NINE-TENTHS OF THE LAW: SQUATTERS' CINEMA
MARCH 2024
In 2019, a radical group calling itself the Cinéma La Clef Revival Collective forced their way into the derelict building which housed La Clef ('The Key'), a '70s-era cinema originally opened and operated by Claude Franck-Forter in Paris's 5th arrondissement. Over the years, the cinema was home to many vibrant programs - most significantly Images d'Ailleurs, which focused on screening works by African diaspora filmmakers and films from the Arab world - before its shuttering in 2015 by owners intent on selling the property for redevelopment. In a history of La Clef hosted on their site, Franck-Forter explains, "For me, a key represents a mythical, almost magical object, because its etymology in several languages describes either something that allows access to be limited, or the opposite, that is, to open it widely." The partisans of La Clef Revival blew things wide open, launching a communally programmed and operated squatter's cinema.
Recounting a 2022 visit to the cinema, Nick Pinkerton writes, "The reason for my support of La Clef Revival is a conviction that culture that comes from the ground up - that is, people united by common cause just getting together and doing a thing - is almost invariably superior to that which comes from the top down." We believe that principle holds true in the more base material world of everyday survival as well. This is a film series committed to kicking the door in and helping life collectively flourish in the fertile terrain of all our empty spaces.
When squatters move into a building, it is no longer 'abandoned'. People have claimed it, built it, loved it, hurt no one through it, made absolutely no profit through it, created their own lives in it, and called it home. Instead of swelling overcrowded housing waiting lists, instead of relying on overburdened social services, instead of living outside, instead of sleeping on friends' couches or in shelters for years while waiting for an apartment to open up in the most expensive, exclusionary rental market in history, people decide to exercise and satisfy one of the most natural urges in the world: to make their own space for life.
Rent is an abstract commodity. A building is only built once, but it is paid for many, many times over by the continual payment of rents which in themselves have no relation to an equal 'something' given in return. Rents are never calculated by costs to the owner but by what the market will bear - the maximum amount that the owners figure they can possibly get for something which is essential to our survival. Landlords and real estate speculators are vampires. They actually produce nothing at all but somehow, one way or another, manage to control just about all of the space on earth, and make all the rest of us pay for it by working our whole lives simply to exist. In a free market economy, only those who control the market are free. We are all homeless.
A battle has been taking place since the dawn of capitalism - the battle for space. Space can be land, it can be the structures that sit upon the land, it can also be the space in your head, your ideas, your cultural, political, artistic beliefs, or the ways you pursue your desires. Space is a place you live passionately, not as a commodity, a statistic, a prisoner or a tourist. All of these kinds of spaces are under siege from the world of things as they are, a world that is threatened by the implications of the world that could be. The earth is being steadily and purposefully denuded of every routine pleasure that makes life possible and worth living. This certainly isn't limited to cinemas but the aggression on that front has been particularly virulent. That's why a communal triumph like the Cinéma La Clef Revival Collective is so inspiring.
At the Beacon, we're on the side of cinema and people, and at this juncture, that doesn't leave space for quibbling over property law. Join us in breaking and entering a new world.
Can't pay? No one turned away! (Pending seating availability)
Recounting a 2022 visit to the cinema, Nick Pinkerton writes, "The reason for my support of La Clef Revival is a conviction that culture that comes from the ground up - that is, people united by common cause just getting together and doing a thing - is almost invariably superior to that which comes from the top down." We believe that principle holds true in the more base material world of everyday survival as well. This is a film series committed to kicking the door in and helping life collectively flourish in the fertile terrain of all our empty spaces.
When squatters move into a building, it is no longer 'abandoned'. People have claimed it, built it, loved it, hurt no one through it, made absolutely no profit through it, created their own lives in it, and called it home. Instead of swelling overcrowded housing waiting lists, instead of relying on overburdened social services, instead of living outside, instead of sleeping on friends' couches or in shelters for years while waiting for an apartment to open up in the most expensive, exclusionary rental market in history, people decide to exercise and satisfy one of the most natural urges in the world: to make their own space for life.
Rent is an abstract commodity. A building is only built once, but it is paid for many, many times over by the continual payment of rents which in themselves have no relation to an equal 'something' given in return. Rents are never calculated by costs to the owner but by what the market will bear - the maximum amount that the owners figure they can possibly get for something which is essential to our survival. Landlords and real estate speculators are vampires. They actually produce nothing at all but somehow, one way or another, manage to control just about all of the space on earth, and make all the rest of us pay for it by working our whole lives simply to exist. In a free market economy, only those who control the market are free. We are all homeless.
A battle has been taking place since the dawn of capitalism - the battle for space. Space can be land, it can be the structures that sit upon the land, it can also be the space in your head, your ideas, your cultural, political, artistic beliefs, or the ways you pursue your desires. Space is a place you live passionately, not as a commodity, a statistic, a prisoner or a tourist. All of these kinds of spaces are under siege from the world of things as they are, a world that is threatened by the implications of the world that could be. The earth is being steadily and purposefully denuded of every routine pleasure that makes life possible and worth living. This certainly isn't limited to cinemas but the aggression on that front has been particularly virulent. That's why a communal triumph like the Cinéma La Clef Revival Collective is so inspiring.
At the Beacon, we're on the side of cinema and people, and at this juncture, that doesn't leave space for quibbling over property law. Join us in breaking and entering a new world.
Can't pay? No one turned away! (Pending seating availability)
