<\/a>![\"4.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/4._October.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOktiabr\u2019. Desiat\u2019 dnei kotorye potriasli mir. <\/em>Dir. Sergei Eisenstein & Grigori Aleksandrov. <\/em>USSR, 1928.<\/em><\/p>\nThe programme opened with a special 35mm screening of Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov\u2019s silent classic October <\/em>(1928). The film was shot and edited during 1927-28 for the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. Its premiere coincided with major political changes in the Soviet Union \u2013 the beginning of Stalinisation, including the revision of the legacies of 1917. In that context, the auteurism<\/em> of Eisenstein\u2019s masterpiece and its exalted vision of revolutionary revolt resulted in a mixed reception and led to the film being discreetly shelved in 1933.<\/p>\n![\"5.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/5._Snijders.jpg\")
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The musical accompaniment for the screening was created specially for this event and performed by John Snijders <\/em>of Durham University\u2019s Music Department. The score was made up of <\/em>early 20th<\/sup>-century Russian avant-garde pieces for the piano by well-known as well as now largely forgotten composers, including: Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962), Alexander Mossolov (1900-1973), Nikolai Miaskovsky (1881-1950),<\/em> Nikolai Obukhov (1892-1954), Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Sergei Protopopov (1893-1954), Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944), Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).<\/em><\/p>\nMemories of Underdevelopment<\/em><\/strong>: Beyond Remembering<\/strong><\/p>\nWhile the occasion for producing the programme was the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the curators\u2019 goal was to go beyond commemoration and to pursue a non-nostalgic, critically reflective approach to the contemporary significance of revolution. This entailed, crucially, an interrogation of the relationship between the revolutionary past, present and future \u2013 a question that the programme began to explore first in the case of Cuba. The programme featured the UK premiere of the recently remastered version of the classic of Latin American and Caribbean cinema, Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea\u2019s Memories of Underdevelopment <\/em>(1968). Through its exploration, at the height of the Cold War, of the contradictions and aspirations of the Cuban Revolution, the film challenges us to consider how in revolutions tensions between perceived underdevelopment, colonial interdependence, individual freedoms and political compromise continue to shape the uncertainties of our contemporary world.<\/p>\n![\"6.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/6._Memorias.jpg\")
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Memorias del subdesarrollo. Dir. Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea. Cuba, 1968. The screening of the film<\/em> was followed by a lively discussion with the audience, chaired by Durham University\u2019s Francisco-J. Hern\u00e1ndez Adri\u00e1n. The guest speakers were Michael Chanan, documentary filmmaker and <\/em>influential historian of Cuban cinema,<\/em> and t<\/em>wo leading Caribbeanists from Newcastle University, <\/em>Dunja Fehimovi\u0107 and Jorge Catal\u00e1 Carrasco.<\/em><\/p>\nEsto es lo que hay<\/em><\/strong>: Take It or Leave It!<\/strong><\/p>\nTo address the critical question \u2018How are Cubans today living and leaving the historical project of the Cuban Revolution?\u2019 the curators invited the French documentary filmmaker L\u00e9a Rinaldi to showcase her 2015 documentary Esto es le que hay<\/em>, which focuses on the censorship of and political controversy surrounding Los Aldeanos \u2013 one of the most prominent Cuban rap bands, famous for their active engagement with sensitive issues affecting contemporary Cuban society.<\/p>\n![\"7.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/7._Esto.jpg\")
