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Bioneers Winter Film Series
Film
Bioneers Winter Film Series
Tue, Feb 6, 3–4pm
Teatro Santa Ana, Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
Every year in October in San Rafael, California, there is a huge gathering of practical
visionaries called Bioneers. A diverse group of more than 100 speakers and workshop leaders open the curtains on a possible and hopeful future.
On February 6, you can see some hope for the future in two Bioneers films. In the first, Michael Lerner connects the dots between personal and planetary healing. Lerner is one of the great visionary leaders of the Ecological Medicine Movement. He believes that environmental health will be one of the great human rights issues of the new millennium. He is president and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute, as well as co-founder of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. As editor of Tikkun magazine he is a leader of the spiritual progressive movement that addresses the need for the alignment of spirituality and politics. He is author of several books, including his latest, The Left hand of God: Taking Back God from the Religious Right.
As a rabbi and editor of Tikkun, Lerner is a strong voice in the call for an equal and secure Israel and Palestine, including Palestinian statehood. This issue is certainly highlighted in the current conflagration in the Middle East.
In the second film, visionary genius Amory Lovins talks about a common-sense
plan for how to cure our oil addiction. In How to End the Oil Game, Lovins
presents a practical plan that demonstrates how auto makers, government, energy companies and consumers can work together to change over from oil to alternative fuels. Why can this plan work? Because it’s practical and feasible, and there’s something in it for everybody. He offers a realistic outline of how to integrate design innovations, radically enhanced resource efficiency, and use of biofuels and hydrogen to move toward a prosperous post-petroleum economy. Lovins is a physicist and co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, as well as co-author of Natural Capitalism (the handbook for people who are serious about how to integrate economics and ecology for a viable future). His work has won Lovins an Alternative Nobel Prize, a MacArthur fellowship, eight honorary doctorates and many other awards, including a Hero of the Planet award.
The screening is followed by an optional conversation café for those who would like to stay and discuss issues from the films.
Brando burns in Global Justice film
Global Justice film
Burn!
Thurs, Feb 8, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana, Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
This week’s entry in the Center For Global Justice Snowbird Film Series is Burn!, an epic film of the transition from colonialism to neocolonialism. Made in 1969, it stars Marlon Brando in his most political film. He has been quoted as saying he considered it his most important film, and he turned down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to make it.
An analysis of Black revolutionary struggle that is part Marx and part Franz Fanon, Burn! maps the historic cycles of white colonialist oppression and Black insurgency. At the same time, this 1969 Gillo Pontecorvo classic is a political statement against the Vietnam War. Perhaps that is why United Artists withdrew it from exhibition soon after it opened. It is a political allegory set in a fictional sugar cane-producing Caribbean Island named Queimada.
Brando is Sir William Walker, the 19th-century English equivalent of a CIA operative who has been sent by the British government to fan the flames of an insurrection of the Black slaves and simultaneously to whisper encouraging words to members of the mixed-race urban classes so that when the Portuguese are routed, they will be ready to seize the reins of power. Not real power, of course, because it is British wealth to which this puppet regime will be permanently indebted.
The rebellion transformed Queimada from a colony into a neo-colony—nominally independent politically but economically dependent on its new British masters. It also transformed slaves into wage slaves, now paid for their labor but little better off than before. Within a decade there is a new rebellion, and Walker is called back to put it down. As Walker muses, “sometimes a single decade can reveal the contradictions of an entire epoch.” The counter-insurgency directed by this 19th-century CIA precursor leads to scenes of scorched earth reminiscent of Vietnam. Today’s viewer might well ask whether history is repeating itself once again. The film runs 112 minutes, and a discussion follows.
Cinemateca
José Luis’s Pick and Tips:
The pick
The Day I Became a Woman
There is more than a little ambivalence in the otherwise proud title of Marzieh Meshkini's The Day I Became a Woman, a powerful portrait of what it means to be a woman in a fundamentalist Islamic culture and an assured, astonishing directorial debut. In a trilogy of stories that mix allegory, fable and political commentary, Meshkini takes us from childhood to widowhood. “Hava” is a little girl (Fatemeh Cheragh Akhtar) who counts down her final hours of irresponsible youth before she must don the traditional chador and become a “woman” at noon on her ninth birthday. She defiantly spends that time with her best friend, a little boy she will no longer be allowed to play with, while a makeshift sundial measures her last minutes of freedom. The film is evidence of how healthy and alive the Iranian cinema is, even in a society we think of as closed. What appears on the screen has a starkness that is almost indelible.
The tips
In order to be able to provide the best viewing experience, the show times for some movies may be adjusted to accommodate their length. Be sure to check the schedule carefully. Also, please remember the new ticket price of 50 pesos. Discount cards are 450 pesos for 12 shows.
On Monday after 4pm buy your tickets for any selection of the week. Don’t take the risk of being locked out! Nos vemos en el Cine….
Le Grand Voyage (2004)
Tuesday, February 6, 5pm
French drama, French with English subtitles, 108 minutes
Director: Ismael Ferroukhi
Cast: Nicolas Cazale, Jacky Nercessian, Malika Mesrar El Hadaoui
Driving his traditional Muslim father (Mohamed Majd) across Europe en route to Mecca, thoroughly modern college student Reda (Nicolas Cazale) finds little to say to the old man. But along the way, as the gap between father and son begins to narrow, the two discover that ultimately it’s the journey—not the destination—that matters. For his fresh take on the road trip formula, director Ismael Ferroukhi earned a BAFTA nomination.
The Day I Became a Woman (2000)
Wednesday, February 7, 5:30pm
Friday, February 9, 3pm
Thursday, February 15, 5:30pm
Middle Eastern drama, Farsi with English subtitles, 78 minutes
Director: Marzieh Meshkini
Cast: Shabnam Toloui, Badr Iravani, Azizeh Sedighi
In her directorial debut, filmmaker Marzieh Meshkini offers an unsettling vision of what it means to be female in her native Iran. Tracing the stories of three characters—a nine-year-old girl on the brink of maturity, a young wife who defies her husband and an elderly woman seeking material comfort—this tightly crafted, award-winning film is a powerful, poetic exploration of the struggle to maintain dignity in the face of second-class status.
Center for Global Justice Film
“Burn” (1969)
Only show: Thursday February 8, 3pm
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Political drama, English, 112 minutes
An analysis of Black revolutionary struggle that is part Marx and part Franz Fanon, Burn! maps the historic cycles of white colonialist oppression and Black insurgency. At the same time, this 1969 Gillo Pontecorvo classic is a political statement against the Vietnam War. Perhaps that is why United Artists withdrew it from exhibition soon after it opened. It is a political allegory set in a fictional sugar cane-producing Caribbean Island named Queimada.
Kids’ cartoons
Saturday, February 10, noon
Free
Musical Saturdays:
Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus
Saturday February 10, 2:30pm
Sung in German, English subtitles, 169 minutes
Next week: Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth
If you want Die Fledermaus brilliantly sung and played in a true Viennese style, this is the performance. It has limitations: the shtick (slapstick and verbal comedy) goes on too long, but overall this recording captures the exuberance of Vienna celebrating the New Year as does no other. Try as you might, you will break up at the polka, delight in the accents and admire the singers’ enthusiasm. The production is as expected: traditional throughout with rich settings and costumes respecting the era.
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