Liberty At Night

Philippe Garrel | Liberté, La Nuit

France | 1983 | DCP | 82min | MR: 14 years old

Paris, during the Algerian War. Jean and Mouche decide to end their long-standing relationship. They continue fighting separately for the independence cause while each one tries to adjust to the other’s painful absence. When Mouche is killed by the OAS, Jean starts going out with a young girl of Algerian origin.

Actua 1

Philippe Garrel | Actua 1

France | 1968 | DCP | 6min | MR: 14 years old

A film considered almost lost even by Garrel, who recently found his negatives. Shot during the events of the May 68, it was made collectively; the film is a merge of Garrel’s and his partners’ points of view, all of them students and filmmakers that participated in the revolt. Collage of scenes from the Paris barricades that were recorded surreptitiously by some of the protesters. Viewed years later, the footage thrusts the audience right into the heart of the revolutionary fever.

The Wound

John Trengove | Inxeba

South Africa/Germany/Nederlands/France | 2017 | DCP | 88min | MR: 18 years old

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp, young men, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who increasingly calls into question the patriarchal codes of the initiation, as well as the unbearable crisis building in Xolani as he must choose between the traditional world that he knows, and his own fulfillment.

Spell Reel

Filipa César | Spell Reel

Germany/Portugal/France/ Guinea-Bissau | 2017 | DCP | 96min | MR: 14 years old

In 2011, an archive of film and audio material re-emerged in Bissau. On the verge of complete ruination, the footage testifies to the birth of Guinean cinema as part of the decolonising vision of Amílcar Cabral, the liberation leader assassinated in 1973. In collaboration with the Guinean filmmakers Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, and many allies, Filipa César imagines a journey where the fragile matter from the past operates as a visionary prism of shrapnel to look through. Digitised in Berlin, in superbly vivid tableaux, the film juxtaposes the black-and-white 16mm footage with contemporary digital images, subtly manipulating scale, orientation, and text to alternatively create distance or achieve proximity between past and present.
 
Image and sound (1967-80): José Bolama, Cobumba, Julinh Camará, Djalma Fettermann, Flora Gomes, Josefina Lopes Crato, Sana na N'Hada, Rudi Spee
Image and sound (2012-15): Suleimane Biai, Filipa César, Marta Leite, Nuno da Luz, Dídio Pestana, Benvindo dos Santos, Aissatu Seidi
Additional text and commentary: Anita Fernandez, Flora Gomes, Sana na N'Hada