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Esto es lo que hay, chronique d\u2019une po\u00e9sie cubaine. <\/em>Dir. L\u00e9a Rinaldi. France, 2015. After the screening, the film\u2019s d<\/em>irector, L\u00e9a Rinaldi, was interviewed via Skype by Francisco-J. Hern\u00e1ndez Adri\u00e1n and the <\/em>Cuban culture critic and activist Parvathi Kumaraswami (University of Reading)<\/em>. Rinaldi discussed with the audience her interest in the<\/em> new generation of Cuban cultural and social actors who are today consciously reshaping the present-future dimensions of the Cuban revolution. <\/em>The discussion brought to the fore the intensity, uncertainty, and pain of political participation and censorship, masculinity and exile, not only in the Cuban or Caribbean contexts, but also globally.<\/em><\/p>\nOnce Upon a Time Proletarian<\/em><\/strong>: In History\u2019s Limbo<\/strong><\/p>\nRevolutions change the course of history, but they ultimately acquire meaning in and through the lives of ordinary people caught up in them. By looking at the legacies of the Chinese communist revolution, the programme examined the intimate interlocking of personal and historical time in the documentary Once Upon a Time Proletarian<\/em> (2009) by UK-based Chinese filmmaker and novelist Xiaolu Guo. The film is composed of ad hoc interviews with representatives of China\u2019s contemporary \u2018proletariat\u2019 as they try to make sense of their place in a rapidly changing social, political and economic landscape. Guo subtly interweaves fragments of her protagonists\u2019 reflections on the meaning of their lives with poetic \u2013 roughly shot, but carefully edited \u2013 visual sequences, to produce an understated but powerful image of a \u2018prison house\u2019. \u2018The prison\u2019 serves here as a metaphor not for China itself, but for the limbo of historical time in which present-day Chinese \u2018proletarians\u2019 seem to be caught up \u2013 an uncertain place between a past figured by narrations of revolution and an undefined future that has no shape other than the immensely attractive, but still largely symbolic, image of the child.<\/p>\n ![\"8.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/8._Once_Upon.png\")
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Women ceng jing de wuchanzhe. Dir. Xiaolu Guo. China & UK, 2009. The film was followed by a discussion with the audience, chaired by Andy Byford (Durham University), in which sociologist Sophia Woodman (Edinburgh University) placed the subject in the framework of social change in contemporary China, while film studies scholar Sabrina Yu (Newcastle University) situated the film in the context of Chinese independent documentary filmmaking.<\/em><\/p>\nVideograms of a Revolution<\/em><\/strong>: The TV Is with Us!<\/strong><\/p>\nIn contrast to both Cuba and China, whose socialist regimes, forged in revolution, persist to this day (albeit in significantly reshaped forms), Eastern Europe experienced, between 1989 and 1991, a revolutionary overturn of socialism itself. The What\u2019s Left? programme featured Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujic\u0103\u2019s Videograms of a Revolution <\/em>(1992) \u2013 a documentary that focuses on the five days in December 1989 which brought down the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu. As demonstrators occupied the state television station in Bucharest and broadcast continuously for 120 hours, television became an instrument of revolution, while the television studio was turned into a site in which history was made.<\/p>\n![\"9.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/9._Videograms.jpg\")
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Videogramme einer Revolution. <\/em>Dir. Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujic\u0103. <\/em>Germany & Romania, 1992.<\/em><\/p>\nThe Event<\/em><\/strong>: Do Not Let Them Deceive You!<\/strong><\/p>\nThe immediacy and visual potency of television does not mean, however, that the revolutionary downfall of communist rule in the countries of the Eastern bloc, including the USSR itself, was necessarily rooted in transparency. A quarter of a century on, documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa is still trying to piece together what lay behind the supposed \u2018birth of democracy\u2019 in Russia in 1991. In August of that year, a failed coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> was staged in Moscow by a group of Communist Party hardliners who sought to thwart the political and economic reforms of the Soviet Union instigated by Mikhail Gorbachev. What became known as The Putsch was overturned in part thanks to thousands of liberal-minded citizens of Moscow and Leningrad who came out onto the streets in protest. In his documentary The Event<\/em> (2015), Loznitsa revisits extant documentary footage of the 1991 public demonstrations kept in the Leningrad archives and casts his own interpretation of these world-changing political events.<\/p>\n![\"10.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/10._Event.jpg\")
