Cine y revolución: Reds, de Warren Beatty

Sobre el filme "Reds" y el cine estadounidense de izquierda


Por Pepe Gutiérrez-Álvarez*

Los títulos en DVD están siendo asimilados por las revistas de cine como una suerte de estreno suplementario, y la verdad es que nadie puede discutir sus ventajas por más que los veteranos añoremos los tiempos de las salas oscuras. Entre los últimos “grandes estrenos” se encuentra Reds (Rojos)...

Por si alguien no lo sabe, Reds fue una producción financiada -ahí es nada- por la Barclay Mercantile In., y distribuida mundialmente por la Paramount. Su protagonista, Warren Beatty, ejerció igualmente las labores de director, productor y participó en el argumento, guión y diálogo, junto con el comediógrafo británico izquierdista, Trevor Griffiths, que había colaborado en el cine con Ken Loach en su película teóricamente más "trotskista", Fatherland (1986). También tomaron parte, aunque sin aparecer en los títulos de créditos, Elaine May y Robert Towne. La fotografía, de tonalidades oscuras en interiores y anaranjadas en exteriores, estuvo a cargo del prestigioso Vittorio Storaro (Novecento), en tanto que la música la puso Stephen Sodheim con aportaciones adicionales de David Grusin. Fue estrenada en diciembre de 1981 en New York. La parte norteamericana fue rodada en Lincolshire y en Londres, en tanto que la parte rusa se dividió entre Finlandia y España. Aquí, concretamente, el palacio de Riofrío de Segovia sirvió como escenario de los debates del Komintern, mientras que el Alcázar de Sevilla hizo a su vez de fondo para el caótico Congreso Internacional de Bakú. Luego, en las proximidades de Guadix (Granada), en un paisaje que recordaba la estepa rusa, se filmó el asalto de los últimos reductos del ejército blanco contra el tren en el que viajaba Reed, junto algunos de los líderes de la revolución triunfante, hacia Moscú. Otro lugar elegido fue la Estación de las Delicias, que se convirtió en la estación de Moscú, como ya lo había hecho en Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965), el principal antecedente fílmico de Reds.

El guión se apoyaba en los diversos libros del propio Reed y Louise Bryant, y en menor grado en la mejor biografía del primero, la escrita por Robert A. Rosenstone (de la que existe una edición en castellano en ERA, México, 1975, trad. de Juan Tovar), al que Beatty contrató como asesor histórico. En un largo artículo sobre la película escrito a raíz de su estreno, Rosenstone considera que el título resulta "intransigente, temerario, rotundo", muy en línea de Jaw (Tiburón). No obstante, concede que Reds al menos no oculta el "hecho fundamental: esta película trata de personajes radicales y revolucionarios, de personas que no temieron agruparse bajo un nombre desprestigiado en los Estados Unidos, que no temieron llamarse a sí mismos comunistas". Las divergencias con Rosenstone fueron más allá del título, y de hecho, éste apenas sí tuvo que responder a algunas preguntas específicas orientadas a precisar al máximo los detalles cronológicos y la ambientación de algunos acontecimientos, algo sobre lo que Hollywood mantuvo secularmente una proverbial despreocupación que, empero, Reds, desmintió al menos en parte.

"Hunger" y la lucha de los presos en Irlanda del Norte

Hunger es una impactante película sobre la huelga de hambre de los prisioneros del IRA en 1981. El filme es dirigido por Steve McQueen, quien escribió el guión junto con Enda Walsh. Está basada en hechos reales y fue estrenada en 2008.

Hunger aborda la lucha de los reclusos republicanos por el reconocimiento de su condición de presos políticos. La de 1981 fue la continuación de otras huelgas y protestas, en las que los presos reclamaban por las condiciones inhumanas de su cautiverio.

