SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL - Film Pack - René Viénet

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The Situationist International (SI) was a small group of international political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the early 20th century European artistic and political avant-gardes. Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and aspired to major social and political transformations.

Rene Vienet is one of the only French Sinologists to have denounced the Chinese totalitarian regime and its nihilistic Cultural Revolution, at a time when, on the Right and Left, many looked favorably upon Mao Tse-Tung. Over the course of five broadcasts, A voix nue looks at this uncommon person.

Rene Vienet was norn in the Havre, where his father was a dock worker. While a student, he seduced a Girl Scout who was the sister of the companion of Guy Debord; when he showed up in Paris to study Chinese with Jacques Pimpaneau, he joined the Situationist International. Studying in China, he saw the beginnings of the "revo-cul" (the term is his). He was expelled from China in 1966, and without difficulty he was among the first in France to denounce the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

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Original Title: La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques?
Released: 1973
Eng. Title: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069970/
Video: DivX 5.0, 352�240, 29.97 fps
Audio: MP3 128k 44.1kHz
Length: 01h 22m 19s
Size: 480.96MB
Language: Français
Subtitles: English (onscreen)
About: The film uses a much older martial arts film ("The Crush" from Doo Kwang Gee) for its visuals which has been dubbed over by the filmmakers in an attempt at detournement. The concept and motivation of this film was to adapt a bourgeois film into a radical critique of cultural hegemony and thus into tools of subversive revolutionary ideals. The Narrative is based upon a conflict between the proletarian and bureaucrats within state capitalism. The proletarians enlist their dialectics and radical subjectivity to fight their oppressors whilst the bureaucrats defend themselves using a combination of bribery and violence. The film is noted for its humorous approach to this serious subject matter. The film also contains many references to revolutionaries who thought and fought for the realisation of a post-capitalist world, including Marx, Bakunin, and Wilhelm Reich. Also Subplots dealing with issues of gender equality, alienation, trade unionism, May 1968, and the Situationist themselves are riddled throughout the film. The conclusions reached by the filmmakers are that those who would use violence against dialogue will always prevail as they are incapable of following the rational argument.

Original Title: Les filles de Kamare
Released: 1974
Eng. Title: The Girls of Kamare
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315594/
Video: DivX 5.0 320x240 29.97fps
Audio: MP3 128k 44.1kHz
Length: 44m 11s (part1), 43m, 18s (part2)
Size: 243.3MB (part1), 238.1MB (part2)
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: Français + English (onscreen)
About: The film is a montage of Japanese soft-porn / bondage drama set in a juvenile disciplinary school, and French 16mm hardcore pornographic film. The plot follows a team of female heroes, forced into a disciplinary school, who revolt against the authorities and their screws. The original Japanese film ends in a successful riot which plays directly into Viénet's detournement. Unlike Dialectics, The Girls of Kamare is less self-critical and relies more on traditional conceptions of heroism.

Original Title: Chinois, encore un effort pour être révolutionnaires
Released: 1977
Eng. Title: Peking Duck Soup
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147990/
Video: DivX 5.0 352x288 29.97fps
Audio: MP3 128k 44.1kHz
Length: 01h 52m 23s
Size: 798.4MB
Language: English
Subtitles: English (onscreen)
Comment: Rather bad quality - digitized VHS - analog glitches and color anomalies
About: René Vienet's third film, "Chinois, encore un effort pour être révolutionnaires" had been missing from the situationist cinématheque until now. "Chinois, encore un effort pour être révolutionnaires" (a.k.a. "Peking Duck Soup") applies the method of détournement to the genre of the political documentary and conveys the definitive anti-maoist history of maoist China.

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