Screen Practices

“Work is a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” - Studs Terkel
 
Is Nothing Forever? at the ICA is a question posed to filmmakers, artists, and image makers about the economics and ownership of our work. To rephrase the title: Is a managerial system of gatekeeping that pays less and less for labour (if at all) the best we can hope for? Is there power in collective ownership of work that lives primarily on digital platforms we don't own or control? Is there a better way to make a living?
 
Noindex is a collective practice organized by Amar Ediriwira and Clayton Vomero that offers an alternative model for filmmakers to monetize their work through fractional ownership. Our special programme at the ICA presents a collection of films that examine how rethinking organized labour might disentangle the web of financial abuse inherent to the business of culture.
 
The program will open on Friday night with a Noindex production. A “group film” comprised of work by more than a dozen filmmakers and artists, “Is Nothing Forever?” is our first experiment in collective ownership where each contributor shares equally in the film’s profits. The film will be accompanied by an introduction from Noindex and followed by a party in the ICA Bar with DJs to be announced.
 
On Saturday we’ll present a program of films that explore the meaning of work across varied spaces. Salt of the Earth, written, directed, and produced by artists blacklisted during the McCarthy era in the US. One of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view, its plot centers on a long and difficult miners strike in New Mexico. Working with actual miners and their families in a neorealist style, the film shows how the workers, the company, and the police react during the strike.

Fertile Memory, the first feature film to be shot in the West Bank, is a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual working and personal life both define and transcend a society that is emerging into modernity under the pressures of occupation. Sleep Dealer, a 2008 science-fiction film by Alex Rivera, depicts a dystopian future where a fortified wall has ended unauthorized Mexico-US immigration, but replaced migrant workers with robots that are then remotely controlled by the same class of would-be emigrants.

We’ll close the day with Shinjuku Boys, a film about the lives of three non-binary and transgender men who are employed at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo, Japan. As they discuss their romantic relationships, their relationships with their parents and their gender presentations, we start to understand their own genders, and their different outlooks on life.
 
On Sunday the ICA will host a screening of Les Bicots-nègres, Vos Voisins by Med Hondo. Opening with a monologue in which a man, speaking directly to camera, expounds the history of cinematic representation in Africa, the film proceeds to introduce cinema-verite and docu-fiction examples of the racism encountered by African immigrants in France, and powerfully connect the continuities between slavery and the postcolonial exploitation of migrant labour.
 
Following Les Bicots-nègres, Vos Voisins, we’ll conduct a roundtable discussion on the subject of modern independent filmmaking and the practicalities of producing and owning your work.
 
After the dicussion we’ll feature a new film from AG Rojas. Pare De Sufrir follows three people as they navigate the liminal space between life and the afterlife in an attempt to heal themselves and each other. A fragile, wordless meditation on grief and how it can transform and baptize the body and spirit.
 
To close the program we’ll show the canonical work of independent film, Daughters of the Dust. Directed by Julie Dash, and photographed by Arthur Jafa, Daughters of the Dust tells the story of three generations of Gullah women on Saint Helena Island as they prepare to migrate off the island to find work.

Fri 15 Mar, 7pm
NOINDEX: Is Nothing Forever?
A group film comprised of work by a dozen filmmakers and artists, “Is Nothing Forever?” is an experiment in collective ownership of intellectual property. Introduction by Noindex.



Sat 16 Mar, 2.30pm
Salt of the Earth on 16mm
Written, directed, and produced by film industry workers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, the film centers on a long and difficult miners strike in New Mexico.



Sat 16 Mar, 4.30pm
Fertile Memory
A portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual working and personal life both define and transcend a society that is emerging into modernity under the pressures of occupation.



Sat 16 Mar, 6.30pm
Sleep Dealer
A sci-film depicting a dystopian future where a fortified wall has ended unauthorized Mexico-US immigration and forced migrant workers to be replaced with robots that are then remotely controlled by the would-be emigrants from the other side of the wall.



Sat 16 Mar, 8.30pm
Shinjuku Boys
A documentary exploring the lives of three non-binary and transgender men who are employed at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo, Japan



Sun 17 Mar, 1pm
Les Bicots-nègres, Vos Voisins
A film about the experiences and reflections of migrant labourers living and working in France across the 1970s made by legendary migrant labourer and director Med Hondo.


Sun 17 Mar, 6.30pm
Pare de Sufrir
Three people navigate the liminal space between life and the afterlife in an attempt to heal themselves and each other. A fragile, wordless meditation on grief and how it can transform and baptize the body and spirit.



Sun 17 Mar, 7.45pm
Daughters of the Dust
The story of three generations of Gullah women on Saint Helena Island as they prepare to migrate off the island to find work and the conflicts it creates with their way of life on the island.