Doors Open: 19:30
Film Starts: 20:00

Drinks Till: 23:00

Marat/Sade (1967)
Directed by Peter Brooks
119 minutes
In English

Especially Americans like to exploit the idea of freedom and democracy these days... but what does freedom mean in our modern society? Does it mean personal freedom, sexual excess, hedonism, greed? Is freedom the right to take as much of the world's wealth as you want, or is it a social construction that demands equality among everyone? Back in the 1960s there was a theatre piece that brought these issues up by German playwright Peter Weiss. It was then translated to the screen by a radical director named Peter Brooks who explored theatre from every corner of the earth, including experimental Polish theatre (Grotowski, Kantor) and African rituals. This project was one of Brook's visionary highlights, and it soars.

This British movie was made at a time when real crucial issues were being discussed openly in society and culture. Films could actually be about real ideas and explore serious themes. When you compare a movie like this to what is being cranked out today, it makes everything pumped out of the Hollywood dream machine seem trivial. Today what is controversial is the hard-hitting ending of a Tarantino film, which has nothing to do with the meat and bones of real cinema or philosophy. It is all spectacle and made-up storytelling.

This flick is set in the French mental asylum of Charenton, where the notorious real-life pornographer Marquis de Sade directed theatre plays while he was an inmate. This film imagines what would have happened if the head of the institution allowed the inmates to create their own theatre production - and they used it to stage their own revolution. Although the performance happens on July 13th 1808, the play critiques the events and ideas of the French revolution in 1793. The film is absolutely explosive in both its expressionistic performance style, and the ideas being discussed. Thoughts are thrown around like crazy, almost feeling like a boxing-ring of philosophy.

To visualise this happening, director Peter Brooks brings in influences like Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty along with the tactics of Bertolt Brecht. What erupts is one hell of a vision, with smashing performances by Patrick Magee (Clockwork Orange), Ian Richardson and Glenda Jackson.

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Location information:

Adress: Overtoom 301 Amsterdam

Ventilator cinema at OT301 - on the 2nd floor

Accesability: Only stairs. No elevator available to get to the 2nd floor

Public transit: Tram stop ‘J.P. Heijestraat’

Car parking (Paid per hour): Reade Overtoom