Tokyo Reels 1

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Excerpt: Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective that aims to cast new light upon historic works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Ramallah and Brussels. For documenta fifteen, Subversive Film has curated a cinematic program around the screening of a recently restored film, shedding light on the overlooked and still undocumented anti-imperialist solidarity between Japan and Palestine. After meeting in Tokyo with Masao Adachi, acclaimed director of different experimental agit-prop films and former member of the Japanese Red Army, Subversive Film was entrusted with a collection of 16mm films and U-matic tapes, dozens of posters, and a full library safe-guarded by a Japanese solidarity group in Tokyo. The material, considered either lost or unknown to the public, was sent to Japan in several waves from 1967 to 1982. Source: https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/lumbung-members-artists/subversive-film/ _______________________________
Analysis / Interpretation / Press / Source

Excerpt:

September 16, 2022

Directors and artists have condemned the decision to suppress the viewing of pro-Palestine films during Documenta 15, a contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany. The festival, which runs through the summer and is expected to close at the end of this month, has been engulfed by a row over the censorship of pro-Palestine movies.

An advisory group responsible for overseeing programming at the festival recommended censoring a series of films about Palestinian solidarity, according to the Art Newspaper. The series, Tokyo Reels, is a set of restored films by the cinema research and production collective known as Subversive Film. The collective aims to shed light on "the overlooked and still undocumented anti-imperialist solidarity between Japan and Palestine."

The advisory council said in a report that the work is "pro-Palestinian propaganda… made between the 1960s and the 1980s". Calling it "highly problematic", the panel said the film is "filled with antisemitic and anti-Zionist set pieces" that are presented as objective fact.

Source:

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220916-banning-pro-palestine-films-s...