RECENT WEEKS revolutionaries throughout the world have paid tribute to the achievements of Mao's life. Sadly, his death immediately and dramatically rerealed the limits of that achievement. The events of the last few days have reembled not the burial of a great revolury but the macabre re-enactment of Wing dynasty succession crisis.
eror's will is said to be forged. His This nephew and some of his associates and proteges are arresor killed, after a reported attempt to inate his successor. une purge exto the provinces. Peking runs with s. Powerful military men take up under the anxious eve of the hard to believe that these events are pening in a nation which under the rship of Mao's party carried out THE OTHER CINEMA has been distribution group since known for its Third World films, its Godard, Coup pour Coup (Blow for Blow), and agitprop documentaries used by labour movement - such as An Egg is Not a Dalens Chicken, used by the National Abortion Campaign.
The group has mainly serviced college clubs, community organisations, political campaigns and film societies. It also managed, despite having no cinema of its screen films which would otherwise had showing country. In 1971 the Other Cinema premiered The Battle of Algiers - a film about the early stages of the struggle against French colonialism in Algeria at the Kings Cinema.
For two years they also screened films on Sundays at the Collegiate Theatre: films such as wnen ine People Awake [ about the struggle in Cole completed BUSI before national unification, became a world power, and achieved results qualitatively superior to those of comparable poor and backward countries in the transformaton of society and the economy.
Earlier articles in Red Weekly explaining the inevitability of increased polarisation between the two leadership factions have been strikingly confirmed by recent events. Writing shortly after Mao's death, Shuang Shan argued that both the factions involved in the disputes are essentially Stalinist, combining a policy of "socialism in one country' with hostility to socialist democracy, and that their rival programmes simply emphasised different aspects within identical framework.
Whereas the Shanghia group (the misnamed "radicals') stress crude egalitarianism and all-round dictatorship, the so-HE OTHER CINEMA "All the continents of the world, while in transition trom tribal organisation to industrial capitalism, have thrown up the phenomenon of social banditry: the cangaeiros of Brazil, the Haiduks of the Balkans, the Chinese bandits of Liang Shan P'o and the Robin Hood outlaws of Northern Europe.* Salvatore Giuliano shows at 7pm,21, 24, 30 October.
But they needed a cinema of their to extend this 1970, OWIl showing previously tims in London, consequent increase in turnover to make more such films available to all cal- parts they've got it! Sixty per cent of the country.
money they needed grants from arts bodies, and the rest from supporters who recognised the crucial need for such a cinema.
Why crucial? It is crucial because the ABC and Rank chains have an almost total grip over distributionexhibition channels in this country. This has two major effects. It makes it almost impossible tor socialist film workers to make films; and even Cross if they do manage -10 means that their films available to a wide audience in the normal way. The Other Cinema will make political films accessible in a West End cinema.
AI- Both cinema called "moderates"
Limited noeralsanion resolve the problems of socialist developbackward country like China. Bureaucratic political sions are decided democratically.
nical meetings screenings.
way process.
works to produce Rience, an the history of the cinema from socialist position.
of socialist films necessary to ask cinema popular?
HIKe task the cinema -unscreened and to use the Viva Lapara, Marxist historian AnO now came this concept.
Bourgeois
bandits and by discussion on the season -do this, important new are not socialists.
JANE CLARKE
The Other Cinema and (or "conservatives') favour a widening of differentials and a But each of these 'lines' contains the seeds of its own able administrator, defeat, since it is objectively impossible to ping) as its moving force ment within the limits of a poor and leadership Mao's widow Following Shuang Shan's analysis, the of reasons for this: resolution of the dispute at the experise of the Shanghai group should be interpreted as a defeat not for the left, but for a bureaucratic current analogous in many ways to the Malenkov group ousted in the mid-1950s by Kruschev. The victors in the their arrest.
equal wages, and major policy deciThe cinema will screen three programmes a nign, and more at week- repeated. ends. At the end of this month they will be opening their clubroom so that discussions, lectures and polican be held after •an Donal the deadlock at the top. feature of the Other Cinema's intervention in British film culture - they aim to contest the cinema as a one- unprecedented square showed.
Most Cinema - ane television La passive aud ience. The Other Cinema wants to create the space for a critical aud present round of struggle are an alliance of the old central bureaucracy, apparently with Li Hsien-nien (veteran Communist, and long-standing colleague of Chou En-lai and Teng HsiaoThe speed and violence with which the clash chimaxed took mos observers by surprise. Whereas after Stalin's fall the factional struggles took in China some urce years to mature.
before the was ousted embalmers had even put the finishing touches to his corpse. There are a number 1. For reasons explained below, the "radicals' are weak and isolated. This is clear above all from the course of events in their former power base of Shanghai, where hundreds of thousands of jubilant 2. ne central bureaucracy is bette organised and more determined than ever before, adamant that the experience of the Cultural Revolution should never b 3. The pressing nature of the various economic problems facing the regime especially in the wake of the Tang Shan earthquake, require a speedy resolution of 4. Many ordinary Chinese are restive and anxious for political change, as the TOES TH Tien-An-Men CHIANG CHING - Mao's widow,ousted before embalmer's finishing touches put TO nIS DOOY *all-round dictatorship' prompted rank and-file currents such as the Li I-tse ir Canton to raise the cry for a return to socialist democracy and icgally, and wa a major target of attack during the April riots in Peking After thoroughly devaluing the institutional life of China (with Mao's obvious consent) by rigging, postponing and simply ignoring established political proce dures, the radical' leaders finally them-