DISSIDENTS CINEMA AND OTHER EVERYDAY UPRISINGS. Cinema course

‘Splitters!’ (Dissidents). This was how the members of the People’s Front of Judea characterised those of the Popular Front of Judea, and was also the cry addressed to the sole member of the latter, sitting a few steps below. This legendary scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979) graphically illustrates the etymology of dissidere (dissidence): the physical act of ‘sitting apart,’ of ‘being separated’ and hence, by extension, discrepancy, resistance and ultimately, maybe, uprising.

The great irony of Monty Python’s visionary sketch is that dissidence, like any other countercultural gesture, is never isolated or systematic and can lead to fragmentation. Unlike power, system or culture, which try to perpetuate themselves to infinity, the spiral of dissidence tends, eventually, to wear itself out. But meanwhile, there is so much to burn, and to burn beautifully because, as Nietzsche wrote, to follow the path of the creator and to be finally free ‘you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame.’

In this course we will try to link film gestures to political gestures, but without using loudspeakers or slogans. The French Revolution’s fiftieth anniversary has just been celebrated, but we will not focus on the idea of a collective revolt that transforms the existing order, but on the intimate insurrections, on the small rebellious gestures, on the muffled uprisings of bodies in (not always) silent war: those deprived of their freedom, the individualists, the migrants, the insane, the cursed, the outcast...

These are the dissidents, those who sit apart; those who proclaim their disenchantment to whoever wants to hear it; those who step aside and vanish, like Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wakefield; those who are locked away within themselves and in their rooms like the student in A Man Asleep by Georges Perec; or those who prefer to say ‘No,’ like Herman Melville's Bartleby (or say something, at least, in different manner); those who, with everything lost, give creative form to their rage; or those who, disenchanted, give it a destructive form because, as Nietzsche also wrote: ‘How could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?’

PROGRAMME

2 OCTOBER
‘I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!’: Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)

9 OCTOBER
Outcast of the universe: Wakefield (Robin Swicord, 2016)

16 OCTOBER
The melancholy of resistance: Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)

23 OCTOBER
“The most useless and bloodiest war: the war for being me”: The Disenchantment (Jaime Chávarri, 1976)

30 OCTOBER
‘Obey, consume and conform’: They Live! (John Carpenter, 1988)

13 NOVEMBER
Exiled (from herself): Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1970)

20 NOVEMBER
‘I'm against it’: the Marx brothers against everything

27 NOVEMBER
Two women against the world: Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

4 DECEMBER
Outside of language, outside of difference: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)

11 DECEMBER
Citizens of a fake version of the world: HyperNormalisation (Adam Curtis, 2016)

JOSÉ MANUEL LÓPEZ (Vigo, 1974). Critic, teacher and film programmer, he is currently writing his thesis entitled ‘La última ciudad. Vagabundeos terminales por el cine contemporáneo’ and is a teacher of screenplays and image theory in the communications faculty of Pontevedra.
Since 2012, he has been teaching film courses at the MARCO de Vigo and at the CGAC. He has also given lectures at events such as Master LAV, ESCAC, the CGAI - Filmoteca de Galicia, the Seminci, the Malaga Festival or the Arts Centre of Seville.
In 2004, he founded the film analysis magazine Tren de sombras (2004-2008) and from 2007 to 2017, he was on the editorial board of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine (formerly known as Cahiers du Cinéma: Spain).
In 2008, he coordinated the book Naomi Kawase. El cine en el umbral for the Las Palmas Film Festival. He has taken part in collective books such as La risa oblicua. Tangentes, paralelismos e intersecciones entre documental y humor, Las edades de Apu. Estudios sobre la Trilogía de Satyajit Ray or Paul Schrader. El cineasta frente a los tiempos, among others. He has also collaborated in different magazines and, as a dialogist, in two seasons of the Televisión de Galicia’s series Matalobos.
In 2015, he curated the film series O centro non pode resistir. Descentramentos da figura na paisaxe urbana to accompany the exhibition Valérie Jouve. Corps en résistance at the Luís Seoane Foundation of A Coruña; in 2017 he curated the Sonic Lux short film programme for the Curtocircuíto international film festival; and in 2018 he was one of the-curators of New Spain, an exhibition of Spanish artists and filmmakers for Solar - Galeria de Arte Cinemática and the Curtas festival of Vila do Conde (Portugal).

TARGET GROUP

Teachers, students and people interested in cinema.

REGISTRATION

The registration period is open from 1 July to 1 October 2019. Anybody interested may send an e-mail to cgac.educacion@xunta.gal. They must provide their full name, ID number, their work or interest area, an e-mail address and a contact phone number.
Once the request has been accepted, those registered will be informed on how to pay.

CERTIFICATION

The CGAC will issue a certificate to all those who attend at least 75 % of the sessions.