films made for teleSUR
teleSUR is a pan-South American broadcaster largely funded by Venezuela. Activist, producer and writer Tariq Ali had a weekly show on teleSUR English language channel, produced in London by Dartmouth Films. These are the 15 films I directed or co-directed for Rear Window, a short arts feature within that programme.
LA ZAD - Zone à Défendre (Zone to Defend)
For decades there has been a local campaign of resistance against the construction of a second airport near the city of Nantes, Brittany. This resistance culminated in the establishment of a self-organised autonomous zone, known as the ZAD. Over 40,000 people took part in creative acts of disobedience to defend this zone, a non-hierarchical community with its own bakeries, brewery, newspaper and radio station.
LA ZAD - part 1 (above) shows the history of La Zad
Part 2 (to the right) shows day to day life in the zone
Co-directed with Kypros Kyprianou
COLD WAR CINEMA
Ian Christie Professor of Film and Media History, Birkbeck College, on Cold War cinema and the Space Race.
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JEAN-LUC GODARD
Michael Witt, Professor of Cinema at the University of Roehampton, surveys the career of Jean-Luc Godard.
SOVIET CINEMA
Ian Christie on Soviet Cinema, concentrating on Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov.
A film about Red Saunders, the photographer behind the Hidden Project which recreates great moments in the long struggle of working people for democracy and social justice.
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A story of the history of Bedlam how the experience of mental illness and notions of madness have been shaped over centuries, focusing in particular on inmate James Tilly Matthews, the first recorded case of a man who thought his mind was being controlled by a machine.
Peter Kennard is Britain’s most important political artist whose imagery has become synonymous with the modern protest movement. Peter talks about his first major retrospective at The Imperial War Museum.
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Composed by Arseny Avraamov, The Symphony of Sirens was an avant-garde composition performed in 1992 on the 5th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
It is explained and, in part, performed by Rita Says of the Jerico Orchestra
New Babylon is a 1929 Russian silent film about the 1871 Paris Commune, directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg with a musical score by Shostakovich. Ian Christie explains the importance of this film from a political and film history context
A survey of independent cinemas in London and how they can survive in the current economic and cultural climate.
Every year thousands of migrants cross the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, risking everything to get to the EU. Many don’t make it. Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen talks abou two of his recent works “Ode to the Perished” and “End of Dreams”
Co-directed with Duncan Pickstock
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Artist Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen talks about two of his works. “Rendezvous” looks at Indian migrant workers in the UAE and their families left behind. “Promised Land” provides a n insight into the lives of migrants as they prepare to cross the channel from France to England
Co-directed with Duncan Pickstock
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Thomas Hirschhorn explains the influence behind his temporary “monument” to Italian political theorist and Marxist Antonio Gramsci which ran throughout summer 2013 in the central Forest Houses housing project in the Bronx.
Co-directed with Duncan Pickstock
Political artist duo Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps talk about their current exhibition which opened on the eve of the recent UK general election. MAY NOT shows the realities faced by people affected by global austerity and war, and in particular what has happened in the UK in the last 5 years under a Conservative Government.