Event overview
FACTORY TROUBLE - a film programme curated by Manuel Ramos for InC, Goldsmiths, University of London
ABOUT
‘All contemporary politics has the factory as its place’.
What is the relation of cinema to the factory today? According to Harun Farocki cinema is repelled by the factory. Straub and Huillet understand that the cine-camera is either too early or too late when it comes to film the factory. For Wang Bing to film an industrial complex is to experience an exile. This film programme explores the thwarted relation between the cinema and the factory: the distressing inadequacies of representation, the uncertainties of filmmakers with this space, the dissatisfaction of workers with the audio-visual media.
The programmed documentaries, essay-films and fictions develop inventive experiments with this frustration. In this sense the intention of this programme is not to confirm the powerlessness of cinema in regards to the realities of the factory. It is neither to simply denounce cinema’s ignominious connivance with the social order; a connivance eloquently phrased by Godard in his maxim ‘the exploiter doesn’t show the exploitation of the exploited’. Differently the programmed films make operational their thwarted relation to the factory, manufacturing singular articulations of dissent. These films visualize the capacity of cinema to intervene in how the factory (re)figures today. By looking at the singularity of these articulations, this programme provides a forum to discuss the contemporaneity of the cinema-factory pair and to re-think the sense(s) of cinema’s efficacy.
The programme includes films rarely seen (if ever) in the UK.
Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks, 2003) by Wang Bing [first part]
Wang Bing follows a group of factory workers in three state-run factories: a smelting plant, an electric cable factory and a sheet metal factory. Workers face sub-standard equipment, hazardous waste, and lack of safety precautions. The heavy industry that was once a vibrant example of China's socialist economy is in decline. The factories also face a constant lack of raw materials, leaving the workers concerned for their future, idle and critical of the situation.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
---|---|---|
18 Mar 2011 | 5:00pm - 8:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.