- This event has passed.
Filmavond – Films for those who care | Aftenlandet (1977)
24 February 2022 @ 8:30 pm - 10:15 pm
Free
Films for Those Who Care
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.
EVENING LAND 1977
(Aftenlandet)
Directed by Peter Watkins
109 minutes
In Danish with English subtitles
Done in Peter Watkins unique furious docudrama film style, blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, this is another engaging flick dealing with the world around us. The details of the situation don’t really matter much, because the themes are universal. Watkin’s films are not art movies, the director is only interested in discussion, and in finding new ways to understand the world around us since the old ways seem ineffective. Watkins was thrown out of almost every country he was in, except where he is now, in the countryside of France.
This film was shot in Denmark, and revolves around a country on the brink of collapse. We see workers taking over their workspace, we see radicals kidnapping a NATO head honcho. The country is unraveling on every level. But as these uprisings take place we more importantly see the workers and radicals discussing and trying to decide what the best course of action is. The cinema of Watkins is not about sensationalistic stories that serve as action movies – his films are there to help us think, and to care. Therefore this film is not only about a story, it is also about the world at large. How the military operates and how it will be used against its own people when push comes to shove. It is also a critique on the mass media and how it is used to distract and pacify us. Although Watkins is a visionary filmmaker, he is also a collective one, believing in a populist cinema. Therefore this flick was made with 192 non-professionals and everyone chipped in on every level (acting, the ideas explored, the direction the story takes).
Peter Watkins directed Evening Land for the Danish Film Institute, but once they screened it they felt it was too edgy, touching on topics that were too sensitive. So they have kept it under lock and key ever since, acting like it was never made. I can’t think of a better example than this director to show that certain filmmakers are being silenced for decades. As a writer in Le monde put it in 1971 “To find traces of Peter Watkins in a dictionary or a history of cinema you might as well hire a private detective. His works remain hidden, or forbidden, in most cases.”
To underline that point, in a documentary about Watkins, a TV executive explains bluntly why we never see his movies: “Some filmmakers say ‘this is my work and I want it to stay that way’. That is their right, and we respect that right. Those are the films we don’t buy, and those are the films we don’t transmit.”
Free screening