La película, que tuvo buena recepción de la crítica y recibió varios premios, recrea la huelga de hambre de 1981, que se convirtió en un pulso entre los presos y el gobierno de Margaret Thatcher. Uno de los huelguistas, Bobby Sands, llegó a ser elegido parlamentario durante la protesta, lo que provocó el interés de la prensa. Sands y otros nueve huelguistas murieron.

‘Roger & Me’ (Michael Moore)

By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 12, 1990

"Roger & Me," Michael Moore's documentary about the effects of General Motors plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Mich., is a hilariously cranky bit of propaganda. One part home movie, one part editorial, one part letter bomb, the film is a one-man insurrection. And -- imagine that -- the man is just some yob with a movie camera, an auto worker's son who has never made a film before and who sees in the demise of his home city the perfect metaphor for everything that's gone wrong with America.

The result is one of the most subversively comic political films in memory. Moore presents "Roger & Me" as his End of the '80s essay, his attempt to reclaim the decade from those who would have it remembered as an upbeat era of rebuilding and progress. His subject, in the most limited sense, is Flint itself. As the home to several major GM facilities, Flint was a proud industrial town caught up in the great postwar American dream. But due to shutdowns and layoffs, more than 30,000 workers lost their jobs, leaving Flint desolate, rat-infested, a city with teeming jails, a soaring crime rate and plummeting expectations -- a postindustrial American wasteland that Money magazine proclaimed the worst place to live in the country.

About all this Moore is deeply funny and deeply serious. When the laughs come -- and there are more here than in any movie I saw all last year -- they have a prankster's reckless irreverence. His target and elusive costar is GM Chairman Roger B. Smith, whom Moore tracks throughout the movie in an attempt to confront him with the devastation his company has left in its wake.

Moore loves making trouble, but his impudence is multilayered and fueled, primarily, by rage. He comes on in "Roger & Me" with the bratty effrontery of a party crasher, out to spoil everyone's fun. He dogs Smith at his office (where he offers the security forces his Chuck E Cheese discount card for identification), at his yacht club in Grosse Pointe, at his athletic club in Detroit. Moore even manages somehow to gain entrance to GM's annual stockholders meeting, where his mike is cut just as he is about to speak.

The party Moore's crashing here, though, is the Reagan '80s. Acting as the film's curmudgeonly master of ceremonies, Moore presents a collection of sneaky riffs on a score of topics, both large and small -- from unionism and capitalism to Pat Boone, beauty pageants and game shows -- and spins them into a highly personal, shorthand history of American corporate collapse.

On another level, it's a kind of critique of the great American dream of sunny, smiley-face, middle-class prosperity. Moore's greatest gift is his feel for the native American surrealism -- his sense of us as a people who love diving donkeys and dancing spark plugs and parades with Shriners driving around in miniature Model T's. To Moore, these funky absurdities are on a direct line with an attempt to raise spirits in Flint by bringing the Rev. Robert Schuller to town to say things like "Tough times don't last, tough people do." Or Anita Bryant's buck-up rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone." Or Ronald Reagan's kind offer to buy pizza for 10 unemployed auto workers. To demonstrate his appreciation, one of the guests rips off the pizzeria's cash register on his way out.

Two motifs connect these various plot threads: the search for Roger and the operations of Sheriff's Deputy Fred Ross, who, with cool efficiency, travels around town, pounding on doors and evicting families from their homes. The latter's scenes work as dark counterpoint to the generally amused tone; they're the movie's dire bottom line. Without them, it might come across as a glib radical cartoon.

Wearing baggy jeans, a windbreaker and a cap reading "I'm out for Trout," Moore styles himself as a kind of beer-bellied rube, but the Average Joe pose is merely an elaborate disguise for a highly sophisticated, cagey wit. Moore is a naysayer in the classic American tradition -- a working-class sorehead with attitude to burn. Class anger is part of what drives him. He hates the twits who dress up in costume for their "Great Gatsby" party or rush to plunk down $100 to spend the night in the city's spanking new jail. In essence, though, he's an equal-opportunity basher -- everyone gets a turn, and he's nearly as scathing in his derision for one woman who slaughters rabbits to make ends meet. Or the future Miss America, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, who virtually quivers in front of the camera, desperate not to put her foot in her mouth.