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Sobytie. <\/em>D<\/em>ir. Sergei Loznitsa. Netherlands & Belgium, 2015. The screening was followed by a Skype interview with the director and discussion with the audience, chaired by Du\u0161an Radunovi\u0107. <\/em>Loznitsa spoke about the background to the making of this film (which he dubbed a \u2018found-footage\u2019 documentary) and about his interest in Russia\u2019s short-lived experience of political liberalism. He placed the events of 1991 in the wider context of Russian history, which, in his view, is shaped by cyclical returns of totalitarian models. One of these models, he argued, is \u2018revolution\u2019 itself.<\/em><\/p>\nKrisis<\/em><\/strong>: The Return of the Repressed<\/strong><\/p>\nKrisis<\/em> (2016), by artist Dmitry Venkov, is a theatrical re-enactment of a Facebook discussion between Russian and Ukrainian artists after the toppling of Lenin\u2019s statue in Kiev during the Euromaidan protests of 2013-14. It shows that the revolutionary symbols of the Soviet era are still alive in post-Soviet societies \u2013 societies that are still, over a quarter of a century since the dissolution of the USSR, as deeply connected as they are divided by history, politics, and aesthetics.<\/p>\n![\"11.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/11._Krisis.jpg\")
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Krisis. Dir. Dmitri Venkov. Russia, 2016. <\/em>After the screening, Du\u0161an Radunovi\u0107 chaired live Q&As with the author. Venkov discussed both some of the formal aspects of his filmmaking (such as what happens when one turns a Facebook exchange into a scenario) and the major ideological issues that his film raises. The discussion revolved especially around the symbolic meanings of monuments and how political ideas morph over time and start to mean something else \u2013 key questions that the What\u2019s Left? programme sought to bring to the fore around the topic of \u2018revolution\u2019. Members of the audience drew important parallels with related issues in very different cultural and political settings, including, for instance, contemporary Italy.<\/em><\/p>\nPussy vs Putin<\/em><\/strong>: Weaponising Gender<\/strong><\/p>\nAs should be clear in the example of Pussy vs. Putin <\/em>(2013) \u2013 an eyewitness chronicle of Russia\u2019s anarchic feminist rock performance group, Pussy Riot, before and after the 2013 arrest and imprisonment of three of their members \u2013 Russia remains fertile ground for revolutionary, anti-authoritarian activism. It is a place, moreover, where a new aesthetic of political radicalism is being developed \u2013 one in which gender is, it would seem, deployed as a particularly powerful weapon.<\/p>\n![\"12.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/12._Pussy_vs_Putin.jpg\")
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Pussy protiv Putina. <\/em>Dir. Gogol\u2019s Wives. Russia, 2013.<\/em><\/p>\nWhat Is to Be Done? The Summer School<\/strong><\/p>\nA related form of cultural-political activism in Russia was showcased through the brand-new art film of the Russian avant-garde collective Chto Delat? (What Is to Be Done?). Titled New Dead End #17: Summer School of Orientation in Zapatism<\/em>, the film was co-commissioned by Tyneside Cinema and premiered in Newcastle as part of the What\u2019s Left? programme. Inspired by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a leftist political and militant group based in southern Mexico, the film explores the idea of the so-called \u2018Zapatista Embassy\u2019 \u2013 \u2018horizontal meetings\u2019 designed to encourage others to walk with the Zapatista and deliver their message. The film documents the goings on at a \u2018summer school\u2019 in a village outside St Petersburg, where participants engage in self-reflection and improvised experimental performances as part of a tongue-in-cheek \u2018Zapatista Embassy\u2019 transposed to Putin\u2019s Russia one hundred years after the October Revolution.<\/p>\n![\"13.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/13._Chto_delat.jpg\")
