First, I watched the short documentary The Black and the Green by St. Clair Bourne. It is a short film about a group of American civil rights activists who traveled to Belfast in 1983 in midst of "The Troubles." Due to its brevity, the film isn't really fleshed out but is still quite good and shows the importance of solidarity among people who are truly oppressed.
I also watched a documentary that I believe was made in 1991 or at least begun in that year but not released until 2000. 1991 marked the 30th anniversary of the political assassination of a figure previously unknown to me: Patrice Lumumba, who served as Zaire's (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) first prime minister after that country gained independence from Belgium.
Simply titled Lumumba, Raoul Peck's documentary is a fascinating look about the rise to power of this former beer salesman and postal clerk but, moreover, of his swift fall from power and his brutal execution. He has been more or less forgotten. In the end, Lumumba only served for about 2 months as prime minister before being sacked by Zaire's first president.
Enrico Berlinguer
Shortly after these tumultous early months of independence, Zaire witnessed the rise of Mobutu Sesi Seko, who became a long serving and brutal dictator. It seems that prior to his fall, Lumumba was fairly close to Mobutu. Peck's documentary style mixes the past and the present and makes Lumumba a spectre haunting the film.
After he was killed, Lumumba's body was hacked to bits, scattered about, with some parts of his body dissolved in acid. So, his body was never found. Peck uses this to good effect in his haunting film, which highlights the dark underside of the post-WWII wave of independence in addition to the gross injustices of colonialization.
Finally, I watched Christopher Roth's Europe Endless 1: The Spectre of Eurocommunism. I have to say, this is a fascinating movie. The central figure of the movie is critical theorist Colin McCabe. It's a deeply interesting film. Of course, "spectre" in the title is meant to evoke the opening of The Communist Manifesto ("A spectre is haunting Europe...").
The key concept underlying the film is Gramsci's "hegemony." I guess the point of the movie was that social and political change don't have to be brought about by violent revolution. Rather, persistent striving after certain goals and winning people to your side is a better course of action. This begins with dissuading people from continually voting against their own interest. Like a lot of people, however, I remain skeptical of drift away from class and the consequent degradation into idpol.
The Spectre of Eurocommunism is no ham-fisted pro-Marxist movie. One of the more interesting parts of the movies is about how the Red Brigades' kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978 was aimed at preventing political collaboration between the Italian Communist Party, led by the fascinating figure of Enrico Berlinguer, whose own sudden death in 1984 at age 62 was a blow from which the party never recovered, and the Christian Democrats.
Berlinguer died after spending four days in a coma as a result of the brain haemorrhage he suffered while giving a speech in Padua. He had broken the Italian party away from Moscow
Aldo Moro was close enough to Pope Saint Paul VI that the Holy Father considered him as something of a son. Moro's murder in May 1978 undoubtedly contributed to Pope Paul's rapid decline and death in August of that year. Moro was the bridge between the two parties. As Bob Marley asked, "How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?"
Let it be said, especially as we gear up to celebrate the mother Church of Christianity- Saint John Lateran, the Pope's Cathedral as Bishop of Rome- that Berlinguer's funeral Mass was celebrated there in 1984.
I love the quote by Welsh socialist writer Raymond Williams used as the film's epilogue: "To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing." I am looking forward to watching the other two movies Europe Endless 2 and Europe Endless 3 once they are made and released.
Anyway, I am still too tired to write up any more detailed description of the the movies I was able to watch yesterday. Each one was fascinating and gave me a lot to consider given what we're living through politically. Especially as we witness the mere spectre of human solidarity once again unleashing a frightening rightwing backlash very much out of proportion to any "threat" by the nebulous "left."
At least in the U.S., the faux protestations of Phox Gnus notwithstanding, there is really not much of a genuine left to be concerned about. The craven and cynical populism and nationalism with which this backlash is laced is built on making despair convincing.
On Thursday, I also started to re-read Giorgio Agamben's State of Exception, which is the second volume (according to a revised order), of his Homo sacer series.
I changed my mind. So, even though it's Saturday, I am still posting a traditio. Kraftwerk's "Europe Endless" seems more than fitting:
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