As a comic, Moore sees virtually everyone as fair game, but then he presents himself in nearly as harsh a light as the others. None comes off as badly as the eponymous Roger, though. Reading his bland Christmas message to the stockholders and their children, he quotes Dickens, and in the process he becomes mythic, the personification of the heartless capitalist -- a real-life Scrooge.

When I first saw the film, it struck me as the most impressively articulated response to the Reagan era I'd seen. Since then it has come out that Moore has -- either intentionally or through lack of skill -- fuzzied the chronology of events, creating the impression that the plant closings and layoffs took place all at once, around 1986 and '87, instead of over a period of more than a decade. In other instances too, Moore may have fallen short of factual accuracy.

Though this doesn't invalidate his political points, it does cast them in a more dubious light -- and Moore along with them. The unfortunate effect of this imprecision is to reduce a great film to a nearly great one. It does not, however, interfere with our pleasure at seeing Pat Boone refer to Roger Smith as a "can-do kinda guy." Or diminish the epic silliness of the city's efforts to rescue Flint by turning it into a tourist center with the construction of a Hyatt Hotel, a shopping center and, as its biggest draw, a Disney World-type tribute to the auto industry called AutoWorld.

In "Roger & Me," Moore's brand of slapstick reportage strikes the perfect balance between irony and sincerity; it's slyly deadpan and committed, democratic and kingly all at once. In the end, though, he winds up giving ironic credence to the swells at the Great Gatsby party who advise the laid-off workers to get out there and do something. He's shown what one man with a camera crew and a vision can do.

Carlos: Official Trailer

The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.



La película, del realizador francés Olivier Assayas, acerca del venezolano Ilich Ramírez -que pasó de idealista en contra del capitalismo a terrorista con fama internacional- es un retrato contundente de un personaje que se convirtió en leyenda en la década del 70. Además, es una excusa para revivir la compleja telaraña sociopolítica que enredaba al mundo en ese momento. Excelente actuación de Édgar Ramírez (nominado al Globo de Oro por su papel en este filme), en una trama maratónica y por momentos densa, que alcanza casi las tres horas de duración.

Impunidad, documental sobre el paramilitarismo en Colombia

Colombia actual, el más grande juicio en contra de los grupos paramilitares –acusados de asesinar miles de colombianos- es diseñado para crear “Justicia y Paz”. A cambio el proceso se convierte en una abrupta obstrucción a la verdad, donde los intereses políticos y económicos en la guerra paramilitar son encubiertos ¿están las victimas condenadas a ser víctimas por siempre o serán capaces de pelear en contra de la impunidad?

Todo sobre Bloody Sunday (Domingo sangriento)

Sinopsis

En Irlanda del Norte, el 30 de enero de 1972, trece personas murieron en las calles de la ciudad de Derry (Londonderry para los ingleses) y otras catorce fueron heridas por las balas del ejército británico. Eran unos civiles desarmados que participaban en una manifestación contra el decreto del Gobierno británico autorizando los internamientos preventivos. Este día, que se conoce en la historia por el nombre de Bloody Sunday (Domingo Sangriento), fue crucial en la historia contemporánea del problema irlandés porque convirtió el conflicto (que se arrastra desde hace más de 700 años) en una guerra civil, hizo que muchos jóvenes se integraran al IRA y alimentó un ciclo de 25 años de violencia. La película cuenta lo que pasó ese día, desde el amanecer hasta el anochecer, desde la llegada de las tropas a las calles de la ciudad sitiada hasta la violenta actuación de los soldados del formidable Regimiento de Paracaidistas contra los manifestantes civiles, y sigue con algo más de detalle a cuatro hombres: Ivan Cooper, líder de los defensores de los derechos civiles, lleno de idealismo y que comparte el sueño de Martin Luther King de lograr un cambio pacífico; Gerry Donaghy, un rebelde católico de 17 años, que desea establecerse y casarse con su chica (protestante) pero que se ve arrastrado por el enfrentamiento con los soldados; el general de brigada Patrick MacLellan, comandante del ejército británico en Londonderry, que se ve presionado para que detenga con firmeza la manifestación, y un joven soldado, un operador de radio de los paracaidistas, que, junto a su unidad de aguerridos veteranos, recibe la orden de entrar en el Bogside.

