Far from Vietnam, far from the war

"Far From Vietnam", the film of Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, Agnes Varda, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, and Alain Resnais, will be screened at Light Industry on Tuesday, October 28, at 8 pm. Light Industry is on 55 33rd Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, New York, and tickets, available at door, are $6.

This film, from 1967, has seven parts, because of the idea of Chris Marker to make an anti-war story with different point of views to help the Vietnamese people. Organized under the aegis of SLON (Société pour le Lancement des OeuvresNouvelles) and overseen by Chris Marker as a protest of the US involvement in Vietnam, this legendary portmanteau, which features contributions by seven iconic artists, stands as watershed moment for political cinema as well as collective filmmaking. A melange of fictional and documentary elements shot across the U.S., France, Cuba, and Vietnam, it was a source of some controversy in its time, and remains a provocative and resonant essay on global conflict and life during wartime.

Alan Resnais: "'Far from Vietnam' is a film of question marks, of questions we ask ourselves as often perhaps as you. It's for that reason that we put them on the screen: after all, it is as natural for filmmakers to speak on a whitecanvas as in a cafe."

William Klein: "On the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue in New York, a guy is recitinga poem consisting of the syllables na-palm. And no one knows what napalm is. It showed me how blind people become to something they hear referred to all day long. So, we decided to do something a little like Picasso confronted by the bombing of Guernica."

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Moving Image Source: "One of the most powerful documentary statements about the opposition to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In fact, I would cite Emile de Antonio's 1968 'In the Year of the Pig' and the collectively made 1972 'Winter Soldier' as its only real competitors."

Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of weekly events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative artspaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst awide range of artists and audiences within the city.

Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to across-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number ofrent-stabilized studios for artists in need of low-cost rental space. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment -- one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production.