November events

Join us this November at e-flux for screenings, talks, and a performance. Our month commences with a two-part screening of Polish educational films from WFO Film Studio and works by Edward Etler, guest-curated by Stanisław Welbel. Later the same evening, the African Film Institute hosts Seek & Find for an off-site screening and reception featuring Nollywood classic Karishika. The following week, guest-curator Zachary B. Feldman presents an array of films responding to the activist-filmmaking legacy of Harun Farocki. In the lead-up to US election day, Shannon Mattern will deliver a talk on civil society institutions as part of e-flux Architecture Lectures. Ethan Spigland and Paul Grant collaborate to showcase the four-part program If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Be Making Movies: Revisitng Situationist Film, featuring work by Guy Debord, the Scandinavian Situationists, René Viénet, and Groupe Cinéthique. Finally, we look forward to performances of three iconic works by Ben Patterson, by Holland Andrews and Lester St. Louis; Brandon Lopez; and Timmy Simonds with students from Pratt Institute. 

Saturday, November 2, 2024
Archiving the Avant-Garde: Polish Educational Cinema and Edward Etler
Get tickets. A single ticket grants access to both screenings.
A special two-part screening, guest-curated by  Stanisław Welbel, highlighting the intersection of avant-garde film techniques with educational and documentary cinema produced in Poland between 1950 and 1989. The first part of the program presents a selection of short films produced by the Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych (WFO), highlighting the studio’s contribution to educational and experimental filmmaking. Known for its collaboration with the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, WFO’s films are accompanied by groundbreaking soundtracks from avant-garde composers, fusing modernist film techniques with educational narratives that reflect the transformation of socialist Poland. In the second part we turn our focus to Edward Etler, an influential filmmaker who was forced to emigrate from Poland in 1968 due to an anti-Semitic campaign by the communist government. Known for his experimental style and collaboration with Krzysztof Komeda, Etler’s films reflect both the creative freedom allowed by WFO and his personal exploration of identity and history. A talk between Welbel and Ksenia Nouril will follow the 5pm screening. Co-presented by the Polish Cultural Institute New York and e-flux Screening Room in partnership with WFO Film Studio and The Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Read more here.

Nollyween: Christian Chika Onu’s Karishika, with Seek & Find
Off-site at the École du soir Workroom, 195 Chrystie Street, 6th floor, NY 10002
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The African Film Institute at e-flux is pleased to host Seek & Find for an off-site screening and afterparty for the restored Karishika (1998), a classic of Nollywood film directed by Christian Onu. Nollyween (“Nollywood” + “Halloween”) serves as the inaugural event of the ongoing initiative of Seek & Find, a film restoration and redistribution collective that has acquired master tapes for some of Nigeria’s most historically significant horror films. Taking place offsite at École du soir Workroom, the program is an invitation to practice and support the rehoming of African social life, cultural ingenuity, and profound creativity in the face of material degradation by the encroachment of industrialized aesthetic uniformity. Read more here.

Thursday, November 7, 2024
Against War: Farocki’s Activist Legacy from Vietnam to Today
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This program presents a curated selection of films by Jill Godmilow, Harun Farocki, Irena Vrkljan, Miranda Pennell, Forensic Architecture, Thomson & Craighead, and Total Refusal, critically engaging with the themes of war, militarization, and the power of moving images in shaping public discourse. The screening spotlights works by artists and filmmakers who extend and reinterpret Harun Farocki’s activist approach, using the film medium to question the politics of representation and the ethics of visualizing violence. The films address conflicts from the Vietnam War to contemporary crises, exploring the legacy of Farocki’s unique methods in critiquing war and its machine through the language of cinema. This screening is the first part of Harun Farocki: 10 Years in Memoriam, a three-part series curated by Zachary B. Feldman and co-presented by Goethe-Institut New York and e-flux Screening Room. Read more here.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Shannon Mattern, “Civic Adjacencies”
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How might we reinvigorate the civil sector by reconcieving the public institution, imagining new configurations of and solidarities between those that exist, while proposing new connections to the many heavily subsidized, quasi-public systems that operate in adjacency? Thinking across architecture and urban, organization, graphic, and service design; integrating historical precedent, from the City Beautiful movement to the New Deal and beyond; drawing on global exemplars; and welcoming audience participation, this talk by Shannon Mattern considers what’s possible when we imagine new spatial arrangements of and adjacencies between our public knowledge, cultural, and care institutions and the infrastructures that support them. Read more here.

