INTRODUCTION

"Films Politically" is a new series of Experimental Film Club screenings taking place at the autonomous social centre Seomra Spraoi, every second Tuesday at 8pm, beginning on February 17th. The series will explore the convergence of film and radical politics in the late 1960s from the perspective summed up in Jean-Luc Godard's famous line: "The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically."

For over a century, film has been recognised as a powerful political tool---but in the heightened climate of the US and Europe in the late 1960s, that power was understood in new and innovative ways. One of the key characteristics of the radical cinema that emerged in this time, particular in the epicentres of New York and Paris, was a keen awareness of the political implications of form, style and the filmmaking process that has often been neglected in contemporary radical and activist filmmaking.

For these filmmakers, it was not possible to simply make a Hollywood film, using the established modes of production and distribution and the established stylistic and narrative conventions, and insert within that a set of radical anti-war or anti-capitalist messages. It was not possible because those established conventions were not neutral, but had serious political implications themselves, implications that overrided any message one may try to propagate within them.

This series of screenings attempts to explore some of the new, politicised forms of cinema that were created during this time, and discuss what lessons they may hold for activists and artists in today’s world.

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The Experimental Film Club is dedicated to creating forums for the exploration of diverse and often neglected film works. It is perceived that there are a large number of people interested and engaged in aspects of experimental filmmaking in Dublin but no meeting point to build on this shared interest and knowledge. The club has been organising monthly screenings in the Ha'penny Bridge Inn since March 2008.

Seomra Spraoi is an autonomous social centre in Dublin city centre. It is run by a non-hierarchical collective on a not-for-profit basis. It hosts workshops, gigs, political meetings, film screenings, a vegan cafe and lots more. The centre seeks to be a hub of positive resistance, in a city and society where public spaces have been eaten away by consumerism, property speculation and the culture of the car.