LFF Experimenta: Occupy The Cinema

Protest and survive: Karen Mirza and Brad Butler’s ambitious new film screens with two equally powerful works by Russell/Cailleau and Ken Jacobs. Part of LFF Experimenta.

Austerity Measures
Dir. Ben Russell & Guillaume Cailleau, Greece-Germany 2012, 9min.
Athens at crisis point: a colour-separation portrait of the Exarchia neighbourhood during the anti-austerity protests.

Seeking the Monkey King
Dir. Ken Jacobs, USA 2011, 39min.
Amid the hypnotic, flickering motion of a metallic terrain, vitriolic onscreen texts rail against American culpability, from the Revolution to Iraq to the present administration. Each statement casts an arrow, and JG Thirlwell’s monstrously cinematic score drives them home.

Deep State
Dir. Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, UK 2012, 44min.
‘An audacious, semi-fantastical secret history of the counterforces of popular protest and clandestine control, this struggle is told through archive material, contemporary footage and future speculation.’ A direct development of the filmmakers’ visit to Cairo prior to the Tahrir Square uprising, Deep State was commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella, made in collaboration with author
China Miéville.

Total running time: 92min

LFF Experimenta brings together cutting-edge cinema, artists’ film and video and the avant-garde.