Ficha técnica

Dirección y guión: Paul Greengrass.
Países: Irlanda y Reino Unido.
Año: 2002.
Duración: 107 min.
Interpretación: James Nesbitt (Ivan Cooper), Tim Pigott-Smith (General Ford), Nicholas Farrell (Brigada Maclellan), Gerard McSorley (Lagan), Kathy Keira Clarke (Frances Cooper), Allan Gildea (Kevin McCorry), Gerard Crossan (Eamonn McCann), Mary Moulds (Bernadette Devlin), Declan Duddy (Gerry Donaghy).
Producción: Mark Redhead.
Producción ejecutiva: Jim Sheridan, Pippa Cross, Rod Stoneman, Paul Trijbits y Tristan Whalley.
Música: Dominic Muldoon.
Fotografía: Ivan Strasburg.
Montaje: Clare Douglas.
Diseño de producción: John Paul Kelly.
Dirección artística: Padraig O'Neill.
Vestuario: Dinah Collin.
Estreno: 2002.

Tráiler (en inglés)



Bloody Sunday: Los hechos y sus antecedentes

En enero de 1972, la Asociación de Derechos Civiles de Irlanda del Norte, que trabajaba conjuntamente con grupos locales, convocó una manifestación de protesta para el domingo 30 de enero. La manifestación iba a empezar en Bishop’s Field, en Creggan, el barrio católico edificado en una pelada colina muy lejos del centro y seguiría por “Free Derry” hasta el Ayuntamiento, la sede del poder político local (protestante) para celebrar un mítin. El objetivo de la manifestación era protestar contra los internamientos sin juicio, medida introducida por el Gobierno británico el verano anterior por presiones del Gobierno unionista en Stormont, que advirtió que se produciría una violenta reacción protestante contra el creciente malestar de los católicos.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley (trailer)

2006 Ken Loach film starring Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham. Two brothers fight the British for Irish independence then find themselves on opposite sides of the Irish Civil War.

Ver reseña y tráiler en español.

In the Time of the Butterflies (trailer)

Vancouver Latin American Film Festival tells Colombia's rich stories

By Janet Smith

Colombia remains largely an enigma to North Americans, often represented by fleeting clichés of drug wars and guerilla violence. The real complexities of the country are rarely revealed through the nightly newscasts, let alone on celluloid.

But all that is about to change at this year’s Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, which runs Thursday (September 2) to September 12. The event features several key titles from that country’s exciting new wave of directors. The diverse offerings range from fest opener The Wind Journeys, which follows a veteran accordion player as he crosses the Caribbean region with his seemingly possessed instrument, to Crab Trap, about a conflict between remote Pacific Coast villagers and landowners who want to build a beach resort.

One of the filmmakers who most sweepingly captures the place, its people, and its complicated past is Carlos Gaviria, whose Portraits in a Sea of Lies travels from Bogotá to the lush far reaches of the country in a beat-up orange Renault 4. Along the way, the central duo, upbeat photographer Jairo and his mute cousin Marina, are faced with not only the breathtaking beauty of their country but the violence of its past and present.

“Colombia is a country with a lot of stories to tell,” the congenial director tells the Georgia Straight from Los Angeles, where he’s visiting friends. “We’ve had civil war for, well, all my life, so this is a country where more things happen in one day than for one month in Canada! And I’m amazed at the amount of stories that come out.

