Films Politically: the Convergence of Politics and Cinema in the 60s

The Experimental Film Club is branching out, with a series of feature film screenings taking place at the autonomous social centre Seomra Spraoi. (The monthly screenings in the Ha'penny Bridge Inn will be continuing as usual.) This series will explore the convergence of film and radical politics in the late 1960s from the perspective summed up in Jean-Luc Godard's famous line: "The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically."

It begins on Tuesday February 17th at 8pm with Peter Whitehead's The Fall (1969). In 1967, the English documentary filmmaker (sometimes credited as the godfather of the music video) travelled to New York to explore the social, political and cultural unrest then in process. The film that emerged is both a vivid and expansive document of the period—particularly in its final, remarkable sequence documenting the student occupation of Columbia University—and a personal, agonised reflection on the role of media in political struggle and the potential for effective social change.
For more information on the series, please visit filmspolitically.blogspot.com or contact experimentalfilmclub@gmail.com .