Welcome back! I hope everyone had a pleasant and refreshing holiday break. As you will no doubt remember, we have been spending the past few months exploring what I called Post-Depression Tragedy ... by which I meant the "dark cinema" of the years that followed the Great Depression. As you may have figured out by now, this was an era when Hollywood was more than willing to get down and dirty, with the sex; with the violence; with the cha-cha-cha (always under the watchful eye of the censors, of course). But "noir" (whereof I am speaking) is notoriously hard to pin down - probably because it was never actually a genre . It was a consequence of a specific moment in history, and the convergence of a number of cultural threads that all came together in post-war Hollywood to create something distinctive, albeit difficult to define. Who's the Femme-est Fatale of all...? As we enter the "Spring season" I want to turn my attention to films that aren't quit...
Our little film series at the Victoria Park Baptist Church has now been exploring Cancel Culture for the last six months, which is, I think you will agree, a lot of Cancel Culture. I originally conceived this series of films because I have been concerned by what appears to be an epidemic of intolerance and "tribalism" taking hold in modern social discourse. What I wanted to show (and what I hope has become apparent from my selection of films) is just how depressingly familiar all of this actually is. Whether it was the American Congress going after an imagined Communist threat or New England Puritans going after imagined Witchcraft; Turn-of-the-Century reactionaries going after The Cult of the Clitoris (I never get tired of that one) or modern Conservatives going after Satanic Paedophiles, there never seems to be a shortage of historical examples of "othering". A Monty Python sketch famously told us that "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" but the ...
Update; December, 2022: To anyone reading this page now, the roof work is now complete and the building is fully re-opened. Our film nights are back in the main hall, and we can use the entrance on Grove Road. We have witnessed a number of truly cataclysmic events in the past year or so: a Global Pandemic; an attempt to overthrow the Government in the US; the catastrophic but entirely foreseeable fallout from Brexit. And then the Church Roof Collapsed. Okay, I suppose a leaking roof isn't the worst problem most of us have had to face this year (the horrors never stop: all the local grocery stores are completely out of grapefruit juice ; truly we are living through Armageddon) but (a) it is symptomatic of the kind of year this has been, and (b) it does mean that we won't be organising these film evenings in the usual Church Hall. While the fearless roofers and scaffolders tirelessly wage their battles against the Forces of Entropy ...
Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings! Chestnuts are roasting, sleigh bells are ringing, yule logs are burning, and computers are trying to enslave the human race. I am not currently in a position to do anything about the yule logs, but as a public service, I feel I should pass along this timely warning about the imminent destruction of humanity. So, Happy Chanukah! Merry Christmas! Blessed Kwanzaa! Happy New Year! The machines are coming for us and we're all going to die! I'm being ridiculous, of course; after all what respectable liberal would ever say "Happy Chanukah" in public? But they are warning us of the coming robot uprising. It's The End of the World!!! In May, 2023, a short, headline-grabbing statement was published by a group calling itself the "Center for AI Safety" (CAIS): Their statement was signed by thousands of scientists, politicians and other public figures. It was widely reported and discussed in the media. Prime Minister Rishi Su...
Before we go any further, let me say that no , this week's film is not about abortion. It is however very much about choice . The abortion rights movement have championed the idea of "choice" because they have chosen (see what I did there?) to frame the battle as one of personal freedom . Also because their opponents would otherwise try to label them "anti-life", which doesn't look so good on a placard. But the dirty little secret of the abortion battle is that everyone is pro-choice. The argument is not about choice; it's about who gets to make that choice. In some communities, the choice is left to the individual, while in other communities, the choice is made by the State. Everybody wants to choose. Some people also want to choose for others. Choice is very much the issue at hand in our next film, which takes place in North London's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Disobedience , based on Naomi Alderman's 2006 novel, tells the story of Ronit ...
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