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New Dead End #17: Summer School of Orientation in Zapatism. Dir. Chto Delat? Russia, 2017. Chto Delat? is an art collective, founded in St Petersburg in 2003, whose work merges experimental and performative art with political activism. The group\u2019s name derives from the 1860s\u2019 novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky and brings to mind some of Russia\u2019s earliest revolutionaries. The same title was borrowed by Lenin for his 1902 pamphlet in which he argued for the formation of a revolutionary vanguard, which not long after materialised as the Bolshevik Party. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Uprising<\/em><\/strong>: Narrating Pan-Arab Mobilisation<\/strong><\/p>\nThe most visible and prolifically documented revolutions of the present moment are, no-doubt, the uprisings that spread across the Arab world in 2011 and whose aftermaths still haunt the region in the shape of a succession of ferocious civil wars, with Syria at the forefront. The What\u2019s Left? programme\u2019s look at the 21st-<\/sup>century Arab revolutions provided an opportunity to reflect on how mobilisation for change has been framed around the idea of the \u2018Arab Spring\u2019. In the 20th<\/sup> century, notions of pan-Arabism, Arabness as a singular form of identity, and a struggle for Arab unity under the banner of such pan-Arabist leaders as Egypt\u2019s Gamal Abdel Nasser, provided the context for the emergence of the Arab state. In his docufilm The Uprising<\/em>, Peter Snowdon imagines a new \u2013 21st<\/sup>-century, \u2018post-modern\u2019, bottom up, technologically mediated \u2013 form of pan-Arabism in action. He forges a narrative in which \u2018the Arab people\u2019, from the rural corners of Tunisia to cosmopolitan Cairo, rise up and set off on the march for justice, freedom and dignity.<\/p>\n ![\"14.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/14._Uprising.jpg\")
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The Uprising. Dir. Peter Snowdon. UK, Belgium, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, Libya, Egypt & Bahrain, 2013. <\/em>The lively panel discussion that followed the screening (chaired by Anoush Ehteshami and featuring the film\u2019s director Peter Snowdon and <\/em>Durham University\u2019s Middle East expert Emma Murphy) <\/em>focused on the role of technology, or rather \u2018digital action\u2019, in mass mobilisations in the region, on the importance of youth as a social category in political mobilisation, and, finally, on what the consequences are of viewing distinct uprisings through the lens of a single \u2018camera\u2019 \u2013 that is to say, a single narrative.<\/em><\/p>\nSilvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait<\/em><\/strong>: What Does It Mean<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"15.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/15._Silvered_Water.jpg\")
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Ma’a al-Fidda. <\/em>Dir. Wiam Bedirxan & Ossama Mohammed.<\/em> France, Syria,<\/em> USA &<\/em> Lebanon, 2014. A collaboration between exiled Syrian filmmaker and young Syrian-Kurdish schoolteacher, the film is composed of footage from thousands of authentic videos sent through directly to the authors by those caught up in the war. The result is a harrowing on-the-ground documentary chronicle of the ordeal undergone by Syrians today. <\/em>The screening of the film was a charged event on all levels \u2013 both cinematically and emotionally \u2013 as the audience included a group of around thirty Syrian refugees resettled in Durham County, who shared their experiences of the war and the impact of the film on them.<\/em><\/p>\nWhat does it mean to screen a film on the horrors of the Syrian revolution and the ensuing civil war while having the very people who took part in it there, watching their homes and their streets destroyed on screen, and their family, friends and compatriots undergo suffering and death? What meanings did these people assign to the struggle and pain that was shown, and how did they relate it to their own narratives of their own hardship and loss? As everyone present mediated between languages, cultures and contexts, the panel chair, Abir Hamdar, and invited panellists \u2013 Syrian writer Robin-Yassin Kassab, activist Leila al-Shami, journalist and novelist Malu Halasa, and Head of the Middle East section at Chatham House Lina Khatib \u2013 addressed the multiple issues at stake, both in the film and in Syria itself. Malu Halasa spoke for all those present when he later wrote in an email: \u2018I’ll always remember last night. The refugee women were so special and amazing. I’ve not met a group like that before. I woke up this morning thinking I don’t know if I can watch Silvered Water<\/em> again, but then I thought it is my duty to watch it.\u2019<\/p>\nThe Trials of Spring<\/em><\/strong>: Revolution is a Woman<\/strong><\/p>\nRevolution \u2013 al-Thawra \u2013<\/em> has feminine connotations in Arabic and Arab women have always been at the forefront of revolutions in the region. Egypt\u2019s Arab Spring was no exception. Women were in the heart of Tahrir Square during the protests; but they also became a prominent subject of terror and attacks for their involvement.<\/p>\n![\"16.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/16._Trials_of_Spring.jpg\")
