[Sfbay-video] Fwd: Free Film Wednesday: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

[a. mark liiv]

>Subject: Free Film Wednesday:  Can Dialectics Break Bricks?
>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 00:41:01 -0800
>
>As part of the "8 Days Of Anarchy" centered around the Anarchist 
>Bookfair this Saturday, Station 40 will be hosting a free screening 
>of Vienet's detourned film: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?  As always, 
>the film starts *at* 9pm, and admission is free.  Station 40 is at 
>3030b 16th St. (at Mission St.)
>
>"Imagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout 
>Situationist aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent 
>bureaucrats ply the ironies of a stalled revolution. This is what 
>you'll encounter in Ren Vinets outrageous refashioning of a Chinese 
>fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, Vinet stripped the 
>soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on 
>his own devastating dialogue ... A brilliant, acerbic and riotous 
>critique of the failure of socialism in which the martial artists 
>counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts from Debord, 
>Reich and others ... Vinets target is also the mechanism of cinema 
>and how it serves ideology."  -- PFA Program Note
>
>"Since Guy Debord has permanently withdrawn all his films from 
>circulation, Can Dialectics Break Bricks? is virtually the only 
>available example of a situationist use of cinema. Vinets film is a 
>far lesser creation than any of Debords, but still well worth seeing 
>for its consistent use of the situationist technique of detournement 
>the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new 
>subversive purposes. Other filmmakers have used aspects of this 
>technique, but only in confused and half-conscious ways, or for 
>purely humorous ends  la Woody Allens Whats Up, Tiger Lily?
>
>Vinets film is even funnier, but its humor comes not so much from 
>its satire of an absurd film genre as from its undermining of the 
>spectacle-spectator relation at the heart of an absurd society. In 
>both its social-critical content and its self-critical form, it 
>presents a striking contrast to the reformist whining and militant 
>ranting that constitute most supposedly radical media. By turning 
>the persuasive power of the medium against itself (characters 
>criticize the plot, their own role in it, and the function of 
>spectacles in general), it constantly counteracts the viewers 
>tendency to identify with the cinematic action, reminding them that 
>the real adventure  or lack of it  is in their own lives."  -- 
>BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS