→ Liberated Film Club Sight & Sound review
→ click the headline for Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Screen Slate review
‘Film is the liberating application in the margins in search of a proper world.’
—Stavros Tornes
‘Schtinter runs with wolves. His Liberated Film Club was, throughout its brief, perfect existence, the antidote to contemporary cinephilia. It was impious and sexy, mysterious and unsober, a ululatory free zone for refuseniks, a place of magic and mayonnaise. If you never made it to one of its mad, baffling nights, this book is guaranteed to make your loss all the more deliciously unbearable.’
—Sukhdev Sandhu
There are more and more curators of experimental cinema, which is great; but unfortunately still few experimental curators. Stanley Schtinter offers us a fascinating and liberating example.
—Nicole Brenez
→ THE LIBERATED FILM CLUB was held at Close-Up Film Centre, London, in 2016, and then again for the year 2019 into 2020 (after an earlier career street-vending pirated materials). Each event followed the same format: a guest speaker would be invited to introduce a film that neither they nor the audience knew beforehand. It was ended by its programmer, Stanley Schtinter, ‘to avoid it becoming a victim of its own success.’ The publication from Tenement Press documents these periods of activity.
To mark the publication of The Liberated Film Club on October 23 in 2021, two events were held:
at Close-Up Film Centre, London, presenting the premiere of Twilight by György Fehér
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at LUX, London, in ‘The Liberated Film Club vs. Important Books (or, Manifestos Read by Children)’
with a cohort of children reading manifestos from and on cinema,
and a conversation with Elena Gorfinkel, Gareth Evans and Andrea Luka Zimmerman
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Throughout October in 2021, Important Books (or, Manifestos Read by Children) will be dedicated to the cinema manifesto,
with new recordings each Monday: listen in full at importantbooks.co.uk
→ A special edition of the Liberated Film Club book is available through purge.xxx. Click here for more information.
→ Selection of Liberated Film Club posters
2) 11 titles across 11 DVDs in black-gloss bubble envelope, with ‘dizzy’ pirate logo. Catalogue presented as doctored postcard produced in and sent from Athens, Greece (2015)
3) Liberated Film Cub: Trans-USB pen. No catalogue. Lucky dip. Average of 6 feature films on each cub. Produced to mark the first Liberated Film Club season held at Close-Up Film Centre, London (2016)
4) Catalogue produced on scroll and contained in glass bottle. No mailouts or sales, found only. North Atlantic Ocean (2018)
5) Catalogue presented handwritten on bloodied Greggs bakery wrapper in a sealed evidence bag (special edition of 1 complete with half-eaten vegan sausage roll). Produced to mark the return of the Liberated Film Club at Close-Up Film Centre, London (2019)
6) *forthcoming* Single existing hard drive containing all digitalised films to have shown at the Liberated Film Club, buried in bomb-proof packaging with 50 pence piece in secret London location. Exact co-ordinates of burial place encoded within Liberated Film Club book (Tenement Press, 2021). Produced to mark the book’s publication (public announcement will be made if and when hard drive retrieved)
→ DONATE: Contributions (to: purgefina [at] gmail [dot] com marked “kindling”) will go in their entirety to the acquisition and preservation of otherwise lost or neglected film and / or Liberated Film Club event production.