Anytime, anywhere | The Politics and Poetics of Landscape

A milestone in the history of political and experimental cinema, A.K.A. Serial Killer pioneers the cinematic theory of fûkeiron (the theory of landscape). Together with cultural theorist Matsuda Masao, scriptwriter Sasaki Mamoru and other collaborators, Adachi set out to trace the likely steps of a nineteen-year-old boy who carried out four, apparently motiveless, murders over a month-long period in 1968.

The result is an experimental documentary comprised purely of landscape shots, each of which shows scenery that he may or may not have seen during his upbringing and journey. Seeking an alternative to the sensationalism found in the media, Adachi’s sparse voice-over provides only the hard facts while the increasing number of billboards in the landscapes slowly reveal the hegemony of capitalism in contemporary Japan.

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Followed by a Skype conversation with Julian Ross, researcher, writer, and curator for International Film Festival Rotterdam. Julian has also written a programme note to accompany the screening. 

Supported by the BFI and BFI’s Film Audience Network as part of “Uprising: Spirit of ‘68”

Anabasis – The name given to wandering, circuitous homeward journeys.

Developed in collaboration with legendary filmmaker Adachi Masao, The Anabasis… re-purposes Adachi’s theory of fûkeiron to explore the history of the Japanese Red Army, their exile in Beirut and ultimately their forced return to Japan.

Shot in glorious Super 8mm, Baudelaire traces the disjointed stories and entangled recollections of Fusako Shinegobu, leader and founder of the JRA; her daughter, May; and Adachi Masao, filmmaker-turned-revolutionary fighter. Panoramas of Tokyo and Beirut merge with archival footage, TV clips and film excerpts to create a beautiful and poignant exploration of the slippages between history, memory, politics and cinema.

How do forty-three students vanish into thin air? Produced by an anonymous Mexican collective, The Sun Quartet is an experimental, at times psychedelic protest-poem addressing the legacy of the 2014 disappearance of forty-three students in Iguala, Guerrero. Across four visually striking and emotionally potent short films, the collective radically depart from the grammar of mainstream film and television, which, along with the obfuscation of the state, police and military continues to fail victims of violent crime in Mexico. The Sun Quartet finds them instead reaching towards a more authentic language capable of articulating the trauma at the heart of the national psyche.

The whereabouts of the disappeared students remain unknown, and their status as ‘disappeared’ persists to this day.

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Please note that the film is composed largely of overlaid moving images that at times create a strobe-like effect. 

Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual exploration through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Immersed into the sacred, the profane, and everything in-between, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.

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Presented in partnership with Africa in Motion Film Festival

The Territorial Sea is a programme of recent artist moving image work featuring stories of struggle from sovereign waters. Works by Taus Makhacheva, Forensic Oceanography, and Francisco Rodríguez document tragic maritime passages, variously pointing to the cultures of spectacle, neglect, and cruelty which permit ongoing catastrophe. Mapping the geopolitics of water through re-enactment, surveillance analysis, and oral history, these short films build a portrait of the sea: parts deadly and sublime. Twelve nautical miles from the baseline of a coastal state, the territorial sea is a drifting stage for violent border policy and humanitarian crises.

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The Territorial Sea is curated by Marcus Jack, director of Transit Arts, with thanks to Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing; narrative projects, London; and Forensic Architecture.

Filmed on Super 16mm between a state-owned underground copper mine in post-war Serbia and an illegal gold mining collective in the tropical heat of Suriname, Good Luck is a non-fiction portrait of men brought together in the pursuit of capital. Neither a simple morality tale nor an indictment of the mining industry, Good Luck is a film that looks at the similarities between two radically different groups of men as they work in isolation on opposite sides of the globe, labouring in the long shadow of a 3,500 year-old extraction process.

Formed between dark and light, cold and heat, North and South, the film immerses its viewer in the precarious natural and social environments of two distinct labour groups so as to better understand the bonds that men share. In a time of global economic turmoil, here is the human foundation of capital, revealed.