Revolt Video Film Screening

dublin | arts and media | event notice Monday January 22, 2007 17:09 by Revolt Video

Wednesday 24TH of Janruary

Doors 7:30pm
Starts 8pm Sharp
Waged 5 euros/Unwaged 3 euros

Location:
Seomra Spraoi - No 6 Lower Ormond Quay is on the north side quays,
between capel street and swift's row.

The entrance is a big blue metal door next to Snap Printing. Ring top buzzer

5 euros waged 3 euros unwaged

Camphill Open Day

Camphill Community, Ballytobin, near Callan in County Kilkenny, is a small rural community caring at present for 22 children and 12 adults, all with disabilities. It was established in 1979 as a therapeutic farm, to provide a home and school maily for children with exceptional needs, some with multiple disabilities and disturbances. This video was made during their recent Open Day and tries to give a feeling of what that day was like along with some history and a bit about the renewable energy and sustainable living projects that are going on out there

The Power of Nightmares

Subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is written and produced by Adam Curtis.

This documentary argues that during the 20th Century politicians lost the power to inspire the masses, and that the optimistic visions and ideologies they had offered were perceived to have failed. The film asserts that politicians consequently sought a new role that would restore their power and authority. Curtis, who also narrates the series, declares in the film's introduction that “Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares”. To illustrate this Curtis compares the rise of the American neoconservatives and radical Islamists, believing that both are closely connected; that some popular beliefs about these groups are inaccurate; and that both movements have benefited from exaggerating the scale of the terrorist threat.

Part 1 - Baby It's Cold Outside
In the 1950s Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian civil servant turned revolutionary, and Leo Strauss, a Jewish-American professor of political philosophy who fled Nazi persecution, were both in America at the same time. Qutb came to see Western liberalism as corrosive to morality and to society. Qutb had been sent to the U.S. to learn about its public education system but was disgusted by what he saw of its society. They each argued that radical measures (in Strauss's case, deception along the lines of the Plato's Noble Lie, and in Qutb's case, violence) could be justified in an effort to restore shared moral values to society, and their arguments heavily influenced American neo-conservatism and radical Islamism, respectively. Senior American civil servants and politicians influenced by neo-conservatism came to see communism as an evil force against which the U.S. should be presented as a force for good. This propaganda included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's formation of Team B, which over-estimated Soviet military technology, and the William Casey-led CIA assertion that various terrorist organisations were backed by the Soviet Union. The CIA's internal analysts (that Team B was arguing against), held that most terrorist groups were independent, in part because the book that laid out the theory of Soviet control of all terrorism, "The Terror Network - The Secret War of International Terrorism", was full of lies the CIA had knowingly released as Black Propaganda.

The Drilling Fields

The film, The Drilling Fields , shows mass demonstrations by peaceful Ogoni protesters, Shell, the major oil company in the area, has been drilling for oil there for 50 years and has reportedly yet to carry out an environmental impact analysis in the region. The company says that it has cleared up some of the oil spills, but the film shows one of these areas where land which suffered major oil leakage was burnt by the company and left polluted.

The film also shows people working, with gas flares from leaking pipes close by. It depicts how crops have suffered, rivers are polluted and oil pipes, sometimes leaking, criss-cross villages. Shell, which has been trying to present itself as an environmentally friendly company in the West, withdrew staff from the area in 1993, saying they had been under attack from Ogoni people. They say that they have been used by MOSOP to gain political advantage within Nigeria. Saro-Wisa accuses Shell of aiding genocide. He says before MOSOP decided to mobilise people against oil pollution, ‘men, women and children were dying slowly, the air and streams were polluted and finally the land itself dies’.