Friday, September 30, 2011

Screening Strongman Ferdinand at Wooden Shoe on Sunday





Wooden Shoe (704 South Street • Philadelphia, PA 19147) will be screening Alexander Kluge's Strongman Ferdinand (1976) on Sunday October 2 at 7:00 pm. Shooting Wall has been extolling the films of Alexander Kluge online and in print over the last year, so Philadelphia cinephiles should jump at the chance to see one of his most witty and intriguing films. As always at the Wooden Shoe, all screenings are free. Please check out this amazing film from one of the best filmmakers of all time.

I have included a few links below to some reviews of the film and some writing about Kluge for those who are interested in learning more about this filmmaker.

http://www.filmref.com/notes/archives/2007/07/strongman_ferdinand_1976.html
http://whitelightcinema.org/Kluge.html
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/kluge/

1 comment:

  1. Alexander Kluge’s “Strongman Ferdinand” (1977) – When Today’s “Rich-Men Ferdinands” Were Occupied With Direct Power/Control Over the Population

    How Freaks of National Security Ideology Become Terrorists and Violators of Human Rights
    “Strongman Ferdinand” by Alexander Kluge (1977) is a detailed depiction of the psychology of a right-wing functionary, a person who has only one goal in life – to subdue other people in order to serve his rich masters as efficiently as possible. He is afraid that people’s democratic freedoms will be used by them as a cover for their desire to subvert his government and his security zones, and he is spying on people in order to trap them, arrest, interrogate, torture and force them to confess their criminal intentions. For Ferdinand serious culture (cultivating independent thinking) and democracy (cultivating versatility of life styles) are nothing but swamps breeding anarchic monsters.
    Ferdinand’s bizarre destiny is to shift from being an anti-terrorist to becoming a terrorist himself, to blur the very distinction between anti-terrorism and terrorism. For him advanced anti-terrorist activity includes terrorist activity as a part of itself. The logic of transformation of anti-terrorism into terrorism is analyzed by Kluge’s film with a prophetic power.
    Kluge made this film with stylized asceticism to emphasize the deadly boredom of his anti-hero’s universe, his emotional poverty and pathological limitations of his imagination. In personal relations Ferdinand is practically autistic; the absence of any eroticism makes him, in order to satisfy his sexual needs, to resort to persistent manipulation of women. His cultural horizon is identical wit his job description. He combines the psychological features of conservative dogmatists and the Soviet functionaries of communist doctrine.
    Kluge’s main point is that totalitarianism is a function of cultural illiteracy.
    Victor Enyutin

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