For the exhibition ‘A History of Irritated Material’, Raven Row commissioned the translation into English of part of Suely Rolnik's compendious research project Lygia Clark, from Object to Event, an archive of video interviews on Lygia Clark, focusing on her late project Structuring the Self (1977–87), the culmination of Clark’s life-art. Raven Row is hosting a discussion between Guy Brett, close friend of Lygia Clark and one of the key interpreters of her work, and Lars Bang Larsen, curator of the exhibition, who has written extensively about Rolnik's project. The discussion will consider Lygia Clark’s radical proposals involving the body in its sensory and sensual capacities, and Suely Rolnik’s attempt to reactivate Clark’s ideas via a ‘living archive’.
Monday 8 March, 7pm
Night Cleaners (1975) by Berwick Street Film Collective
Screening and discussion with Humphry Trevelyan.
Tuesday 9 March, 7pm
Edinburgh International Film Festival in the 1970s: A Panel Discussion
With Esther Leslie (chair), Paul Willemen, Colin MacCabe, Margaret Dickinson, Noreen MacDowell and Felicity Sparrow.
Wednesday 17 March, 7pm
Deux Fois (1969) by Jackie Raynal
Screening and discussion with Marina Vishmidt and Nina Power.
Wednesday 21 April, 7pm
London Women’s Film Group
Screening of Women of the Rhondda (1973, 20 minutes) by Mary Capps, Margaret Dickinson, Mary Kelly, Esther Ronay, Brigid Segrave and Humphry Trevelyan, and The Amazing Equal Pay Show (1974, 48 minutes) by London Women’s Film Group. Discussion with Julia Knight.
The London Women’s Film Group formed in January 1972 with two aims: to disseminate the ideas of the Women’s Liberation movement and to give women access to the skills and facilities denied them by the film industry. They distributed and screened their own films, and those of others. Women of the Rhondda, which follows the lives of four women in a South Welsh mining village, was distributed by the Group, and the critical discussions around it informed their own film The Amazing Equal Pay Show, which adopted a more didactic approach in order to ‘provide an analysis of sexism within capitalist society’. Described as a ‘political burlesque in seven tableaux’, The Amazing Equal Pay Show examines the questions of equal pay, women’s roles within the unions, and the status of women’s work. The screenings will be followed by a conversation with Julia Knight about the London Women’s Film Group, with a focus on how their films were distributed and presented.
Saturday 24 April, 3pm
Cinema Action
Screenings and conversation between Steve Sprung, former member of Cinema Action and co-director of Year of the Beaver, and Alex Sainsbury.
3pm So That You Can Live (1982, 83 minutes) by Cinema Action.
4.30pm Year of the Beaver (1985, 77 minutes) by Steve Sprung/Poster Collective.
6pm Steve Sprung and Alex Sainsbury in conversation.
So That You Can Live follows five years in the life of the Butts family from South Wales. It developed from Cinema Action’s project The Social Contract which began in the mid 70s and through which the collective met Shirley Butts, who was then leading a strike for equal pay for women at the GEC factory. Year of the Beaver focuses on the strike at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratory in North London in 1977, and ‘the staged media event’ surrounding it. The screenings will be followed by a discussion with Alex Sainsbury and Steve Sprung.
Wednesday 28 April, 7pm
Peter Osborne and Paul Willemen in conversation
Peter Osborne and Paul Willemen will critically examine the discourses that proliferated within the British film culture of the 1970s, and which informed the film theory that was developed then. The event will consist of short presentations from Paul Willemen who edited the film journal Framework in the 1980s and was on the board of Screen throughout the 1970s, and Peter Osborne, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University. The presentations will be followed by responses from each participant and a wide-ranging discussion.
Programme organised by Petra Bauer and Dan Kidner
‘Me, You, Us, Them’ a project by Petra Bauer will be at Focal Point Gallery from 27 March to 8 May 2010. www.focalpoint.org.uk/