Movie

Documentarian Anne Lewis presents her acclaimed film Morristown.

Morristown: in the air and sun is a working class response to globalization. It engages the audience in the issues of immigration, factory flight, and the organized demand for economic justice.

Filmed over an 8-year period in the mountains of east Tennessee, interior Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez, Morristown: in the air and sun is rooted in the authentic expression of workers who speak about their lives, work, disappointments, and hope. These conversations are combined with scenes in factories, fields, union halls, Mexican stores, city parks, and employment agencies. The documentary travels to the U.S.-Mexican border (El Paso – Juarez) to create deeper understanding of factory flight out of Morristown, and to interior Mexico to look at the forces that cause immigration. Morristown ends with a stunning union victory at a large poultry processing plant in Morristown, Tennessee.

Live Nude Girls UNITE!
A documentary about strippers unionizing

This first person documentary follows Julia Query, lesbian/stand-up comedian/peepshow-stripper, and daughter of a feminist activist, on her raucous journey to help organize the only union of strippers in the United States. Shot on a variety of formats, Live Nude Girls Unite! weaves backstage and dancing footage with labor organizing, street protests, stand-up comedy and comic-book style "animation" making an intelligent and dramatic cutting-edge film.

Grateful Undead

Join the filmmakers of this film as they cart it around on their bikes from venue to venue across Austin!

Set in the grunge-soaked heyday of the early 90's, "The Grateful Undead" is a shocking surrealistic spectacle about what happens when social waste turns toxic! Eno the Zero and Dr. Zog are two wastoids cut adrift in the Summer of '69. Disenchantment reigns supreme as they trudge through the junk food wasteland of mini-marts and parking lots. Their dense, hallucinatory haze draws the attention of flower-child wannabes who yearn for love and freedom in an age of apathy and rage. Take a stomach-turning psychedelic journey to a world of baby boomer nostalgia, tie-dyed in blood!

1968: 40 Years Later
A Film Series

The Weather Underground (2002, 92 min.) is an Oscar Nominated documentary that follows the rise and fall of the Weather Underground - a group of several hundred young women and men who tried to violently overthrow the American government during the late 1960s and 70s. Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, the Weathermen battled police in the streets, bombed the US Capitol and two dozen other buildings, and broke Timothy Leary out of prison. For almost a decade, they lived underground and evaded one of the largest FBI manhunts in US history. In this film, former members of the Weather Underground speak candidly about their own thoughts and experiences­many for the first time ever. What drove the group to embrace violence? How did violence affect their cause? How did it change them? And how do they feel about their actions thirty years later?

Tuesday, June 24th
8:00 PM
MonkeyWrench Books
110 E. North Loop

Spanish Language Film Series
En el País de No Pasa Nada

En el País de No Pasa Nada (2000, 91 min., México, in Spanish with subtitles in English)

Maricarmen de Lara, best known for her feminist documentaries, directs this comedy about a corrupt philandering businessman and his wife and the class conflicts created when Enrique is kidnapped by a band of incompetent kidnappers

This film uses humor to describe the social problems facing Mexico and the role of women in society.

Thursday, May 29th
8:00 pm
MonkeyWrench Books
110 E. North Loop (53rd St. at Ave. F)
for info or directions call 512-407-6925

1968: 40 Years Later
A Film Series

Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973, 90 min. French with English subtitles) is a Situationist film by director René Viénet which uses an older martial arts film ("The Crush" from Doo Kwang Gee) for its visuals. This film was then dubbed over by the filmmakers in a detournement. The idea was to adapt a bourgeois film into a radical critique of cultural hegemony.

There will be a pedal-in film festival in Monkey Wrench's backyard. This is a benefit for Skillshare Austin, a new organization raising money to throw a weekend skillsharing event. The film festival is free but Skillshare Austin will be accepting donations for popcorn and beer. The films that will be shown are independent movies about bikes (that you have not already seen!) Skillshare Austin volunteers will be signing up teachers for workshops, as well as selling patches, t-shirts, and other *exciting* items to raise money. Pedal on down, have fun, and help raise money for an exciting radical event!

La Estrategia del Caracol (1993, 105 min., Colombia, IN SPANISH NO SUBTITLES)

Sergio Cabrera directs this film about a group of people renting apartments in a building in Bogota. When the neighbors receive news that they are to be evicted to make way for gentrification things get interesting.

The neighbors band together with an old anarchist Spanish revolutionary war vet and resist in progressively more unconventional and at times hilarious ways. This is a great flick about resistance with a sense of humor.
IN SPANISH NO SUBTITLES

Monday, April 28th
8:00 pm
MonkeyWrench Books
110 E. North Loop (53rd St. at Ave. F)
for info or directions call 512-407-6925

Fraude: México 2006 (105 min.)
IN SPANISH. NO SUBTITLES. SORRY ABOUT THIS

This documentary was directed by Luis Mandoki as a response by
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the declared loser in the 2006
Mexican presidential elections. El Fraude covers Mexico's illustrious
history/tradition of electoral fraud, the illegal media attacks orchestrated
by the elite, atttemps to disqualify López Obrador, cheating on election
day, and López Obrador's post-election response.

Tuesday, May 13th
8 PM.

Spanish Language Film Night
El Violin (Mexico, 2005, 98 min) (In Spanish--no subtitles available--sorry!)

The quietly dignified Don Plutarco, his son Genaro and grandson Lucio make a humble living as travelling musicians. They also collect supplies and ammunition for the guerrilla movement that has arisen in response to the tyrannical regime. Upon returning to their hometown after one journey, they find it has been occupied by the army and their fellow villagers have been forced into hiding. Genaro leaves to find a way to salvage the supplies. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to his son, Plutarco attempts to recover the ammunition himself and courageously approaches the squad captain.

Thursday March 27th
8:00pm

MonkeyWrench Books
110 E. North Loop
512-407-6925 for more information or directions