“It’s like there are two or three different countries inside. The north, where we go in my film, is very Caribbean; it’s much more African-American and the music is very different. In the south, the music and the culture are more Indian.”

That’s not even mentioning the visual riches of Colombia’s diverse terrain, which spans the arid cowboy ranges of Wind Journeys, the mangrove lagoons of Crab Trap, and the emerald-carpeted mountains of Gaviria’s Portraits. (Schedules for these and other movies, products of countries ranging from Brazil to Mexico, are on the VLAFF's Web site.)

Though only about a dozen films got made in Colombia in 2009, Gaviria says that is up significantly from the handful produced in previous years, when the government was less supportive. “And the amazing thing is that most of those 12 films are doing really well at festivals around the world,” points out Gaviria, whose own film was accepted at Berlin and Montreal and has nabbed awards at the Guadalajara and Cartagena festivals.

Gaviria, who received his master’s of fine art at New York University and has worked in film and TV both in the U.S. and Colombia, says making his first feature film in his home country was akin to “swimming across the Atlantic: you have to just think about getting to the other side”.

More money is available for films from the government these days, but the process is still extremely low-budget, meaning directors have to get creative. Portraits’ visual artistry belies the fact that Gaviria uses professional lights in only one scene; otherwise, he made do by putting clear plastic instead of a roof over a shanty that is a key location in the movie, and he actually opened a hole in the top of the Renault to shoot its interiors with enough light. In the remote areas where his small crew filmed, the team didn’t have electricity, using generators to charge the camera batteries each night.

When Gaviria returned to his home country from the U.S. about seven years ago, he already had a script reflecting the nostalgia he had for Colombia while living abroad. But the harsh realities of the place, the homeless surviving on the streets of his hometown of Bogotá, soon confronted him. “When you live somewhere, you think it’s the centre of the world. Then when you go someplace else for a long time and come back, you see you’re in a country that’s very different, very abnormal.”

He began interviewing people who had been displaced, tapping into the personal stories behind a massive problem that has plagued the country for decades. The United Nations estimates that more than three million people have had to abandon their homes in Colombia, forced out by guerrillas, paramilitaries, or violence, and thrown into destitution; other groups put the number higher, at 4.5 million. Colombia’s displacement is so bad it ranks alongside war-ravaged areas like Iraq and Somalia.

The result of Gaviria’s research was that he made his lead character Marina—played by Canadian-trained actor Paola Baldion (who will attend both screenings Monday and Wednesday [September 6 and 8] at the Pacific Cinémathèque)—a displaced person who is travelling with her cousin to reclaim the land taken from them by militia after a massacre.

Still, Gaviria wanted to keep the movie humanistic and, at times, funny: the wheeler-dealer Jairo staves off corrupt soldiers by taking Polaroids of them in a Mexican sombrero. “I didn’t want the film to become about the violence,” Gaviria says. “It’s my very honest feelings about my country. At the beginning, I didn’t intend to make a political movie, and I’m very surprised at how politically charged it is.”

Compelling politics, it seems, will provide more rich material as Colombia’s movie scene continues to expand. Its dedicated filmmakers will never be short of subjects—even if they are short of lights or electricity.

Born on the Fourth of July

Enemigo al acecho (Enemy At The Gates)

Sobre la batalla de Stalingrado



Por Nelson Dávila Acosta
Rebelión

Durante la batalla de Stalingrado (hasta 1925, se llamaba Volgogrado); en la que se luchó cuerpo a cuerpo, metro a metro, cuarto por cuarto y sumando muertos soviéticos y nazis, se alcanzó a contar algo mas de dos millones de cadáveres.

La carnicería fue bestial, todo tipo de armas fue usada, de la ciudad, desaparecieron perros, gatos y ratas, todo lo que se movía servía de alimento.

