Edinburgh Anarchists

Edinburgh AFed are curating a one-day, free, film festival on Saturday 20th March at the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddrie Street (formerly Nicholl Edwards). Celebrating “cultures of resistance” across the world, the diverse films share the theme of collective action against political or economic injustice.
A conscious shift away from the documentary-heavy format of most activist film festivals sees the screening of new and old class-conscious classics.
They include John Sayles’ Matewan, featuring the screen debut of indie singer Will Oldham as a teenage preacher in a mining town standing together in the teeth of state and capitalist siege.
And last year’s Army of Crime, which makes Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds look like a cartoon. The Group Manouchian, refugees and Jews, actively resisted the Nazi occupation of France, a country which despised them as terrorists and “aliens”. In its uncompromising politics and refusal to gloss over difficult moral choices, this 2009 film could prove to be a 21st century “Battle of Algiers” and is sure to provoke debate.
If Spanish anarchist feminists and Serbian anarchosyndicalism sound like too much, there will be the opportunity to relax with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bagpuss’s wildcat strike. As well as rock karaoke, beer, books and friendly chat. All welcome.

It may be the state broadcaster and utterly supine in the face of power, but the BBC has some very useful stuff on it. Among my favourites is In Our Time on Radio 4, where they take a Big Idea, something you may have heard of but not understood, and get experts to answer the question: what’s that all about then?

This week it was The Siege of Münster, which features in Luther Blissett‘s astonishing anti-authoritarian retelling of the Reformation, Q. IOT, available to download (but not for long), has sections about the Peasants’ Revolt, the surprisingly advanced democratic form in Munster and the Anabaptists’ reading of the New Testament leading them to demand all property to be held in common. (Not something you hear from modern Biblical literalists.) At the time of the birth of the merchant / capitalist class, this is early anti-capitalism (communism) expressed in the only language then available to the peasantry, that of the Bible

I can’t recommend Q highly enough, it’s both eye-opening and a rollicking good thriller. In my ideal world, more people read this than the Da Vinci Code.

In one of those happy coincidences, I discovered on the same day I heard this programme, that Luther Blissett (now writing as Wu Ming) have a new novel out in English translation.  deals with the “discovery” of the New World and I’m hoping that it does for that period what Q did for the Reformation – reclaiming history from the bottom up, and giving us new myths to replace those of Empire and Christendom.

History may be written by the victors, but we can still read between the lines.

from 7 pm in the Forest Cafe:
Screenings:

• RIOT GRRRL MOVEMENT IN EUROPE AND AMERICA IN THE NINETIES
• ANARCHA FEMINIST FESTIVAL CLITFEST
• QUEERRUPTION DOCUMENTARY

all-female and female fronted punk bands from all over the world
from 7 pm in the Forest cafe:
CONFIRMED PERFORMERS AND BANDS:

• SELLOTAPE
• DEBORAH with SILENT THEORY ORCHESTRA – looped guitar, spoken word, poetry
• ANNA- poems, reading and performance
• WITCHES REVENGE – angry girls punk
• SCOUTTS BAND – raw folk
• (JO)ANNE BONNY pirate DJ
• OTHER BANDS t.b.c.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan benefit stall
Anarchafeminist and D.I.Y. GIRLZ ZINES stall

COME ALONG!!!!
FROM 7 TIL LATE AT THE FOREST
EVERYBODY WHO SUPPORT THE NIGHT IS WELCOME
ESPECIALLY GIRLS WHO HAVE D.I.Y. STALLS AND PLAY!!!