Symposium: Radical Cinema, a Dialogue between Mexico and Japan
The fascination for our interactive digital present and the thoughtless immersion in cultural and economic globalization —two new and verifiable phenomena— can induce to an error in our appreciation of recent history and the reactionary uses of connectivity through all the spheres of contemporary life. Radicalism during the 60’s and the 70’s was a phenomenon that went beyond the perimeters of a specific sovereignty. Old-time militants had no e-mail and didn’t take part in interactive forums in the Web; but in spite of the communicational limitations of those times, they combined the national and internationalist perspectives in their struggles and the revolutionary strategies they followed. And, by the way, emancipation was never a nationalistic goal; it always had a universal plus, so to speak.
That means that problems which affected a country in a distant hemisphere had a resonance and a correspondence in another place in the world. An example: What could (and still can) talk about a student, a filmmaker, an activist, and a militant from Japan with their Mexican counterparts? Their ideals: Communism, Socialism, and an economically decent, just world. A period in common: the break-off with a dogmatic, old-fashioned Left. The new modalities of action: the armed struggle and the formation of grassroots organizations. The new configurations of revolutionary subjectivity: the role of imagination, discipline and commitment; putting personal life second to revolutionary duty. Without a doubt, they would talk about cinema as a tool for raising the awareness of the masses and they would see the camera as a mechanical catalyst for an army of images marching towards people’s liberation. In our times, the hyperbole of the past can seem delirious, but the rebellious gesture and the spirit of revolt are absolutely contemporary.
And if we are questioning the establishment, what is the role of women? Are they to be but “compañeras,” partners with a decorative function at the side of the usual social fighters? And a more risky and unsettling question: how would a feminine revolutionary future look like? And, in that regard — how are revolutionary films made? It is not a matter of championing run-of-the-mill Feminism, but of understanding gender perspective issues in both the political struggle and the politics related to film form.
History repeats itself and this goes beyond iconographies and symbols. During the 60’s and the 70’s, in the past century, in Mexico as well as in Japan there were avant-garde artists and new currents where filmmakers could discover and question the structures of the world. One current among these was militant cinema, with its strategic views which have not dated. What do Japanese filmmakers such as Wakamatsu and Adachi share with their Mexican colleagues such as, for example, Rubén Gámez and Paul Leduc, or even Jodorowsky in the 60’s? Where is such nonconformity —posed by the masters of the past— to be found today?
The dialogue is open. This is to be a first approach, guided perhaps by the intuition that there is a secret thread of continuity –—in spite of all the too-easy-to-notice existing differences— between those times and ours.
The Symposium on Radical Cinema will be a place for the reunion of voices, images, and life experiences.
Radical Cinema Simposium
UNAM International Film Festival
February 27-29, 2012
Registrations will open from February 7 to February 26, 2012. Electronic registrations: coloquio@ficunam.org
February 27
10:30 Sala José Revueltas
Ejercito Rojo/PFLP: Declaración de Guerra Mundial | Red Army/PFLP:Declaration of World War
Dir. Masao Adachi & Koji Wakamatsu
71 min.
A propagandistic documentary film for world revolution. Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi filmed the everyday life of Palestinian guerrilla fighters in collaboration with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Japanese Red Army.
12:00 Sala Carlos Monsiváis
Etnocidio: Notas sobre el Mezquital | Ethnocide: notes about Mezquital (Mexico)
Dir. Paul Leduc
105 min.
The images of Paul Leduc’s documentary –based on the research of the anthropologist Roger Bartra in the valley of Mezquital, one of the poorest regions of Mexico– still torment present-day Mexico. The most dire poverty, fueled by a capitalist system of exploitation, is shown with powerful images and testimonies shaped by a highly politicized aesthetic, the legacy of the aftermath of the student massacre on Tlatelolco Square in October ’68.
14:00 Pause
16:00. Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Table 1. Film as Propaganda
Participants:
Go Hirasawa
Servando Gajá
Alberto Híjar
Jesse Lerner
Miguel Vassallo (Moderator)
18:00 hrs. Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Cooperativa de Cine Marginal | Cooperative of Marginal Cinema (México)
Dir. Lucía Gajá
15 min.
