PUTNEY DEBATER
A personal blog
A double loss
The death in Buenos Aires of Argentine filmmaker and theorist Octavio Getino was reported on the same day as that of the historian Eric Hobsbawm in London. Worlds apart and different spheres of activity, perhaps, but both contributed in major ways to the broad current of independent and international critical culture that grew up after 1968, even though Hobsbawm remained a Communist and Getino was always a Peronist.
For myself, I was lucky to have interviewed both of them on camera, Getino in 1982, and Hobsbawm more recently, in 2007. Hobsbawm was generous in contributing to a film I made about a relative of mine, whom he’d known (The American Who Electrified Russia)—which makes it difficult to extract. Getino we filmed in Mexico, for a documentary on the New Latin American Cinema for Channel Four (in its early days, when it was really innovatory and progressive). He explained for us the concept of Third Cinema, which he launched with Fernando Solanas in 1969, in an essay based on their experience making the extraordinary piece of political cinema that goes under the name La hora de los hornos – Hour of the Furnaces. Here by way of tribute is that interview.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVohdIUNuGk[/youtube]
‘Secret City’
It’s almost a year since anti-capitalist protestors, intending to set up camp in front of the London Stock Exchange in Paternoster Square under the banner of Occupy LSX, were ejected from the square and parked themselves instead in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. The result was one of the starting points for this film: a highly public debate about capitalism and the Church.
But there was also another power acting in the shadows to eventually eject the Occupiers – the City of London Corporation. An ancient body which dates back before William the Conqueror, before there was a parliament in Westminster, which zealously guards its autonomy and privileges to this day.
This is the subject of Secret City: a state within a state, with deleterious effects on democracy, politics and economics in London, the country, and the world, for the City is joint headquarters with Wall Street of global finance capital. In short, ‘Secret City’ isn’t just a film for Londoners – especially in these times of crisis, the role of the City concerns everyone everywhere.
Here’s the trailer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HJGLqMAQbk[/youtube]
‘Secret City‘ is a minimal budget film by Michael Chanan and Lee Salter, supported by the University of Roehampton. We tell the story though interviews with politicians, academics, writers, activists and campaigners, counterpointed with unfamiliar archive footage and a musical score by Simon Zagorski-Thomas taken from the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’.
A Short Film About Money
Won’t solve your money problems, but it might make you think about why you’ve got them. ‘A Short Film About Money’ is a spin-off from a longer film I’ve been making with Lee Salter, ‘Secret City’, which launches soon.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFcoelfewXc&feature=plcp[/youtube]
‘Secret City’ is an investigation into the Corporation of the City of London which governs the famous square mile that serves as joint-HQ with Wall Street for global finance capital. We originally thought we might include a sequence about the illusions of money, but in the end left it out, so instead we fashioned the footage we’d collected into the satirical short you can see here.