En Stalingrado, se jugó el destino de la Unión Soviética y de la humanidad, los alemanes volcaron todos sus recursos para atacar a esa ciudad, es que la segunda guerra mundial, no fue una guerra contra los judíos y otras minorías nacionales, como se nos quiere hacer creer, fue realmente una guerra anti comunista, el plan Barba roja, aplicado contra los pueblos de la URSS comenzó el 1 de junio de 1941, a su paso, por Polonia, Ucrania y Bielorrusia, los nazis enfrentaron con extrema dureza a los guerrilleros, a los radicales, a los comunistas sobretodo, mientras tanto en los territorios europeos occidentales ya ocupados por los fascistas, estos asesinaron a millones de combatientes: a los maquis en Francia, a los guerrilleros de todo color político en España, Italia, Grecia, etc.

Consideremos: al final de la guerra se contabilizaron 6 millones de muertos judíos (la mayor parte por razones religiosas, en los hornos crematorios, por los fascistas alemanes), 20 millones de soviéticos, y totalizando las diversas nacionalidades europeas, se cree que la cifra total de muertos fue de 80 millones.

En medio de semejante escenario, aparece la figura de un joven campesino (Jude Law), quien habiendo sido en su campo natal un magnifico cazador de conejos, ahora aquella experiencia, le servirá en el campo de batalla: su misión: matar generales, comandantes, coroneles, con su magnifica puntería y empuñando un fusil, lo logra con relativa facilidad, lo que determinará que el alto mando alemán, haga llegar hasta la sitiada ciudad, a un increíble francotirador germano, armado a su vez con un fusil alemán de alta precisión, Richard Harris, nos demuestra una vez más sus capacidades actorales, y la persecución al francotirador ruso se torna implacable, una y otra vez los dos estarán a tiro de cañón, pero por algún detalle, se complica matar al otro.

Rachel Weiz, (Tania) es la belleza rusa, inteligente e instruida, que se enamora perdidamente del campesino ruso, por sus cualidades, por su sencillez y es ella la que dará el toque de ternura a la película.

El alemán, desesperado, pierde el control de si mismo, se descuida y queda a boca de jarro del fusil soviético, el cual será disparado con total precisión y sin piedad.

Aun faltan dos largos años, hasta que la bandera roja con la hoz y el martillo ondee sobre el Reichstag, en pleno centro de Berlín, pero Stalingrado fue el principio del fin para los criminales nazis.

Defiance (Film Trailer)

The year is 1941 and the Jews of Eastern Europe are being massacred by the thousands. Managing to escape certain death, three brothers take refuge in the dense surrounding woods they have known since childhood. There they begin their desperate battle against the Nazis. At first it is all they can do to stay alive. But gradually, as whispers of their daring spreads, they begin to attract others men and women, young and old willing to risk everything for the sake of even a moments freedom.

Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, Alan Corduner.

Director: Edward Zwick.

Genres: War Drama, War, Resistance Film.

A documentary film worries the Colombian President Álvaro Uribe

For three years the Association of Argentine Documentary Filmmakers (DOCA), has developed a national festival of independent documentary cinema in our country. In our second and third years we have opened the doors to international production teams that wish to show their works alongside those from Argentina but still placing the emphasise on the most recent Latin American accomplishments.

In the documentary film genre we have tackled themes and points of view that are at a distance to what can usually be seen in the mainstream media. For this, the festival and the documentaries shown maintain your respect and public support.

In the International Section of the Third Festival DOCA organised in Buenos Aires in November 2009 (the programme of which was made publicily available although it was only publicised on the state channel not through the mainstream media), there were several documentaries projected that showed different aspects and diverse points of view on the many different struggles of the Latin-American people, as one of these, and with the public's support, we projected the documentary “FARC, la insurgencia del siglo XXI”.

