Radical Software

I have a arrnaged screening of "Hackers", Iain Softley's 1995 film starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, and Lorraine Bracco. (imdb)

Thursday, October 24, 8-10pm, Kellen Auditorium

We'll be discussing the film in class that week.

I have also invited the New School Code Club. You're welcome to bring friends. Could also order food if there's interest. Should be a fun screening!

Today our campus will be hosting a conversation with Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau, two filmmakers who recently released "Direct Action", which depicts "one of the most high-profile militant activist communities in France: a 150-person strong rural collective that successfully resisted an international airport expansion project in 2018 ... survived multiple violent eviction attempts by the French state and spawned a new ecological movement in 2021." Certainly very related to much that we have been reading and discussing so far this semester.

More information here: https://event.newschool.edu/directaction

12-1:30pm, 6 East 16th Street, room 538

Note that the event today is a conversation with the filmmakers, not a screening. The film was shown recently as part of the New York Film Festival, which I wish I had learned of earlier to share with you all.

You can read more about the film here on Hyperallergic and here on Cinema Politica, which includes a short trailer of sorts. I've heard it's a tough film to watch: over 3 hours with a lot of very long duration shots, which you can get a sense of from that "trailer."

I have asked the host of the event today if there's a way we might get a link to watch the film.

Update: The filmmakers have shared a link to a copy of the film we can view. The password is in a file named "Direct Action" in the "Movies" folder within our shared Google Drive.

This story coming out about the exploding pager attack in Lebanon is really wild. Very notable to me that Israel has openly taken credit for it. Also notable that the folks targeted are said to have been using these pagers as a kind of lower tech communications technology in an effort to evade Israeli intervention.

My heart goes out to everyone injured or killed. If we can allow ourselves to consider the event from the privilege of our distance, we could definitely consider this a really fascinating case of political action manifested in software and hardware. Maybe something to discuss in class. Read more here:

Lynsey Chutel and Eve Sampson, "What We Know About the Deadly Wireless-Device Explosions in Lebanon", New York Time (This is a free share link for folks behind the paywall.)