Please join the Platypus Affiliated Society for every second Thursday (beginning Sept 5) for a film series that examines the history of socialism from the Second International to the New Left.

The first two films in the series are part of the 2013 NSPIRG Rad Frosh.

// The Second International (1889-1914)
5 Sept @ 7pm (Dalhousie Art Gallery)
Rosa Luxemburg (1986, 122 min, dir. Margarethe von Trotta (German with English Subtitles))
Cannes Palme D’Or nominee and Best Actress winner (for Barbara Sukowa’s luminous performance), this is a sweeping biopic of radical socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).

// The Russian Revolution (1917)
19 Sept @ 6pm (Dalhousie Art Gallery)
Reds (1981, 195 min, dir. Warren Beatty, English)
A film about John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World on the Russian Revolution, and Louise Bryant and their Greenwich Village milieu, including Emma Goldman, Eugene O'Neill, Max Eastman and others during the early years of American Communism, directed by Warren Beatty and starring Beatty, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson.

// The 1930s Old Left
10 Oct @ 7pm (Room 307, Dalhousie Student Union Building)
Cradle Will Rock (1999, 132 min., dir. Tim Robbins, English)
A drama based on real events about theater life in the 1930s during the times of the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration, the Red Scare (anti-communism), fascism, unions, Hitler, Mussolini, New York mayor Nelson Rockefeller, director Orson Welles, painter Diego Rivera, and newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. The film focuses on the lives of several people during hard times in New York as many struggle to find their place in America. The main focus of the film is a play titled Cradle Will Rock, which tells a pro-union story about lower class workers trying to survive in a growing power-hungry world.

// The 1960s New Left
24 Oct @ 6pm (Dalhousie Art Gallery)
Le fond de l'air est rouge (Grin without a Cat) (1977, 180 min, dir. Chris Maker, French, Spanish, English, and German with English subtitles)
Chris Marker’s epic account of the rise and fall of the New Left. Part One, “Fragile Hands,” charts the growth of the student-protest movement amid a background of Vietnam, the Black Panthers, the Red Brigade, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara, climaxing in the events of 1968. Part Two, “Severed Hands,” analyzes the movement’s tortuous decline, both from outside aggression (in Czechoslovakia and Chile) and internal dissension.

Please join Platypus for a course of four sessions focusing largely, although not exclusively, on content generated by the Platypus Review. The aim of these sessions is to provide attendees with a sense of the raison d’être of the Platypus project.

SAIC Michigan Building 14th Floor Lounge
6:00 pm

1st Session: Monday, Sept. 30
2nd Session: Monday, Oct. 14
3rd Session: Monday, Oct. 28
4th Session: Monday, Nov. 18

You can find all the readings here:

http://chicago.platypus1917.org/introductory-reading-group/

A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A with thinkers, activists and political figures focused on contemporary problems faced by the Left in its struggles to construct a politics adequate to the self-emancipation of the working class. Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Room 224, Dalhousie Student Union Building
October 2nd, 7:00 PM

Panelists:
George Caffentzis - Midnight Notes Collective
Shay Enxuga - Baristas Rise Up
Larry Haiven -Solidarity Halifax / Saint Mary's University

Co-sponsored by the Halifax Radical Imagination Project:
http://radicalimagination.org/

Description:
It is generally assumed that Marxists and other Leftists have the political responsibility to support reforms for the improvement of the welfare of workers. Yet, leading figures from the Marxist tradition-- such as Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky-- also understood that such reforms would broaden the crisis of capitalism and potentially intensify contradictions that could adversely impact the immediate conditions of workers. For instance, full employment, while being a natural demand from the standpoint of all workers’ interests, also threatens the conditions of capitalist production (which rely on a surplus of available labor), thereby potentially jeopardizing the system of employment altogether. In light of such apparent paradoxes, this panel seeks to investigate the politics of work from Leftist perspectives. It will attempt to provoke reflection on and discussion of the ambiguities and dilemmas of the politics of work by including speakers from divergent perspectives, some of whom seek after the immediate abolition of labor and others of whom seek to increase the availability of employment opportunities. It is hoped that this conversation will deepen the understanding of the contemporary problems faced by the Left in its struggles to construct a politics adequate to the self-emancipation of the working class.