Film series: Wild in the streets 5 August – 30 September 2015

By Robert Herbert, curator, film (until June 2017)

An immense crowd of people in a square raising their fists in the air. — Still from *Attica*, 1973

Portraits of social and political struggle

Wild in the streets offers a powerful overview of cinema’s engagement with social struggle and revolutionary culture.

From a big-budget historical epic depicting the 1860s coalminers strike in northern France – Germinal (1993) – to a made-on-a-shoestring documentary exposing opposition to the Vietnam War by African Americans – No Vietnamese ever called me nigger (1968) – this is a collection of bracing portraits of rebellion and resistance. It includes some of the most powerful films ever made about political and humanitarian struggle – whether fiction or documentary or provocative hybrids of the two.

Drawing us into the experience of pacifists, grassroots activists, peaceful resisters, political manipulators, agitators and revolutionaries, the series screens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 5 August to 30 September 2015, in conjunction with the exhibition See You at the Barricades. It offers human portraits of individuals who have banded together – shrewdly or misguidedly – in their attempts to improve their lives and the lives of others and reveals the mixed outcomes of many of their battles.

Films

5, 9 August – Misère au Borinage (directors Henri Stork, Joris Ivens, Belgium, 1933, 35mm) + Strike (director Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1924, 35mm)
8 August – Underground (directors Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson, Haskell Wexler, US, 1976, 16mm)
12, 16 August – Germinal (director Claude Berri, France, 1993, 35mm)
15 August – The patriot game (director Arthur Mac Caig, Ireland/France, 1979, 16mm)
19 August – Rocking the foundations (director Pat Fiske, Australia, 1985, 16mm)
22, 23 August – Attica (director Cinda Firestone, US, 1973, 16mm)
26, 30 August – The coward (director Jiří Weiss, Czechoslovakia, 1962, 16mm)
29 August – The 17th parallel (directors Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan Ivens, France, 1968, 16mm)
2, 6 September – Daens (director Stijn Coninx, Belgium, 1992, 35mm)
5 September – Town bloody hall (directors DA Pennebaker, Chris Hedegus, US, 1979, 16mm)
5 September – Red Matildas (directors Sharon Connolly, Trevor Graham, US, 1985, 16mm)
9, 13 September – The battle of Algiers (director Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria/Italy, 1965, 35mm)
12 September – Ice (director Robert Kramer, US, 1969, 16mm)
16, 20 September – Paradise now (director Hany Abu-Assad, Palestine, 2005, 35mm)
19 September – Lousy little sixpence (director Alec Morgan, Australia, 1983, 16mm)
19 September – No Vietnamese ever called me nigger (director David Loeb Weiss, US, 1968, 16mm)
23, 27 September – If… (director Lindsay Anderson, UK, 1968, 35mm) + Zero for conduct (director Jean Vigo, France, 1933, 35mm)
30 September – The hungry miles (directors Keith Gow, Jock Levy, Norma Disher, Australia, 1955, 16mm) + Kemira: diary of a strike (director Tom Zubrycki, Australia, 1986, 16mm)
30 September – Friends and enemies (director Tom Zubrycki, Australia, 1987, 16mm)