Sequence of the documentary, now in it’s in post-production stage.
Historia de un documento | A Document’s History (México)
Dir. Óscar Menéndez
49 min.
Fleeing repression against militants from the ’68 movement, Óscar Menéndez and Rodolfo Alcaraz moved to Europe with this film, shot clandestinely with political prisoners confined at the Lecumberri Prison in 1970. Narrated in French with Spanish subtitles, this work presents a formerly unknown film testimony of the struggle for democracy in Mexico.
Talk between Lucia Gajá and Oscar Menéndez
February 28
11:00 Sala Carlos Monsiváis
Sex Jack (Japón)
Dir. Koji Wakamatsu
70 min.
Set in the near future, a small gang of revolutionary students are hidden away by a small-time thief. While they are hiding, all but the thief take turns having sex with an unhappy (and perhaps unwilling) girl who has had the misfortune to get involved with them. Through news reports, they discover that someone has been terrorizing police stations and communist headquarters in Japan just as they had hoped to do. At one point it looks like the thief may be the real revolutionary.
12:00 hrs. Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Fando y Lis | Fando and Lis (Mexico)
Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
93 min.
The film is based on the celebrated play with the same title, by author Fernando Arrabal, written in 1955. The film, with its surrealistic codes, tells the journey that Fando and Lis –a dysfunctional couple- start in search for the symbolic city of Tar, where everyone will find peace and joy. However, they have to face many tests along the way, in a clear allegory of Plato’s Cavern Myth.
14:00 Pause
16:00 Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Table 2. Film, Gender & Revolutions.
Participants:
Satomi Miura
Carlos Bonfil
Morna Macleod
Roger Koza (Moderator)
18:00 Sala José Revueltas
Guerrilla Estudiantil Femenina | Female Student Guerrilla (Japan)
Dir. Masao Adachi
73 min.
A group of schoolchildren secede. Though this presents an excuse to film adolescent sexuality, from then on the film echoes some sequences of United Red Army, by Koji Wakamatsu.
February 29
10:00 Sala Carlos Monsiváis
Prisionero/Terrorista | Prisoner/Terrorist (Japan)
Dir. Masao Adachi
113 min.
This autobiographical film combines the experience of the author with that of his comrade Kozo Okamoto who became mad because of torture. Masao Adachi describes the tormented path that the commitment with terrorist struggle leads to, the techniques of torture in prison, and an intellectual education fed more by the ideals of the French Revolution and Auguste Blanqui than those of Marx and Lenin.
12:00 Foro Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Table 3. Continuity…
Participants:
Vicente Castellanos
Go Hirasawa
Adrian Martin
Santiagro Mitre
Fran Ilich (Moderator)
14:00 Pause
17:30 Sala Miguel Covarrubias
La fórmula secreta | The Secret Formula (Mexico)
Dir. Rubén Gámez
45 min.
Methaphorical images of Mexican society organized into a poetic essay. The collage combines allegories of religious traditions, the caciquismo imposed upon peasants, national identity, and worker’s exploitation. These reflections are presented with a macabre sense of humor, the result of the fusion of modern and ancient México and the alienating presence of transnational corporations.
Participants Biographies
Carlos Bonfil
He studied French literature at the University of Paris IV, and translation at the University of Paris Dauphine X. He was a French literature professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and later on became involved in cultural journalism. Bonfil's articles about film have been published regularly for the past 15 years in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. He also writes on an ongoing basis for the International Film Guide (Variety) and is the author of the book Águila o sol; Las apariciones de Cantinflas and the study A través del espejo: el cine mexicano y su público (which he co-wrote in collaboration with the Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis.) Bonfil served as a jury at the 2002 Muestra de Cine Mexicano in Guadalajara and collaborated in the selection of films for the first two editions of the Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival (FICCO, 2004 and 2005;he as also a jury in the third edition (2006) of the same festival, and in the 2006 edition of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, and the Muestra de Cine Indígenista in its 2011 edition.
Vicente Castellanos
Doctor of Social and Political Sciences, with specialization in Communication, by the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNAM; he is the Coordinator, of the Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, UNAM. He is also a member of the National System of Researchers, Level 1 and Former President of the Mexican Association of Communication Researchers, 2003-2005. He has participated in research projects within the areas of linguistics, semiotics and film.
