Why would you want to be left in the cinema?
So wouldn’t it be great to go to a cosy viewing with like-minded people, somewhere where entry’s free if you’re skint, and whatever you can afford towards costs if you’re not.
Somewhere comfortable, where you can talk over what you’d seen afterwards, perhaps moving on to the pub if the mood is right.
t’s something I used to enjoy a lot back in the days when Hastings Labour Party was a sociable, socialist undertaking, and we had our ‘pol ed’ sessions in The Pig, sometimes with a Ken Loach or a TU-produced film to discuss, sometimes something that’s just plain fun.
I missed it, and I worried that there was nowhere now, for newly interested activists to go for political education – or I did miss it, until the spring of this year when Hastings People’s Party started ‘Left in the Cinema’. Among the screenings they’ve already staged are the 2007 film Sicko (highly recommended by Tony Benn among others) which paints a picture of life without a free-at-the-point-of-use health service and Witch Hunt, one of several very important documentaries about what the establishment did to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party during his time as leader.
That one was followed by a discussion led by Leah Levane, a local, former Labour Party activist best known as one of the Jewish, socialist, JVL officers who the Labour Party kicked out when they were on what looked like an ‘all socialists are antisemitic’ drive.
I’ve been to see Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – I really didn’t know half enough about Al Gore. It was fascinating, even if some of his policy ideas are somewhat outdated now, and Santiago Rising, the story of the people of Chile, struggling to recover from the devastation caused by their country being used as ‘the laboratory of neoliberalism’.
The conversations after that one were especially fascinating for having the film-maker present, and finding we had a Chilean guy in the audience, who was able to add some personal observations and updates to what we’d just been learning.
The one that left the deepest impression on me though, was Hearts and Minds – the story of the US invasion of Vietnam. It’s billed as ‘an overwhelming emotional experience’ and that is no understatement.
The film’s 50 years old now, and one of the reasons it hit me so hard was that I’d forgotten how brutally, unflinchingly frank 1970s film-makers were – it’s totally different to the over-the-top sensationalism of so much recent film and TV but the big thing –the monstrous, undigestible truth of it is that I kept thinking about how those Vietnam activists would have been watching in determined, ‘never again’ mode, whereas we were watching it and making involuntary comparisons with the experience of the last two years, of watching footage sent by desperate, and astonishingly brave journalists and film-makers of Palestine.
The Left in the Cinema Club is currently running screenings on selected Wednesdays at the
Quakers’ Hall in South Terrace – here’s the billing for the next few sessions…
…Take your pick – but I suggest you’d be crazy to miss the opportunity to watch The Spirit of ‘45 in the run up to Christmas. There’s no tonic more effective than getting yourself a headful of a British government picking the nation up from a time of trauma and hardship and actually making things work.
Link to trailer The Spirit of ‘45
Next up is Knock Down the House, showing at the Quakers’ Hall on Weds 8th Oct – bring your own popcorn – see you there?
Kay Green, Hastings People’s Party.