Anti-Racism Music Movie Goes Worldwide!

ON RESISTANCE STREET:  ANTI-RACISM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY GOES INTERNATIONAL! 

Screenings in London on 17 April, Rome on 20 April and Bolton, 11 Might 2024 with many extra to comply with.

Director Richard David writes:

After we first began producing our function size documentary ON RESISTANCE STREET, we all the time had a conviction that it could be a movie which might someway discover its personal viewers. As such we began capturing in a Punk DIY fashion with an interview with ‘Impolite Boy’ film star Ray Gange throughout June 2021 and didn’t conclude till effectively into 2023, with the enhancing course of having began lengthy earlier than that. Within the subsequent two and a half years, we might interview many famend musicians and commentators. (A full checklist of the movie’s contributors is included beneath this text.)

At the moment’s movie market is an especially troublesome beast to confront, particularly with movies based mostly on the political function of music and cultural resistance. Anyone trying to make cash from such tasks is often barking up the improper tree. In a world the place information hurtles at us quicker than an Apollo rocket and a focus spans have change into ever shorter, critical analytical material isn’t prone to whet the appetites of main movie distributors.

As such, with our movie, we forged industrial concerns onto the wind of irrelevance, one thing that not solely gave us inventive freedom, however embodied the Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist activist-based beliefs which led to its creation. As Spring dawned in 2024, it was due to this fact pleasing to see inspiring screening developments materialising exterior of the mainstream movie market.

After a sold-out worldwide premiere in Belfast final October, Wednesday April seventeenth sees the movie’s London launch at The Gate Picturehouse in Notting Hill, a really acceptable venue, given a few of the West London-based material included. Tickets are promoting quick and on the time of writing, there are solely round 20 left for this screening which takes place at 8.15 p.m. It is going to be adopted by a Q+A session that includes Producer Robin Banks, authentic Metal Pulse member Mykaell Riley, Paul Simmonds of The Males They Couldn’t Grasp, creator and historian Rick Blackman and myself. The session can be chaired by historian and activist, Louise Uncooked. Remaining tickets will be bought right here.

Within the afternoon earlier than that screening, a really particular ‘Resistance Avenue’ reside music occasion will happen on the well-known ‘Troubadour’ venue in Earl’s Court docket. This occasion will happen between 1.30 and 5.30 p.m and can function Paul Simmonds and Naomi Bedford, Taurus Trakker, Band of The Underhand, John McGlone, Carolyn Marosy, Mark Vennis and Kent Nielsen. All of those acts together with many others, offered authentic songs for the movie’s soundtrack. The Troubadour has been on the centre of London counter-culture since its opening in 1954. Each Dylan and Hendrix performed their very first London units there and a ton of different legendary names have graced its stage. Persons are flying in from America, Eire and Europe to attend his occasion with all tickets now having being offered.

Following these London occasions, Robin Banks, myself, Belfast Co-Producer Helen McCourt and a few buddies can be flying to Italy on the morning of Saturday twentieth April. That night there can be a really particular screening of the movie as a part of the ‘Rome Liberation Competition’ which takes place yearly, celebrating the liberating of the town from the Nazis and Fascists again in 1944. This occasion can even function Actors and Actresses studying from the memoirs of residents who truly lived by means of the liberation interval.

That occasion has been organised by a conglomeration of organisations from the Rome Anti-Fascist Community, with the unique invitation and plan having stemmed from an exquisite evaluation of ORS by Giuliano Santoro, in Italy’s greatest promoting Left Wing newspaper, IL MANIFESTO. Santoro described ORS as ”a meta-narrative straddling music and politics, tradition and society, the digital sphere and actual life. A plot containing tales, biographies and legacies which need to be unravelled.” A abstract which we had been after all, solely too delighted so as to add to the movie’s poster.

After we first conceived the movie, a screening like this in a metropolis occupied by the Nazis, would have been on the high of our dream checklist and we really feel actually privileged and honoured to see it taking place. Following the London and Rome occasions, the movie may have a brief theatrical run in cinemas throughout England earlier than being entered in one other raft of Movie Festivals in Britain and internationally. (Dates and Cinemas to be confirmed in close to future). At current on the Competition entrance, within the autumn, there can be already confirmed screenings on the famend Portobello Movie Competition and the Bristol Radical Movie Competition.

As well as, plans for 2 screenings in Buffalo, New York State, are underway with these going down in October. Considered one of them can be on the ‘Eugene Debs Commerce Union Corridor’ in Buffalo, once more, one thing we’re very pleased about given the trans-Atlantic material examined. Potential accompanying reside music performances from American singer-songwriter Carolyn Marosy – who seems within the movie taking part in in entrance of the Joe Strummer mural in Greenwich Village – and others, are additionally being mentioned. (Dates to be confirmed). As well as there are ongoing discussions regarding additional American screenings.

Again in England, within the Larger Manchester space, a screening will happen at Bolton Socialist Membership on Saturday Might eleventh. This occasion can be a part of Unbiased Socialist Kevin Allsop’s Common Election marketing campaign launch and as soon as once more, we’re delighted to see the movie being utilised inside such elements.

Anyone eager about staging particular screenings of ORS ought to contact Toby Holdsworth 

Our movie was initially impressed by Boris Johnson’s ludicrous assertion about The Conflict being one in all his ”Favorite bands”, as a part of a Tory celebration political broadcast again in November 2019. The affect of The Conflict on a era of musicians, followers and activists is examined within the opening sections of ORS, earlier than we transfer onto critical evaluation of in the present day’s political local weather within the west and the persevering with want for cultural resistance on this darkish period.

On Thursday eleventh April, the movie was proven within the WANDERFILM On-line Movie Competition which is ran by the Movie Research Division at Falmouth Poly in Cornwall. On the conclusion of a Zoom Q+A afterwards, one viewers member said ”This movie ought to be proven to each younger one that ever says they need to be in a band.” We thought that was a really good statement.

As Government Producer Richard Barclay summed up: ”This movie is about actuality. It’s about actuality within the 50s and 70s, when musicians stood as much as be counted in opposition to Fascism, racism and sectarianism and its about actuality in the present day, after we want such energies, maybe greater than ever earlier than. We predict our movie conveys that message powerfully.”

ON RESISTANCE STREET accommodates contributions from the next: Terri Hooley, Glen Matlock (Intercourse Pistols), Mykaell Riley (Unique Metal Pulse member), Tony Gad Robinson (Aswad), Attila The Stockbroker, Paul Simmonds (The Males They Couldn’t Grasp), Mark Chadwick (The Levellers), Jim Reilly (SLF), Buck Murdoch (The Defects), Greg Cowans (The Outcasts), Martin Trakker (Tauris Trakker), Allison Phillips (Taurus Trakker), Rick Blackman, Louise Uncooked, Joe Baker (Historians), Colin Davidson (‘Silent Testimony’ Artist), Henry McDonald (Belfast Creator and Journalist), Ray Gange (Artist and Movie Star), Chris Salewicz (Creator), Naomi Bedford (Folks Singer), Roger Ajogbe and Mark Chapman (Actors), Carolyn Marosy, Mark Ardizzone, Dan Gniewecki (US Commerce Union Organiser), Matt Wrack (Hearth Brigades Union Chief), Chantelle Lunt (Black Lives Matter, Merseyside), Girl Shocker (London Grime Artist), Fernando Luna, Richard Barclay, Stephen Scott (Artist), Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Jo Chook (Inexperienced Occasion).

The unique soundtrack to ORS can be launched as an album in 2025.

All content material Richard David