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The Spectre of Fascism - Echoes from TotalitarianismPost an Event »
Oddball Films presents The Spectre of Fascism - Echoes from Totalitarianism, a program of international 16mm short films, documentaries and animation reflecting on the 20th century's history of fascism and it's repercussions both artistic and humanitarian. With subversive stop-motion animation from Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, dark allegories of political conformity and rebellion, Alain Resnais' definitive Holocaust documentary short, and even Don@ld Duck as a Nazi, it is a powerful night giving testament to the power of the indomitable human spirit in the face of fascism. Alain Resnais’ masterful Night and Fog (1955) is both horrifying and necessary, combining archival material with meditative footage shot at Auschwitz and Majdanek ten years after the end of World War II. In the process, Resnais reveals the yawning gap between what’s left and what was, challenging the commonplace assumption that we can ever really understand the magnitude of history and its many traumas. From former Nazi-occupied Poland comes Tad Makarczynski's The Magician (1962), a pied-piperesque allegory of several young boys recruited to be soldiers by a nefarious magician, as well as the dark stop-motion animation rebellion Bags AKA Worek (1967) directed by Tadeusz Wilcosz. From the former Czechoslovakia we bring you another stop-motion marvel, Jiří Trnka's exquisite parable of totalitarianism and named one of the top five animated films of all-time: The Hand (1965), banned in its country of origin for decades. In De Overkant (1966), Belgian filmmaker Herman Wuyts brings us a bleak interpretation of a totalitarian society in which independence equates to death. The dark animated adaptation of Maurice Ogden's The Hangman (1967) is a chilling vision of the dangers of conformity and a grim metaphor for the horrors of scapegoating and witch-hunts. For a little comic relief (and we'll need it), we bring you Di$ney's Oscar-winning propaganda cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face (1943) featuring Don@ld Duck in a musical Nazi nightmare. Revisit the dark history of fascist oppression so we shall not be doomed to repeat it in the coming years. Everything screened on 16mm film from our massive stock footage archive. Date: Friday, December 2nd, 2016 at 8:00pm Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117 Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com Featuring: Night and Fog (Color/B+W, 32 mins, 1955) Alain Resnais’ authoritative Holocaust documentary, produced just ten years after the end of the Second World War, speaks to the myths of historical progress and the unimaginable depths of historical trauma. Combining carefully composed color photography of concentration camp ruins and an array of black and white footage from the archives, and set to an alienating and totally unexpected score by Hanns Eisler, Resnais’ film stands as both horrifying testimony to the nightmares of the past and direct challenge to the viewer to understand their magnitude: all we have are lingering ghosts, dreams of dreams.