Discussion: At the Cinema – Film and Statement

In 1974, one declaration about the arrest of director Pantelis Voulgaris in Greece was read out at a Forum screening, while a second one about the situation for South American filmmakers following the putsch in Chile was delivered at another of that year’s screenings.  In 1985, a statement was made about England’s striking miners before the screening of    Which Side are You On? by Ken Loach and another declaration about film censorship at schools in Berlin was read out before Amor América by Ciro Cappellari in 1989.

In the more recent past, such public statements have also been written and delivered. They were met with approval or dissent, some of them attempted to stand against the same divisions in society that were equally evident in the cinema auditorium. 

What does it mean when texts are placed alongside films in the cinema whose content is sometimes closely linked to them and sometimes not linked to them at all? Which sort of audience is addressed in the process and what happens between the films, the words and the cinemagoers present? Does the cinema dispositif shift as a result or is it invigorated instead? Based on audio recordings spanning several decades at the Forum and Arsenal, such questions and more will be discussed.