Regional news crew from Swedish television does a spot on the Sunshine Socialist Cinema, in advance of the upcoming screening.
Interviewed by Hans Larsson and Firas Razak
It’ll be found here eventually
Cameraman Firas Razak
Monthly Archives: July 2013
Upcoming Films: An Artist Joins A Collective
On July 14 we’re showing the films Pirate by Annika Larsson, and Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev.
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Still from Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev
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Voina means war in Russian. Voina is the name of a group of artists and activists who’ve managed to gather around 200 participants in various actions, anti-authoritarian performances aimed at the elite of Putin’s Russia. In the documentary Tomorrow director Andrey Gryazev follows Voina members Vor, Koza, and their two years old son Kasper who comes along to the actions riding in a backpack. When Gryazev saw the first early lo-res films from Voina on Youtube, he offered to handle the documentation of their future activities, so that the quality of the filming would match the importance of their actions. At the same time, he shot a lot of material from private moments between the different members. Voina live underground, hiding from the police, and get by without using money, and one condition for Andrey Gryazev’s work was that he had to make Tomorrow without any budget for the filming. After the film started screening in international film festivals, Gryazev was sued by the members of Voina.
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A theme we’re interested in developing over the course of our screenings is the relationship between an artist and a political collective. Let’s say an artist joins a collective in the capacity of a citizen, same as everybody else, but s/he can also participate and work with the collective in the capacity of an artist or filmmaker, hir chosen vocation. We’re looking at films made by artists wishing to document the collective they belong to, and films made by artists who try to give form to the voice of the collective. But we’re also interested in artists describing their personal experiences, talking about what happened to them and their art when they chose to join a collective, whether the relationship between individual and collective produces conflict, disillusionment, euphoria, evolution, conformity, or new possibilities. This is part of what got us interested in the film Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache by Lene Berg, for example, and we will return to this topic in future screenings.
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A theme we’re interested in developing over the course of our screenings is the relationship between an artist and a political collective. Let’s say an artist joins a collective in the capacity of a citizen, same as everybody else, but s/he can also participate and work with the collective in the capacity of an artist or filmmaker, hir chosen vocation. We’re looking at films made by artists wishing to document the collective they belong to, and films made by artists who try to give form to the voice of the collective. But we’re also interested in artists describing their personal experiences, talking about what happened to them and their art when they chose to join a collective, whether the relationship between individual and collective produces conflict, disillusionment, euphoria, evolution, conformity, or new possibilities. This is part of what got us interested in the film Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache by Lene Berg, for example, and we will return to this topic in future screenings.
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Still from Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev
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About the stills:
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Early in the film we follow the preparations for an action in which Voina flip over a police car in order to retrieve a child’s ball which has rolled under the car. The filmclip becomes a Youtube hit, and the Russian police start paying more attention to Voina. A couple of the members of the group get arrested and are put on trial, charged with hatecrimes against a social group (the police). The film ends with one of the more well-known actions of Voina, Dick Captured By The FSB, a gigantic Fuck You at the FSB, the security police, in St. Petersburg.
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Still from Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev
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Still from Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev
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Small Improvements
We’re getting ready for this years’ first outdoor screening in our original location, the village of Höja in southern Sweden. It takes place on Sunday July 14 between 21.00-23.00. We’ll be showing the video Pirate by Annika Larsson followed by a documentary on the art-activist group Voina, Tomorrow by Andrey Gryazev. In the garden there’ll be posters from Formfront on display. We’ll be back with more info on these films shortly, plus some weather forecasts.
Meanwhile, some improvements made to the stationary setup since last year:
Diagonal supports for eliminating traces of wobbliness in the bleachers. And:
Two extra solar panels, giving us a total of 720 Watts per hour under optimal conditions. Enough for the projector and our new soundsystem.
Sunshine Socialist Cinema 