Lucía Gajá
She studied Communication & Graphic Design and later Film, specializing in Direction, at the University Center of Cinematographic Studies (CUEC), UNAM. She has worked as assistant director on feature films and short films with renowned directors such as Paul Leduc and Marisa Sistach. In 2005, she won the Ariel Award for her documentary I Am. Her film debut My Life Within won the award for best documentary made by a woman in the 2007 Morelia Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the Festival of Human Rights in Paris, first place in the category of human rights BAFICI Festival in Buenos Aires, prize for best coverage at the Documenta Madrid Festival, and in 2008 was nominated for an Ariel award in the category of best documentary feature. She is currently working on three feature documentaries: Cooperative of Marginal Film, Intimate Battles and My Life Outside. She was a fellow for Jovenes Creadores, FONCA, with the project Cooperative of Marginal Film. In relation to teaching, she imparts workshops on documentary filmmaking in various states of Mexico.
Servando Gajá
A graduate from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), he specialized in cinematography. In the past century, in the 70s, he found the ideal territory to combine his love of photography and political activism through super 8mm film. With a camera in his hand and a projector on his shoulder, he journeyed through the Mexican landscape illustrated by factories on strike, railroads that took him from one social movement to the next; electricians protesting among other social causes of that time. Professionally, he has contributed to the realization of cultural programs for institutions such as the National Institute of Anthropology and History, the National Indigenous Institute, the Center for Short Film Production and TV-UNAM. He has been Director of Photography in documentary and fiction films, primarily with Maryse Sistach and José Buil. He produced the documentary feature "Soy", which won the 2003 Ariel Award for Best Short Film. He co-directed with Julio Fons a digital series on water and environmental issues based on the experience of the people from Jiutepec, Morelos, which is currently being produced.
Alberto Híjar
Retired professor of the UNAM Faculty of Philosophy and Architecture (self-govern), he is also a survivor of the Cold War in Mexico (1974). He works as a researcher at the National Center for Research, Documentation and Information Arts, National Institute of Fine Arts. He writes in the weekly newspaper PorEsto! Yucatan. His publications include Arte y utopía en América Latina (2000);Releer a Siqueiros (2000), y Frentes, coaliciones y talleres. Grupos visuales en México en el siglo XX (2007). Among his individual works, Semiótica del imperialismo (2002) and Introducción al neoliberalismo. Teacher, counselor, curator, promoter of collective efforts, internationalist, author and producer of cultural texts on aesthetics, political philosophy, political economy, critique of modern and contemporary history, and in various media in Mexico and abroad.
Go Hirasawa
He has written about and programmed many events centered on Japanese political cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He is co-author of Film/Revolution (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2003), A Will: Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2008), a series of interviews with radical filmmaker Adachi Masao and producer Kuzui Kinshiro, and editor of Underground Film Archives (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2001), Godard (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2003), Fassbinder (Gendai Shicho Shinsha, 2005), Wakamatsu Koji (Sakuhinsha, 2007), Koji Wakamatsu: cinéaste de la révolte (IMHO, France, 2010) and Culture Theory of 1968 (Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2010).
Fran Ilich
Writer and media-artist, is a researcher at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York. He is the author of the novels Metro-pop, Tekno Guerrilla and Circa 94, and the essay Another narrative is possible. He was director of festivals like Cinemátik 1.0, <net.net.net.mx> and Borderhack. He has participated in Creative Time Living as Form, The Economist Mexico Summit 2011, Berlinale Talent Campus, Transmediale, ARCO, Documenta 12, How Latitudes Become Forms at the Walker Art Center, Streaming Cinema Festival, Antidote and the World Festival of Dignified Rage EZLN (who was invited by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos). Currently studying Media Art Histories in Donau-Universität Krems Austria, where he won the Leonardo Foundation scholarship while working in the media conglomerate cooperative Diego de la Vega, consisting of several virtual enterprises.
