Flaherty NYC "For Life Against the War" Ken Jacobs & Gerd Stern

Programmed by Almudena Escobar López & Herb Shellenberger Filmmakers Ken Jacobs and Gerd Stern in person. Co-presented with Filmmakers Coop.

Shown in its world premiere on January 30, 1967, For Life Against the War was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival The Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated one to three minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. It was an immediate, politically urgent and militant project from independent filmmakers of many different stripes. Political filmmakers Leo Hurwitz, Abbe Borov and Peter Gessner showed alongside avant-garde mainstays Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Joyce Wieland, Lewis Jacobs and Jonas Mekas. Animators Robert Breer, Larry Jordan and Don Duga sent short works, with Lee Savage and Milton Glaser’s Mickey Mouse in Vietnam gaining some notoriety. The work was compiled with an open selection, and thus contains many amateur, regional filmmakers whose names have not traveled through history. Because of this, when one views the film anew today, its sense of immediacy and collectivity shines through. Around 2000, the only print was restored by Anthology Film Archives, with a new print deposited for distribution at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. The film has been influential (inspiring a new version in 2007) though it has remained difficult to see and study. For this 51st anniversary screening, we invite Ken Jacobs, who conceived the project and contributed a segment to it, to discuss the film and its implications for collective political filmmaking today. He will be joined by Gerd Stern of 1960s media art collective USCO, who also contributed a short to the film.

Filmmakers: Manfred Kirsheimer, Peter Elison, Ron Finne, Lee Savage, John H. Hawkins, Lionel Martinez, Lloyd H. Williams, USCO, Peter Gessner, Hilary Harris, Leo Hurwitz, Peggy Lawson, Tommy Hurwitz, Lewis Jacobs, Stan Vanderbeek, Robert Fiore, Larry Jordan, Don Duga, Barbara Fultz, Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt, Nina Feinberg, Wendy and Shirley Clarke, Betty Ferguson, Maurice Amor, Robert Breer, Preston, Max Phillips, Jerry Wakefield, Movie Subscription Group, Tom Bissenger, Ken Jacobs, Norman Weissburg, Mark Sadan, Fred Wellington, Allen Siegal, Allen Schaff, John Wallenmeyer, Henry J. Korn, Jonas Mekas, George Breidenbach, Abbot Meader, Abbe Borov, A.M. Jimmenez, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Ben Van Meter, Stephen Sellinger, Victor Grauer, Charles I. Levine, Bob Kinney, Dave Lambet, Karl Bissenger, Nat Hoffman, Storm De Hirsch, (Vincenzo Bellini & Luisa Terragnini model for Rudy Burckhardt.)


For film synopsis and filmmaker bios: 
http://flahertyseminar.org/life-against-war/

For full COMMON VISIONS series description: http://flahertyseminar.org/2018-winterspring-flaherty-nyc2/

Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives: 32 Second Ave. (@2nd St.) 

Please note seating is limited. Tickets available day of screening. Doors open 6:30pm.