Articles

Interview with Solidarity Screenings (Glasgow) by Red Flag News

An interview Red Flag News conducted with one of our members in August 2024

RFN: What is Solidarity Screenings and what do you organise? 

SSG: We, Solidarity Screenings (Glasgow), are culture workers. We see film as being a powerful instrument in agitation and education. We chose to begin our project with a focus on Arab cinema, seeing as South-West Asia has been one of the centre points in the resistance to imperialism in the 21st century. The Arab struggle, exemplified in Palestine, has become the Vietnam of our generation. In our screenings, we hope to amplify the revolutionary struggle in the region. We aim to do this by showing militant films, alongside giving out booklets that compile relevant revolutionary literature and theory. Alongside this, by learning about these movements and watching thought-provoking cinema, we hope that this can give us guidance in how to organise better here.

RFN: Much of Cinema today has become part of Bourgeois culture, and reproduces Capitalism both in its messaging and its delivery. How do you break from this?

SSG: We make efforts to break with the formal ossification of cinema. The venues in which we host our screenings have been independent art spaces, we never charge, only doing a free ticketing system to stop overcrowding. We try to make food relevant to the country, and we ensure there is always time at the end for proper discussion to be had. We do all this to take the films from just being in our minds and in our private conversations later, to rather become more deeply communal. In discussing the films, their artistic quality and political content, and in sharing our differing viewpoints, we are all able to understand, appreciate and critique these movies better. In our best case scenario, these films and discussions can then inspire and lead people to doing revolutionary political work. 

RFN: How do you select which films you will be screening?

SSG: Our approach to the films so far has been to travel to a different Arab country each month. The Arab nation is large and diverse, and resistance is embedded throughout its geography. While South-West Asia, particularly the Sham countries have the largest volume of militant film, most of these countries have revolutionary, or at the very least, thought-provoking cinema, that we can then have a very worthwhile discussion around. Starting from August, we have also begun presenting the occasional international struggle, starting with the Black national liberation struggle inside the US, expressed through the Black Panther Party.

To sum up why we do this, we will use Toni Cade Bambara�s famous quote: �As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.� 

RFN: Something deeply important for revolutionaries is remaining accountable and accessible to the people. Do you see this as important for you and if so how do you practice this principle? 

SSG: We see accountability to the masses as deeply important. When organising each screening, we have been trying to actively apply the mass line and constructive criticism and self-criticism. The mass line being the technique of �from the people to the people�. We never want to show films that are self-serving to our tastes, but rather, we try to orient our project around the people.

We do this by going around during the meal-time and asking people what they thought of the films and the screenings. Furthermore, we ask for feedback on our social media regularly. After our first screening, we were criticised (and self-criticised) on various points, but one point that we�ll focus on here is the presentation. It was sorely lacking in detail and did not contextualise the films to their historical context. We investigated the root, which was lack of planning and delegation of tasks, which meant that not enough research was done. After thinking it through, we began to rely on our friends and comrades who had offered us their support. This has spread the burden out, rather than food, the presentation and research all being centralised around two individuals, it is now collectively shared. Furthermore, as a general rule of thumb, we read a minimum of one book on the broad history of the country. 

The Palestine Film Unit would edit their films after hearing criticism from the people. They showed their films in the camps, in the guerrilla bases. They are our model.

RFN: Other than continuing with the good work you have been doing, what are your plans for the future?

SSG: We have had interest in other cities in Scotland to host screenings with us and find this to be very exciting as it has shown to us the real interest in alternative and revolutionary cinema. Revolutionary art has gained traction, there is a real interest in it! We unfortunately have had to mainly show films from the 60-70s, but we wish to find more contemporary revolutionary cinema! We hope to see the creation of new revolutionary art, particularly film, in our epoch.  

Our second new development has been doing special screenings. We think the idea of having our consistent, more intimate, venue for our monthly screenings, while having the larger venue for special screenings would be a lot more work, but very rewarding work at that! We have done one special screening so far, which was a collaboration with Falastin Film Festival on resistance cinema in Palestine, but we are hoping to branch out to more international revolutionary cinema. So, if any readers are based in Glasgow and have an interest in international revolutionary cinema, please get in touch!