Dateline: Clapham Common, London, UK, 20:00-22:30, Sun 18 Sep 11 – Land & Freedom Campers and intrigued local folk choose to become engrossed in Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece of C20 urban revolutionary cinema ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966), to which the C21 imperialist wars waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, plus the revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring, have all brought renewed significance. And all the appropriate technology kit to enjoy human-powered cinema arrived and departed with one bloke, on foot!  NB: my camera’s eye is more feline than yours: waaaay better at harvesting night-time photons than the rods in our retinas, so these photos show much more detail than I could see on the night I took ’em.

Vid at YouTube
• Cinema Democratica: The Battle of Algiers Screening at Land & Freedom Camp
» video, 1:11 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DOpmXJ8u7U


Why ‘Winstanley’ Wasn’t
On 13 Sep, I discovered the prospective Land & Freedom Camp on Facebook, and suggested Plan A: a communal screening of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s biopic of the awesomely magnificent Gerrard Winstanley, a paragon of revolutionary praxis from the English Revolution of the 1640s – namely ‘Winstanley’ (1976) (see pic A3 above). When I heard that Electric Pedals would be at the Camp on Sun 18 Sep in the person of Colin, plans were assembled between L&F Camper Simon and I, but the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley...

“Unfortunately we were caught out by the gap between C21 high technology – video and audio codecs, Audio Video Interleave files, solid state 64 GB flash memory thumb drives – and C20 appropriate technology: the DVD Video Disc format. As Simon and Colin can attest, I’ve spent all day trying to get high end Apple Mac and Windows PC computers to transcode my ‘Winstanley.avi’ file to VOB and burn it to a DVD Video DVD-R – but multiple hardware and software deficits on both platforms have made this unachievable during our timeframe for this evening’s screening, for which I apologise. So instead, here is our Plan B contingency: Cinema Democratica!”
~ my spoken apology for why ‘Winstanley’ wasn’t, and why Cinema Democratica! is


How ‘Cinema Democratica!’ Occured Instead
I’d assembled a bunch of DVDs with radical films, and asked our assembled audience which we’d prefer to share: 

• The Devil's Whore  (TV mini-series 2008) – Levellers, Ranters & Diggers, in the English Revolution
• Wilde (1997) – Biopic of Oscar Wilde, genius, poet, playwright and the First Modern Man
• Battleship Potemkin (1925) – The great Russian naval mutiny and a resulting street demonstration
• October 1917 (1928) – The great Russian revolutionary victory
• The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) – The Republican anti-Brit rebellion in early C20 Ireland
• Frida (2002) – Biopic of Mexican surrealist artist and revolutionary Frida Kahlo
• The Battle of Algiers (1966) – An account of the bloodiest revolution in modern history
• Taking Liberties (2007) – Polemic documentary charting the destruction of all your Basic Liberties under 10 Years of New Labour
• V for Vendetta (2006) – A shadowy freedom fighter known only as "V" uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society
• The View From The Centre of the Universe (2006) – Modern scientific cosmology as motivator for building a sustainable future for humanity and our biosphere

(see also pic A4 above)

In a close finish, Oscar’s biopic ‘Wilde’ (1997) was pipped at the post by Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece of C20 urban revolutionary cinema ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966) – a wise and radical choice indeed, enjoyed and appreciated by all, as far as I could tell.

We also took the opportunity to enjoy:
• a short film about the 1981 Brixton riots, and
• 100ish photos of the Kew Bridge Eco Village


All Power From The People
The 'Electric Pedals' project provided all we needed for a most effective al fresco screening in a single person portable form:
    •    1.5m screen
    •    bike-driven 15 volt dynamo power system
    •    DVD player
    •    mini-projector
    •    sound amp and speaker
The person in question is called Colin, to whom we all owe many thanks for for his amicable technical expertise in appropriate human-powered technology. And the Electric Pedals tech scales upwards too:

“It’s a great way to bring communities together, especially when they have to pedal to keep the film going! Our Pedal powered cinema needs around 12 adults and children to power a large projector and sound system. We arrive with no stored energy, we don’t use pre-charged batteries, so the it’s is completely reliant on human energy.
~ from ‘Pedal powered cinema’, at the Electric Pedals website
» http://electricpedals.com/pedal-p0wered-cinema/


A Second Chance for ‘Winstanley’?
No sooner had we begun our screening than a local Clapham film producer – and passionate admirer of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ – collared me and very kindly volunteered to use his production company’s tech to transcode my ‘Winstanley.avi’ file to VOB and burn it to a DVD Video DVD-R! So by this time tomorrow, I may well have the appropriate tech format for another crack at an outdoor ‘Winstanley’ screening at the Land & Freedom Camp – if so, it will be promoted here and elsewhere on teh InterWebz.   


Whatever Next?
The Land & Freedom Camp continues to at least Sun 25 Sep and is posting activities and events on its website:
» Website – http://landandfreedom.squat.net
» Phone contact – 07 963 475 195 for any questions
» Facebook event webpage – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=281856581829845&ref=ts
» Follow L&FC on Twitter – @freetheland
» Email – landandfreedomcamp[at]aktivix[dot]org
• Location: Clapham Common, just north of the Holy Trinity Church, SW4 0QZ (see location map pic A2 above)
» Google Maps – http://g.co/maps/bhys5
• Transport: Clapham Common tube. Buses from Clapham Junction.

“ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK
Hi there, here are some of the things going on this week (18th-25th September) @ the Land & Freedom Camp on Clapham Common.

Wednesday: Spoken word, poetry, music, performance open mic.  Starts around 7.30 p.m.  Come on down and express yourself or hear others.

Daily activities:
    •    Morning yoga: 9-10 a.m,
    •    Arts & crafts 11-4 p.m,
    •    Open space discussions and talks: 5-7 p.m
    •    Evening yoga: 6-7 p.m”
~ http://landandfreedom.squat.net/?page_id=182


Up the Revolution,

Tim Dalinian Jones


Footnotes

All these photos and video clips are 'CopyLeft'
This means you are free to copy and distribute any of my photos and videos you find here, under the following license:
• Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
» http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
» Accreditation: tim.dalinian.jones@gmail.com