Nearly two months have passed since the public showing of this documentary (that had already been exhibited in several Latin-American and European countries as well as, at the festival in Havana), the president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, has criticized the exhibition of the film saying that " it is a video that a few foreigners helped to produce to let the FARC tell another lie to the world ".

Likewise, the Colombian Minister of Defense, Gabriel Silva, said in regards to the matter that "those advertising or advertising terrorist acts or the proclamations of these bandits, is an accomplice of them”.

This attitude of condemning the exhibition of a documentary film in another country, can only be understood coming from a government that has a record for violating human rights. On the other hand, besides being an inadmissible foreign interference in the freedom of expression in Argentina, the Minister of Defense appeals to a fallacious argument, since it would be necessary to apply this reflection to any film or newscast that was expressing controversial facts relating to international policy.

In this way any organization could be accused of organising a Nazi festival if they exhibited Leni Riefenstahl's film, of inducing a catastrophe for spreading the cinema of Santiago Álvarez, or of antiimperialism for exhibiting one of Michael Moore's documentaries.

"FARC: La insurgencia del siglo XXI" has also been criticised for the use of pseudonyms in the credits. Do they not know that the history of the cinema is filled with numerous films whose authors wished to remain anonymous. That many documentary makers pursue the construction of a critical body of work more than an opportunity to show off their name. And that different historical contexts determined this position in pursuit of the safety of the filmmakers and artists.

However, this reaction does not surprise us coming from the imperial allies in Latin America.

Inside DOCA the positions on FARC are diverse, but with respect to the government of Uribe we understand that it is: oppressor, authoritarian, that desires eternal re-election to guarantee the installation of North American military bases and to increase the imperialistic firepower against the Latin-American people.

In the same way that DOCA was the vehicle that made public in our country the pursuit of Chilenan documentary filmaker Elena Varela, for defending the interests of the people of Mapuche, and we do not hesitate to claim Michel Bachelet responsibility, we will continue with the normal activity of our association without allowing ourselves to be intimidated by false accusations or threats.

Freedom for art, defense of the democratic freedoms and of freedom of expression. This is our fight.

Documentalistas Argentinos

The next Küstendorf Film and Music Festival gets unveiled

For its third year, the festival will be held from 13 to 19 january 2010. This year, more than 300 films by young directors have been submitted. The officiel selection has 28 films, from 18 countries: Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland, UK, and USA. The jury will be led by Marjane Satrapi, famous Franco-Iranian cartoonist and filmmaker. A retrospective will be dedicated to Johnny Depp, guest star of the festival. All the details on the official website: kustendorf-filmfestival.org/2010

Source: kustu.com

The Founding of a Republic

The Founding of a Republic (simplified Chinese: 建国大业; traditional Chinese: 建國大業; pinyin: Jiàngúo dàyè; literally "The Great Cause of Founding a Country") is a historical film to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.

Consultar reseña en español.

Che & Gaza

By Ted Glick
Znet

"In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth. . . We just strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."

-Che Guevara, Socialism and Man

I wonder if, centuries from now, Che Guevera will be looked upon by people around the world in the way Jesus of Nazareth is looked upon by billions today, as a model for how one lives one's life.

This will only happen, of course, if humanity is successful, short-term, in avoiding catastrophic climate change via a clean energy revolution and, longer-term, through a wide and deep justice-based revolution away from capitalism and towards a society organized on the principle of respect for one another and our natural environment.

These thoughts are prominent on the day after watching the movie "Che," a four-hour semi-documentary focused on one successful and one thoroughly unsuccessful revolutionary war, the first in the late '50s in Cuba and the other in Bolivia in the late '60s. Che Guevara was a leader of both.

Yesterday was also the day that Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza. The Israeli government was urged on both by the Bush Administration's to-be-expected overt support of Israel's air strikes that left thousands dead and wounded and by President-elect Barack Hussein Obama's deafening silence. Israel made clear, for the umpteenth time, that their illegal and brutal military occupation and encirclement of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem will only end when they are forced to do so because of a mixture of Palestinian resistance and concrete acts of international solidarity and pressure, as in a cutting off or reduction of military aid from the United States.

