Naeem Mohaiemen - United Red Army (The Young Man Was, Part 1)

Naeem Mohaiemen - United Red Army (The Young Man Was, Part 1)

14:00-16:00. Saturday 15th June. CMB Seminar Room 5

rai new obs naeem mohaiemen

Naeem Mohaiemen, 70 minutes, 2012

United Red Army is the latest installment of The Young Man Was, a multi-year project constructing a history of the 1970s ultra-left. On September 28th 1977, the Japanese Red Army hijacked JAL 472 and flew it to Dhaka. As a negotiation began between the control tower and the lead hijacker (codename: Dankesu), a whole series of unintended consequences are set off. Outside the plane, Dhaka witnesses fierce internal struggles of an unsteady military government, a Hollywood actress on her truncated honeymoon, and an interrupted episode of The Zoo Gang. Two weeks later, the hijack of Lufthansa 181 ends very differently–German commandos storm the plane in Mogadishu, killing the hijackers. The aftershocks include the Stammheim suicides and the execution of Hanns-Martin Schleyer. Act one of a certain 1970s scene ends.

The film pivots off the audio recordings of the five-day negotiation. In this session, Naeem Mohaiemen will be in conversation with Richard Baxstrom and Lotte Hoek, who will draw upon their own research projects to discuss the film’s presentation of evidence, editing and the practices of documentary filmmaking in South and South East Asia.

Naeem Mohaiemen explores histories of the international left, and the contradictions of borders, wars, and belonging in South Asia, through essays, photography, and film. Since 2006, he has worked on The Young Man Was, a history of the 1970s ultra-left, with each chapter in a different museum medium. He is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at Columbia University. [http://shobak.org]

This event is made possible by the University of Edinburgh’s College of Humanities and Social Science Knowledge Exchange Grant.

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Organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland (RAI) since 1985, it is an itinerant festival that moves biennially from one university host to another, in association with local community and cultural organisations.

The festival will be held from Thursday 13 June to Sunday 16 June 2013 in Edinburgh, hosted by National Museums Scotland and the STAR consortium. Scottish Training in Anthropological Research (STAR) is a collaboration between the Universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and St. Andrews. Over 60 new films will be screened alongside a conference 'New Observations' and a selection of special events and workshop about art & anthropology and the use of archival film.

The RAI Film Festival is held in collaboration with the Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California.

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