On Saturday November 8th Hunter College hosted a symposium of documentary film makers entitled Codes and Modes. Many of the panels consisted of respected documentarians who discussed an aspect of documentary film making. At 1:30 pm in HN 436 Ernie Larson and Sherry Millner hosted a panel on Agit-Prop documentaries named Flying Under the Radar: Altering Reception to Change Perception.
Mr. Larson commenced the panel by speaking about a project he and Ms. Millner had conducted in protest of the war in Afganistan. They later went on to discuss how they have been accumulating agit-prop media from around the word and have been asked to curate international presentations of these short works. Ms. Millner went further to illustrate as to how hard the work of gathering these films was before the advent of the internet.
The lecture was punctuated by three short films shown by international film makers. the first was Le Glas (The Deathknell). A short film in protest of the hanging of three insurrectionists within colonial Africa. The second film Was by Mario Handler titled Me Gustan Los Estudiantes. This film showed the plight of Honduran students against the dictatorial government of the time. Riotous students were inter-cut by scenes of grand government happenings all to the song "Me Gustan los Estudientes". To close the discussion Requiem for M by Philippine film maker Kiri Delena was shown. Documetning the outrage and anguish of a community in the Philippines after the murder of 30 plus individuals on their way to register to vote by a gang in favor of the incumbent mayor.
The themes touched upon in this discussion where of engagement without resulting in imprisonment. Turning the screenings of the short films into more of a participatory event with a "collective liveness". Ultimately these two self described anarchists want to engage discussion and encourage questions with their curatorial juxtaposition of work with their "radical politics and radical form".
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