There is an uncanny link between the second half of "Che" and what is now taking place in Gaza. In both instances, people engaged in armed combat against an oppressive government-in one case, a socialist-oriented group and in the other a radical Islamic group-faced or are facing decimation.

"Che" reveals in close detail what took place in Bolivia after, under Guevara's leadership, an armed guerrilla column was established with Cuban government support in an attempt to spread the socialist project beyond Cuba. This portrayal follows the first half of the movie showing how, a decade earlier, Fidel, Che and the Cuban people successfully defeated the U.S.-backed Batista military dictatorship during a two-years-long guerrilla war.

"Che" is not a full biography of the man. 90% or more of the film is devoted to a "you-are-there" rendering of the day-by-day realities of these two guerrilla wars. A small portion of it dramatizes a meeting between Che, Fidel and others in Mexico City in 1955, notable for Fidel's explanation of the exploitative and brutal realities of Cuban society which was the motivation for his willingness to risk his life in the revolutionary cause. A more substantial section of it is devoted to Che's visit to New York City in 1964 to speak at the United Nations. Most of the political motivation for what they did is revealed in these two sections.

The movie is well-researched. While based upon Guevara's diaries, there were also, according to an article in the January 4th New York Times, "interviews that proved decisive. (Peter) Buchman, (Steven) Soderbergh and (Benicio) Del Toro traveled to Cuba several times and talked to Guevara's family and friends, generals who fought in the Cuban revolution and survivors from the Bolivian expedition."

The movie makes no explicit effort to explain why the Cuban armed uprising succeeded and the Bolivian one failed, but several reasons are indicated. One was the opposition from the Bolivian Communist Party to the Guevara-led effort. A related reason was the weakness of indigenous Bolivian leadership in the effort; Guevara is clearly the dominant figure. But perhaps most significant was the active role of the U.S. government in giving strategic and tactical military direction and weaponry to the Bolivian junta. This included sending military advisors and trainers who had honed their skills in the Vietnam war. This aid was decisive, leading to the eventual wiping out of Guevara's guerrilla column.

Guevara's character is played well by actor Benicio Del Toro. It is striking to watch Che's heroic effort to prevent chronic asthma from precluding his full participation in the strenuous activity required during the revolutionary wars. He is portrayed as a no-nonsense, incisive leader of men (and a few women), prepared to make whatever sacrifices were necessary, including his life, to advance the revolutionary cause.

At the end of the film, after Guevara is wounded and captured and is being questioned by his captors, he makes the comment that, to paraphrase, "perhaps our failure will teach them lessons," referring to Bolivians generally as well as the peasantry in the area where they had operated who were unwilling to support their effort. Given the emergence several decades later of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism and its success in electing Evo Morales to the Presidency, as well as the growth of the socialist project inVenezuela, Ecuador and elsewhere in Latin America, it looks like he was right.

The film portrays Guevara dying as one would expect him to die. Sprawled wounded on the ground, an executioner orders him to stand up. Looking the executioner in the eye, he refuses and says, "Shoot me."

Che Guevara, if alive, would feel solidarity with those under the gun in Gaza today. He would draw strength, as I did, from the young Palestinians and Arabs I marched with in their thousands yesterday through midtown Manhattan. Chanting, "Gaza don't cry, Palestine will never die," and "Free, free Palestine," their anger, energy and determination were palpable.

Young Fred Hampton, Chicago Black Panther Party leader murdered by the police in 1969, said that "You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution." The movie "Che," and the on-going resistance in Palestine and all over the world to a profoundly unjust world order, confirms this truth of history.

--

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. Past Future Hope columns and more information can be found at http://www.tedglick.com.

Consultar artículo en español.

Salvador, Oliver Stone's Film