Bristol Radical Film Festival 2022
Spread over two venues, Trinity Centre and The Jam Jar, Bristol Radical Film Festival returns this October 21st – 23rd for its 10th event, celebrating political, activist, and experimental filmmaking.
This year’s programme combines urgent contemporary political subjects with an eclectic mix of archive gems, including a revisit to the successful campaign against Margaret’s Thatcher’s Poll Tax, Eric Cantona’s celebration of politically militant footballers, struggles against gentrification in contemporary Marseille, and a resistance/revenge thriller set in 19th Century Ireland.
Friday 21 Oct
From 2016 to the end of 2019, Place Jean Jaurès in Marseille was the scene of a tumultuous battle, and the setting for The Battle of La Plaine. On one side, the town hall were determined to carry out an extensive program of “requalification” of the district, On the other, the local community considering it a gentrification operation, decided to resist. The film, refusing to be a story of defeat, tells of an exciting subversive campaign opposing the moves and arguing that “another city is possible”
Saturday 22 Oct
A festival highlight on Saturday evening is Black ’47. Set in 19th century Ireland during the Great Potato Famine, the drama follows an Irish Ranger who has been fighting for the British Army in Afghanistan. Abandoning his post, he returns home to find the destruction of his homeland and the brutalisation of his people and his family. Part history lesson, part revenge western, Black ‘47 is a brilliant and rare film about an especially dark moment in British and Irish history.
Two film shorts focus on the situation of Asylum seekers in Europe. Shelter: Farewell to Eden featuring the journey of trans migrant Pepsi, is both a very personal story of survival in the face of abuse and discrimination and revealing of the wider obstacles facing refugees struggling for a better life in Europe. Nothing About Us Without Us, is made by asylum seekers in Greece telling their own stories and creating counter-images to mainstream media's stereotypical representations.
The International Short Films Submissions showcases the new work of radical film makers from around the world. A trip into the past is scheduled in British Radical Newsreels of the early 20th Century to introduce and explore some of the first campaigning films made by activists in Britain alongside a discussion of videomaking today.
Factory to the Workers tells the inside story of the Croatian workers who challenged the dominant economic narrative with their self-owned cooperative . After a decade, the same question remains: can a factory in the hands of workers survive at the periphery of capitalism, or do we need a bigger dream?
