dazzling, almost celebratory symbol of youthful dreams of ending consumerism. Source: Time Out Film Guide (www.timeout.com)

Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni
Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Harrison Starr, Clare Peploe
Cinematography: Alfio Contini
Editing: Franco Arcalli, Jim Benson
Special effects: Earl McCoy
Producer: Carlo Ponti
Production Design: Dean Tavoularis
With the music by Pink Floyd, The Youngbloods, The Kaleidoscope, Jerry Garcia, Patti Page, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones

Screenplay – Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz
Music: Assassin
Dorector of Photography: Pierre Aïm
Film Editing: Mathieu Kassovitz, Scott Stevenson
Produced by: Christophe Rossignon
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Abdel Ahmed Ghili, Solo, Joseph Momo, Héloïse Rauth, Rywka Wajsbrot, Olga Abrego, Laurent Labasse, Nabil Ben Mhamed,    Benoît Magimel, Medard Niang, Arash Mansour, Abdel-Moulah Boujdouni, Mathilde Vitry, Christian Moro, JiBi, Edouard Montoute

This film focuses on a single day in the lives of three friends in their early twenties from immigrant families living in an impoverished multi-ethnic French housing project (a ZUP – zone d’urbanisation prioritaire) in the suburbs of Paris, in the aftermath of a riot. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a gangster ready to win respect by killing a cop, and practices the role of Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver in the mirror. His attitude towards police, for instance, is a simplified, stylized blanket condemnation, even to individual policemen who make an effort to steer the trio clear of troublesome situations. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) is an Afro-French boxer and small time drug dealer, whose gymnasium was burned in the riots. The quietest, most thoughtful and wisest of the three, he sadly contemplates the ghetto and the hate around him. He expresses the wish to simply leave this decadent world of violence and hate behind him, but does not know how since he lacks the means to do so. Saïd – Sayid in some English subtitles – (Saïd Taghmaoui) is a Maghrebin who inhabits the middle ground between his two friends’ responses to their place in life.
A friend of theirs, Abdel Ichaha, has been brutalized by the police shortly before the riot and lies in a coma. Vinz finds a policeman’s .44 Magnum revolver, lost in the riot. He vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a cop, and when he hears of Abdel’s death he fantasizes carrying out his vengeance.
The three go through an aimless daily routine and struggle to entertain themselves, frequently finding themselves under police scrutiny. They take a train to Paris but encounter many of the same frustrations, and their responses to benign interactions with Parisians cause the situations to degenerate to gratuitous hostility. A run-in with sadistic Parisian plainclothes police, during which Saïd and Hubert are humiliated and physically abused, results in their missing the last train home and spending the night on the streets. They go to a roof-top from where they insult skinheads and policemen, before later encountering the same group of racist anti-immigrant skinheads who begin to beat Saïd and Hubert savagely, now that the balance of power has shifted. Vinz arrives and his gun allows him to break up the fight and all the skinheads flee except one (portrayed by Kassovitz himself) who Vinz is about to execute in cold blood. His dream of revenge is thwarted by his reluctance to go through with the deed, and, cleverly goaded by Hubert, he is forced to confront the fact that his true nature is not the heartless gangster he poses as, and he lets the skinhead flee.
Early in the morning, the trio return to the banlieue and split up to their separate homes, and Vinz, in a wise decision, turns the gun over to Hubert, relinquishing his destructive self-image and potentially opening the door to personal growth and a constructive future. However, Vinz and Saïd encounter a plainclothes policeman, whom Vinz had insulted earlier in the day whilst with his friends on a local rooftop. The policeman grabs and threatens Vinz, making reference to the earlier incident on the roof. Hubert rushes to their aid, but as the policeman holding Vinz taunts him with a loaded gun held to Vinz’s head, the gun accidentally goes off, killing Vinz instantly. Hubert and the policeman slowly and deliberately point their guns at each other, and as the film cuts to Saïd closing his eyes and cuts to black, a shot is heard on the soundtrack, with no indication of who fired or who may have been hit. This stand-off is underlined by a voice-over of Hubert’s slightly modified opening lines (“It’s about a society in free fall…”), underlining the fact that, as the lines say, jusqu’ici tout va bien (so far so good); i.e. all seems to be going relatively well until Vinz is killed, and from there no one knows what will happen, a microcosm of French society’s descent through hostility into pointless violence.