Dok Night – Live Music Oldseed & Film FOTOGRAFIA 1973 Directed by Pál Zolnay

Every Thursday there’s a Vegan Dinner accompanying an exhibition opening/closing, a live performance, live music, movie screening or …
Come meet other people interested in art and activism, good food and great prices. Bring your favourite game and your friends. Or meet new people at the bar.

***

18.00 Bar open

19.00 Vegan Food /// 2-course meal for 7 – 10 €

 

20.00 Oldseed in the basement

oldseed is the proof.  They still exist, the nomadic artists on the road less travelled.  
oldseed continues the tradition of the thoughtful folk singers yet with the enthusiasm of the diy spirit.  With a powerful and dynamic voice, the Canadian-born musician, who lives in Germany between tours, sings stories that tell of a life lived with honesty.
oldseed’s music lets the audience feel what we need to feel; to understand that we learn so much more from our failure than our success. This is to be celebrated.
The music is deceptively simple, dynamic and intense.
oldseed writes songs that cut deep and directly into the heart.
oldseed brings an evening full of compelling, insightful songs from over 20 years on the road that will resonate with audiences everywhere.

If you like honest, powerful and compassionate music, oldseed is a master class.

20.30 Film screening

FOTOGRAFIA  1973
Directed by Pál Zolnay
82 minutes
In Hungarian with English subtitles

In some circles this obscure Hungarian film has been compared to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow up… because it is about the act of taking photographs. But where Antonioni’s film maps the attempt to photograph the modernity of the hip 60s, this Hungarian crew goes backward to photograph the villagers living deep in the countryside, some of whom have never even been photographed in their lives. In the end, this film questions our entire process of ‘imaging’ ourselves.

Lingering somewhere between a documentary and a feature film, it examines with a critical eye how we relate to photographs in general – something profoundly needed in our present world of selfies and the flood of images that bombard even our private lives. All these images surround and influence us, but we barely understand them… and this rare movie helps us to take the first few steps in doing that. The cinematography of the film itself is incredible, in that old crafted sort of way, when b&w photography in the east bloc was still an art form. A few of the images are enough to blow you away, and shatter all your expectations of a documentary.

What I love most about this film, besides its poetic quality, are some of the villagers who reject photography outright, and even hate it. No way they will allow themselves to be captured and framed. Also, we see other people who don’t know how to behave in front of a camera… you can see their eyes are more detached and calm – which is incredibly refreshing in our present Instagramed world where everybody knows how to ‘act’ when their picture is being taken. In this movie the act of taking a photograph is rare and almost holy.

The soundtrack to the film is a quiet masterpiece, made by one of the photographers who strums his acoustic guitar loosely as they walk through the landscape, knocking out lyrics about life and death off the top of his head. It gives the entire movie a sharp bittersweet tone.

Adventurous, lucid, poignant, lyrical, thought-provoking, piercing, philosophical. Haunting images of a time we have forgotten… images that we need to dig up again in order to remember what we have lost. An obscure gem of Hungarian cinema with a post-60s East Bloc mood.

Presented by Jeffrey Badcock
A series of socially engaged movies, screened once a month on Thursdays. Touching on such hot topics as immigration, homelessness, racism, education, radical gender propositions, the pandemic and gentrification, these films not only explore visionary politics, but are also chosen to stir our imagination and creativity. The essence of cinema is the collective experience, and these screenings are aimed at creating intimate communities again in an increasingly hectic and fragmented world.