The Forgotten Space
dir Allan Sekula and Noel Burch
16 Sherman Cinema
Thursday April 26th
8 p.m.
16 Sherman Street
SF CA 94103
Between 6th and 7th, and Folsom and Harrison
Nearest BART is Civic Center
Free Admission
The Incite/Insight Film Series is a collaboration between The Anthropology And Social Change Department at CIIS and the 16 Sherman Street Cinema. Please bring beverages or snacks to share, and discussion is highly encouraged.
The Forgotten Space (2012), 112 min, Color
Dir. Allan Sekula and Noel Burch
The "forgotten space" of Allan Sekula and Noel Burch's essay film is the sea, the oceans through which 90% of the world's cargo now passes. At the heart of this space is the container box, which, since its invention in the 1950s, has become one of the most important mechanisms for the global spread of capitalism.
The film follows the container box along the international supply chain, from ships to barges, trains, and trucks, mapping the byzantine networks that connect producers to consumers (and more and more frequently, producing nations to consuming ones). Visiting the major ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Guangdong province, and many places between, it connects the economic puzzle pieces that corporations and governments would prefer remain scattered.
We meet people who have been reduced to cogs in this increasingly automated machine - the invisible laborers who staff the cargo ships, steer the barges, drive the trucks, and migrate to the factories, and whose low wages form the base of the entire enterprise. The film also introduces us to those who this system's efficiency has marginalized: the longtime unemployed occupants of a California tent city, Dutch farmers whose land is bisected by a new high-speed train line, and the displaced residents of Doel, Belgium, whose city is slated for demolition in order to expand the port of Antwerp.
Employing a wide range of materials and styles, from interviews to classic film clips, essayistic voiceover to observational footage, THE FORGOTTEN SPACE provides a panoramic portrait of the new global economy and a compelling argument about why it must change.
"An engrossing and provocative essay film… Various experts offer informative analysis, but the testimony of seamen, factory workers and residents of a California homeless encampment is at the heart of the film's guiding ethical and aesthetic principles, which have to do with the defense of human dignity in the face of a system that so often appears hostile or indifferent to it."—A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"THE FORGOTTEN SPACE begins as an investigative documentary and concludes as a mythopoeic essay on modernity and the sea."—Artforum
About the filmmakers:
Allan Sakula (January 15, 1951 – August 10, 2013) was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts.[1] His work frequently focused on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."
Since the early 1970s, Allan Sekula’s (Erie, Pennsylvania 1951) works with photographic sequences, written texts, slide shows and sound recordings have traveled a path close to cinema, sometimes referring to specific films. However, with the exception of a few video works from the early 70s and early 80s, he has stayed away from the moving image. This changed in 2001, with the first work that Sekula was willing to call a film, Tsukiji, a “city symphony” set in Tokyo’s giant fish market.
Sekula’s books include Photography against the Grain (1984), Fish Story (1995), Dismal Science (1999), Performance under Working Conditions (2003), Titanic’s Wake (2003), and Polonia and Other Fables (2009).
These works range from the theory and history of photography to studies of family life in the grip of the military industrial complex, and in Fish Story, to explorations of the world maritime economy. The Forgotten Space is a filmic sequel to Fish Story.
Noel Burch - Born in the USA (San Francisco) in 1932, Noël Burch has been living in France since 1951. He graduated from the Institut Des Hautes Etudes Cinèmatographiques in 1954. While primarily known for his theoretical writings, he has always positioned himself as a filmmaker and has directed over twenty titles, mostly documentaries.
Burch has been publishing since the 1960s. Among his numerous publications are his first and best known book Theory of Film Practice (New York: Praeger, 1973) and To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema (Berkeley, 1979), which remains the most robust history of Japanese cinema written by a Westerner.
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