November 14, 16, and 17, 2024
If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film
See below for series tickets.
Founded in 1957, the Situationist International brought together multiple strands of avant-garde art and radical socio-economic critique to explore new approaches to revolutionary praxis. The SI leveled a trenchant attack on the commodification of culture and the alienating effects of modern capitalism with a focus on the concept of the “spectacle,” which they defined as the mediation of social relationships by images. Cinema was an ongoing and central concern for the Situationists. For Guy Debord, one of the SI’s founding members, it was not inevitable that the cinematic medium would adopt a spectacular form. The culpability for this development is not the technological apparatus of cinema but the society in which it arose. Guest-curated by Ethan Spigland and Paul Grant, this program groups together films created predominantly by members of the Situationist International and films that fall under their influence. Alongside recent restorations of well-known works by Guy Debord and René Viénet, it also presents rarely screened films by the Scandinavian Situationists, the Scandinavian group that broke away from the SI in 1962, and contributions from Groupe Cinéthique, a Marxist-Leninist film collective primarily recognized for their journal of the same name.

Thursday, November 14, 2024
Part I. Guy Debord: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
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We are delighted to invite you to the first part of If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film, a four-part screening program guest-curated by Ethan Spigland and Paul Grant, drawing on the Situationist critique of the spectacle as well as the SI’s strategy of détournement: the subversive reappropriation of preexisting cultural materials. Part One presents Guy Debord’s melancholy and magisterial final film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978, 94 minutes). Ethan Spigland will introduce the program. Read more on Part One here; and see details on the series as a whole here.

Saturday, November 16, 2024
Part II. The Films of the Scandinavian Situationists
Get tickets. A single ticket grants access to both parts II and III.
The series If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film continues in Parts Two and Three on Saturday, November 16. Part Two, at 3pm, presents a selection of rarely screened and often overlooked films made by the Scandinavian Situationists, who would go on to form the Second Situationist International after splitting with the SI between 1961 and 1962. The screening also includes Guy Debord’s contemporaneous short film, Critique of Separation (1961). The screening will be introduced by the Danish art historian and scholar of the Scandinavian Situationists, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen. Read more here, and see details on the series as a whole here.

Part III. René Viénet and Détournement
Get tickets. A single ticket grants access to both Parts II and III.
Part Three of If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film, at 5pm on the 16th, comprises René Viénet’s film Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973). Vienet’s justly celebrated work, both searing and hilarious, stands as one of the high-water marks of cinematic détournement. The film will be shown in a newly restored color version with revised English subtitles, introduced by Keith Sanborn. Read more here, and see details on the series as a whole here.

Sunday, November 17, 2024
Part IV. And Be Careful If Cinema Intervenes: The Film Projects of Groupe Cinéthique
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The fourth and final part of If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film introduces the little-known films of Groupe Cinétique, a militant Marxist-Leninist collective that emerged after the events of May 1968 and produced the influential eponymous film journal that marked film theory indelibly with its publication of Jean-Louis Baudry’s canonical “Cinéma: effets idéologiques produits par l’appareil de base.” Paul Grant will present sections of these works, subtitled for the first time in English, and discuss other collaborative film projects the group participated in across the long-68. Read more here, and see details on the series here.

Thursday, November 21, 2024
Ben Patterson: Three Performances
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Join us on Thursday, November 21, at 7pm for an evening dedicated to Ben Patterson, one of the founders of Fluxus and a pioneer in performance art. The event will include three iconic Patterson performances: Duo for Voice and Strings (1961), performed by Holland Andrews and Lester St. Louis; Variations for Double-Bass (1961), performed by Brandon Lopez; and Paper Piece (1960) performed by students from Pratt Institute, in collaboration with Timmy Simonds. These works mark the beginning of Patterson’s explosive career in experimentation, particularly exploring the idea of experimenting in the moment. Rather than having a set of predetermined scores, Patterson’s scores are open-ended, refusing the conventional standards of Western musical notation and leading to a different performance each time. This event is the first in a series of performances at e-flux exploring works rooted in Fluxus. Read more here.

Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website, or subscribe to our Events mailing list here.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.