Historical Memory: The Library in 1956
Tuesday August 25th - 7:30PM
Brecht Forum
451 West Street, New York, NY 10014
"The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire. The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city." (David Harvey)
RIGHT TO THE CITY
In David Harvey's essay "The Right to the City," he speaks of a human right within the urban experience wholly outside of the rights of private property and profit. He speaks of a city's evolution, good or bad, necessarily leading to an evolution in our lifestyles; as we are left to navigate structures and institutions developed and constructed by liberal and neoliberal corporate interests. The right to the city is not just chiming in to voice your desires on the uses of various particular spaces, but rather an attempt to maintain and create a way of living within our urban reality.
Almost exactly a year ago, the Donnell Library Center closed its doors, as its location had been sold the year before to make way for the 11-story Orient-Express Hotel (in partnership with the nearby 21 Club). In March of this year, the hotel backed out of its plans, leaving the Donnell collection still without a home of its own, and the New York Public library without the $50 million it was counting on from the sale. As last reported by the New York Times, both parties are trying to patch things up, though we can certainly expect any renegotiation to favor private and not public interests.
Any issues facing libraries and their given priority within city, state, or federal budgets is an issue of cultural hegemony. While watching the two films below, I was struck by how far apart their sentiments were, in regards to the social function of libraries. Both made in 1956, they offer up radically different presentations of history, pride, and intellectual pursuit. The former, deeply rooted in the progress of the Enlightenment; the latter (starring Bette Davis), an ugly history of philistinism, xenophobia, and censorship.
RIGHT TO THE CITY:
--Toute la mémoire du monde (All the Memory of the World) - Alain Resnais, 1956, 21 minutes
--Storm Center - Daniel Taradash, 1956, 86 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | Digital Projection
Co-Presented by Radical Reference
Radical Reference
Brecht Forum
(The Resnais film appears as a bonus feature of Criterion's DVD (2009) of Last Year at Marienbad (1961).)