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The Trials of Spring. Dir. Gini Reticker. USA & Egypt, 2015. When a young Egyptian woman travels from her village to Cairo to add her voice to the tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding an end to sixty years of military rule, she is arrested, beaten, and tortured by security forces, and later punished and imprisoned by her family for daring to speak out. Unbreakable, she sets out in search of freedom and social justice in a country in the grips of a power struggle, where there is little tolerance for the likes of her.<\/em><\/p>\nThe screening of The Trials of Spring<\/em> by Gini Reticker addressed the question of women in Egypt\u2019s revolution of 2011, while the panellists \u2013 Abir Hamdar (Durham University), Zahia Salhi (University of Manchester) and Maria Holt (University of Westminster) \u2013 provided powerful interventions on the significance of women\u2019s participation in political activism in the region. Al-Thawra mustamirra<\/em> \u2013 \u2018The Revolution Continues\u2019 \u2013 is a slogan that was chanted again and again by Egypt\u2019s revolutionaries. Reticker\u2019s film and the ensuing discussion underscored another layer and meaning to this slogan: can women<\/em> continue to participate in revolutions in the region; how, at what cost, and with what consequences?<\/p>\nA Grin Without a Cat<\/em><\/strong>: As One Event Sweeps Another<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"17.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/17._Grin.jpg\")
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Le fond de l’air est rouge. <\/em>Dir. Chris Marker. France, 1977.<\/em><\/p>\nThe What\u2019s Left? programme ended with the screening of Chris Marker\u2019s remarkable two-part documentary A Grin Without a Cat <\/em>(1977). The film weaves an array of archival historical footage, ingeniously edited to retrace the issues, events and debates that had provoked the upsurge of worldwide political activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s following the rise of right-wing oppression and the crisis of the traditional left. In Marker\u2019s own words, the film was pitched against what he saw as the historical amnesia caused by the television treatment of global events, where \u2018one event is swept away by another [\u2026] and it all finally descends into collective oblivion\u2019 \u2013 something still acute today, forty years on. <\/p>\nWhat\u2019s Left? Rethinking Revolution through Visual Art and Cinema<\/strong><\/p>\n ![\"18.](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/byford_piece\/18._Final_Panel.jpg\")
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The programme closed with a discussion titled What\u2019s Left? Rethinking Revolution through Visual Art and Cinema, led by the Durham curatorial team (from left to right): Anoush Ehteshami, Abir Hamdar, Du\u0161an Radunovi\u0107, Francisco-J. Hern\u00e1ndez Adri\u00e1n, and Andy Byford. The panellists engaged the audience on the question of what makes the visual media and the cinematic form so relevant a lens through which to reflect on the phenomenon of revolution. From their different perspectives, the team discussed in what ways cinema and visual culture have been such an important part of revolutionary processes, and how, thanks to distinctive forms of communication, modes of narration and aesthetic devices, they perform a major role in endowing \u2018revolution\u2019 with an existence that cuts across historical time and geopolitical space, across the personal, the culturally specific, and the universal.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Left? A Century in Revolution By Andy Byford, Anoush Ehteshami, Abir Hamdar, Francisco-J. Hern\u00e1ndez Adri\u00e1n & Du\u0161an Radunovi\u0107 Between 29 September and 8 October 2017, Tyneside…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":12420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1657],"tags":[1752],"class_list":["post-12422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1917-centenary","tag-tyneside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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