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Too Early, Too Late

  • maysles documentary center 343 Malcolm X Boulevard New York, NY, 10027 United States (map)

Too Early, Too Late is screening for a suggested donation of $15 / $7 reduced price on SATURDAY, January 28 at 7pm

Join us for a screening and discussion to consider the social, physical and psychological mechanisms used to assign meaning to place as locations of power or locations of extraction, as well as raise money and support for the vital land defense movement Defend the Atlanta Forest. A guided meditation on class and place led by Friedrich Engels…

Too Early, Too Late
Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1982, 105 min.

Too Early, Too Late is a central member of the landscape theory films, connecting class tensions in Egypt and France through shaping and occupation of land in each location. It was inspired by a letter written by Friedrich Engels and a 1974 account of two militant Marxist writers who had been imprisoned by the Nasser regime in Egypt. The late Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet filmed Too Early/Too Late first in the communes of France and then in and around Egypt's Nile Delta during the anxious months following signing of the Camp David Accords and subsequent assasination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in May, 1981. The filmmakers reflect on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, and link it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789, quoting texts by Friedrich Engels as well as the pioneering nonfiction film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory. 

Defend the Atlanta Forest is a decentralized autonomous social movement that has been active since 2021 in preventing the destruction of an urban forest in south Atlanta for the purpose of building a private police training facility known as Cop City and 'the world's largest sound stage' for film production conglomerate Shadowbox Studios. 

Followed by a brief history of the DTF movement & panel discussion with DTF participant Moonpie; choreographer and water & land protector Emily Johnson; and filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri.

Earlier Event: January 27
Saint Omer
Later Event: February 2
Octopus