YOUTH RESURGENCE ‘68: FROM TAKASAKI TO NEW YORK
Spectacle is proud to present this special one-night-only program in celebration of Interference Archive’s exhibition, Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-67: Teenrevolt, Surrealism, Anarchism. Founded in New York’s Lower East Side in 1964, the Resurgence Youth Movement became a sprawling and boundless web of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anarchist activity in cities around the country. The exhibition, closing on May 17th, follows the 2023 publication of Resurgence!, the first book devoted to the RYM and its founder Jonathan Leake, which includes selections of all twelve issues of Resurgence, the original mimeographed zine published by Leake and RYM between 1964 and 1967.
From Interference Archive:
The RYM called for the disintegration of the State, the complete destruction of bourgeois society, and a total surrealist-psychedelic revolution of the mind and body. “The Resurgence Youth Movement…advances the new anarchism of body, mind and soul, the psychedelic alchemies of revolution,” RYM wrote in their “Guerilla Manifesto” (Resurgence 6, 1967). Their activities continued until August of 1967, when Walter Caughey was stabbed to death in New York in an unsolved murder that many believe was politically motivated.
Copies of Resurgence! will be available for sale at the theater. We will be joined throughout the evening by special guests including Resurgence! Editor Abigail Susik, underground press scholar Sean Lovitt, and theorist and activist Sabu Kohso.
COLUMBIA REVOLT (Newsreel #14)
Pr. Newsreel, 1968.
United States. 59 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, MAY 16TH 5pm with q+a
Working between 1967 and 1972, Newsreel was an activist film collective made up of numerous filmmakers who produced dozens of films documenting the political and social unrest of the late 60s and early 70s. Preserved by Third World Newsreel, this is the first opportunity to see the newly digitalized COLUMBIA REVOLT. One of the collective’s longest films, it documents the student occupation of five Columbia University buildings in April 1968.
An early large-scale protest of the Vietnam War, the action exposed links between Columbia’s institutional funding, support of the Vietnam War, and a new gymnasium to be constructed in the nearby neighborhood of Morningside Heights. Led by the Students for a Democratic Society and the Society of Afro-American Students, hundreds of young activists experimented with new forms of organizing, despite violent clashes with the NYPD. The revolt successfully forced the university to abandon its gymnasium project and disaffiliate from the Institute for Defense Analyses, a military research corporation supporting the US invasion of Vietnam.
preceded by
GARBAGE DEMONSTRATION (Newsreel #5)
Pr. Newsreel, 1968.
United States. 10 min.
In English.
This short Newsreel film follows a group of young people as they travel from Manhattan’s rapidly politicizing Lower East Side to its Upper West Side, bringing with them heaps of uncollected garbage from their own neighborhood to relocate on the grounds of Lincoln Center.
Abigail Susik and Sean Lovitt will join us for a Q+A discussion following this screening.
THE OPPRESSED STUDENTS
(aka FOREST OF OPPRESSION – A RECORD OF THE STRUGGLE AT TAKASAKI CITY)
(圧殺の森－高崎経済大学闘争の記録)
Dir. Shinsuke Ogawa, 1967.
Japan. 105 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, MAY 16TH 7:30pm with introduction and q+a
Rarely screened in the United States since their original releases, Shinsuke Ogawa’s films offer invaluable insight into Japanese radical politics and the collective action of workers, students, and villagers. Ogawa dared to imagine a new ethics and approach to documentary production in Japan as he situated himself closely alongside political dissidents and communities and brought the filmmaking process closer to political struggle than had previously been done in Japan.
THE OPPRESSED STUDENTS is an undecorated and patient documentation of a multi-year protest at Takasaki University, which reached its peak in 1967 and 1968 with the students’ unprecedented occupation of university buildings. The film follows a relatively small group of young activists as they struggle to maintain their movement against violent Japanese institutions and the powerful cultural pressures surrounding themselves and their peers. An intimate view of long-term resistance, THE OPPRESSED STUDENTS sits with the messiness and uncertainty of grassroots organizing and reflects the changing feeling of time for those on the frontlines, as persistent and slow struggle erupts into sudden and dangerous moments of conflict.
Abigail Susik, Sean Lovitt, and Sabu Kohso will join us to discuss this piece of history, including how a group of teenagers involved with RYM in the Lower East Side caught wind of THE OPPRESSED STUDENTS and were inspired to adapt some of the Japanese students’ tactics.
Sabu Kohso is a theorist, translator, and long-time activist in global and anti-capitalist struggle. A native of Okayama, Japan, Sabu has lived in New York City since 1980. He has published several books on urban space and struggle in Japan and his translations include works by Kojin Karatani and David Graeber. His most recent book is Radiation and Revolution (Duke University Press, September 2020).
Co-programmed with Abigail Susik and Sean Lovitt.
Special thanks to Abigail Susik, Sean Lovitt, Sabu Kohso, Kelly Mill, Amelia Langas, Brooke Darrah Shuman, Jed Rapfogel, Third World Newsreel, and the Athénée Français Cultural Center.
