Not Gay as in Happy but Queer as in F**k You: Screenings of Queer films followed by Subversive Fire gig.

 

Films: Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947, US, 20min) and Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs 1989, USA, 55m).

 

Date: Saturday 28th January

 

Time: 8pm 'til late.

 

Venue: Stag and Hounds Pub: 74 Old Market Street, Bristol, Bristol, BS2 0EJ

Tiocfaidh ár lá: Banned Films about Ireland

 

Mike Jempson, co-author with Liz Curtis of 'Interference on the Airwaves: Ireland, the Media and the Broadcasting Ban, introduces two films the British establishment banned from TV screens - an American current affairs doc that blew the gaffe on the 'shoot to kill policy' and an extraordinary look at the life and death of Irish Republican leader Michael Collins, commissioned by Lew Grade then locked in his safe for years.

 

Films:

Close UP: To Die for Ireland (Alan Raymond, 1980, 30 min)

Hang Up Your Brightest Colours (Kenneth Griffiths, 1973, 77 min)

 

Date: Saturday 18th February

Time: 8pm til late

Venue: Stag and Hounds Pub: 74 Old Market Street, Bristol, Bristol, BS2 0EJ

 

Topic: You Must be Choking: Anti-Roads Protests of the 1990s

 

The anti-roads protests kicked off a new chapter in the history of direct-action in Britain. When John Major’s Tory government embarked on the biggest road building programme since the Romans, they were met with vibrant, often militant forms of DiY resistance which ultimately shelved the government’s destructive plans. Newly affordable camcorder technology was on hand to document the struggle, of which the M11 Campaign, at 15 months, was one of the longest. 

 

Films:

Life in the Fast Lane: The NoM11 Campaign(Neil Goodwin and Mayyasa Al-Malazi, 1996, 85min)

 

Presentation by photographer Adrian Arbib on the Solsbury Hill protest.

 

Venue: Hydra bookshop: 34 Old Market, Bristol BS2 0EZ.

Time: 19°°- 22°°

Speaker/s: Adrian Arbib; Bristol Radical History Group.

Topic: Women and Resistance

 

Women constitute 51% of the global population yet own only 1% of the world’s wealth, while men overwhelmingly dominate positions of power in politics, economics and culture. Despite the efforts of patriarchal capitalism to ensure women continue to remain marginalised and oppressed in societies across the globe, women are continuing to resist everywhere. Here we look at two films celebrating women and resistance: the first explores the story and development of the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham in the 1980s; the second the struggle of women’s movements around the world.

 

Films:

Greenham: The Making of a Monument(Hamish Campbell, 2000, UK, 28min)

 

The Shape of Water (Kum-Kum Bhavnani, 2006, USA, 70 min)

 

Venue:The Bristol 125 Project: 138a Grosvenor Road, St. Pauls, Bristol, BS2 8YA.

Time: 19°°- 22°°

Speaker/s: Bristol 125 Project and Bristol Feminist Network

Topic: Travellers, Evictions and Oppression.

 

Films: Operation Solstice(Neil Goodwin, 1991, 47 min).

            Short film on Dale Farm TBC.

 

As the treatment of Dale Farm residents illustrated so recently, discrimination and persecution on the basis of class and ethnicity is as much a part of life in Cameron’s Conservative Britain as it was under Thatcher. Operation Solstice documents the infamous day in Thatcher’s Britain when police viciously attacked another kind of Traveller culture: 140 vehicles carrying 550 traveller men, women and children to the annual Solstice Peace Festival. We’ll also be looking at a film documenting the more recent Dale Farm eviction, and discussing the motivations behind the attacks on Traveller, Roma and Gypsy cultures and how they can be resisted.  

 

Venue: Cafe Kino: 108 Stokes Croft, Bristol, BS1 3RU.

Time: 19°°- 22°°

Speaker/s: Speakers from Dale Farm and the Traveller Solidarity Network.

Topic: Riots and Racism

 

Films: Injustice (Ken Fero, 2001, 98)

            Rebellion in Tottenham, 2011 (Reel News, 2011, 26min)

 

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4th August 2011, rioting engulfed London before quickly spreading across the country. Politicians of all parties immediately began falling over themselves to condemn the riots, which Tory Home Secretary Theresa May branded ‘sheer criminality’. While the mainstream media proved incapable of any more insightful analysis, independent filmmakers allowed residents of the communities to speak for themselves – who steadfastly draw connections between riots and the poverty, consumerism and police brutality which causes them.

 

Venue: Malcolm X Centre: 141 City Road St Pauls Bristol BS2 8YH.

Time: 19°°- 22°°

Speaker/s: ShaunDey from Reel News and Ken Fero.

Launch Event - 19.30

 

A Times Comes: The Story of the Kingsnorth Six (Nick Broomfield, 2009, UK, 20min)

 

To launch the festival we open with a short film from one of Britain’s most well-respected documentary filmmakers, Nick Broomfield. Six environmental activists made history in 2008 by shutting down the coal-fired power station in Kent, an act which the jury subsequently agreed was justified in the interests of protecting the environment from the effects of climate change. Broomfield abandons his usual style of enquiring objectivity to bring us this celebration of the spirit of direct-action.

 

 

Paths Through Utopias (John Jordan & Isabelle Freemeaux, 2011, UK and France, 109 min)

 

Beginning with more climate activism, Paths Through Utopias sees activists and academics John Jordan & Isa Fremeaux set off from the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow in 2008 and journey across Europe in search of attempts to imagine alternatives to capitalism in action. Far from the drudgery and exploitation of wage labour that characterises most of the world today, they found ways of living that encourage diversity, creativity and kindness, from squatted villages and anarchist collectives in France and Spain to occupied factories under self-management in Serbia.