Roger Koza
A member of the International Federation of Film Critics, FIPRESCI, he is currently a film critic for the journal La Voz del Interior in Córdoba, Argentina. He published the book Con los ojos abiertos: crítica cinematográfica and is a programmer for the Latin-American section, Vitrina, of the International Film Festival of Hamburg, Germany. He is also the artistic co-director for the Festival Nacional Río Negro Proyecta, in Argentina, and a programmer at FICUNAM.
Jesse Lerner
A documentalist and curator. His short films Magnavoz (2006), T.S.H. (2004) and Natives (1991, with Scott Sterling) and his feature films Atomic Sublime (2010), The American Egypt (2001), Ruins (1999), and Frontierland (1995, with Rubén Ortiz-Torres) have won awards in festivals in the United Stares, Latin America and Japan, and they have been screened in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Bienale in Sydney, and in the Sundance and Los Angeles Film Festivals. As a curator he has organized exhibits for the Robert Flaherty Seminar, the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Brazo in Oaxaca, and the Guggenheim Museums of New York and Bilbao. Has published several articles about film, photography and art, and books like El espanto de la modernidad, The Maya of Modernism and F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing. Currently, he gives lectures for the program of Intercollegiate Media Studies in Claremont College.
Morna Macleod
Independent consultant based in Mexico City, she is currently preparing his doctoral thesis: Guardians of Culture, or changes remain. Women in the Maya movement in Guatemala, at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the UNAM. Regional Representative for Oxfam Community Aid Abroad (Australia), she launched the Indigenous Peoples Program in the Mesoamerican Region and promoted the creation of the educational program Kaji E, Gender and Worldview workshops and meetings between Mayans and Ladinas/Meztizas (Guatemala / Chiapas). Among his publications are the introduction to the book The Children of Mother Earth Speaks, Politics, local and indigenous peoples power (2001), Santiago Atitlán: Navel of the Universe utujil Tz. Worldview and Citizenship (2000), compiler with Maria Luisa Cabrera Pérez-Armiñan of Identity: Faces without masks. Reflections on Cosmology, Gender and Ethnicity (2000), and Local Power: Reflections on Guatemala (1997).
Adrian Martin
Associate Professor of Film Studies at Monash University (Australia), he is the author of six books, the most recent being A Secret Cinema (Melbourne: re:press 2012), and he is the co-editor of the film/arts journal LOLA (www.lolajournal.com). He has written hundreds of film essays and reviews since 1979 for magazines including Cahiers du cinema España, La Tempestad, Trafic, Sight and Sound, De Filmkrant, Transit, Rouge and Film Quarterly.
Oscar Menéndez
He studied painting at the Academy of San Carlos and film at the University of North Carolina, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He has made over 60 documentaries, most with political and cultural content; he is a pioneer of the genre in Mexico. He made several documentaries about the 1968 student movement in Mexico and another with support from French television; he filmed a documentary for the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. He founded, along with Gonzalo Martinez, the Ethnographic Archive of the National Indigenous Institute, where he was appointed director in 1982. He is currently president of the Mexican Association of Documentalists and directs the distribution company La Rana del Sur. He has received numerous awards, including the Fifth Centenary, 1st place in the Documentary Biennial, in Videomed in Badajoz, Spain, in Tashkent, USSR, Poland, special award in Peru, the National Journalism Award, and has had several tributes in recognition of his work.
Santiago Mitre
He was born in Buenos Aires in 1980. He wrote the scripts for Leonera and Carancho (Cannes Official Selection 2008 and 2010), both films directed by Pablo Trapero. The Student is his first solo feature film as a director.
Satomi Miura
Professor-researcher at the Center of Asia and Africa Studies, El Colegio de Mexico. Doctor of Political and Social Science with a major in Communication Sciences by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. BA and MA in Germanic Studies in Japan and Germany. Research Line: Culture, Language & society.
Miguel Vassallo
A professional Mayanist, he defines himself as a tenacious fighter against the system. He is married to Ana Ortiz, also a Mayanist and social activist with whom he has a daughter. Born in 1967, he was educated in a rich family environment and the so-called active learning. But in his work as an agriculture jornalero in the Chiapas of the eighties, he approached the indigenous world. His training has been molded in his passage through arenas as diverse as The Party, art, political activism, journalism and academia.