Sunday November 8 * 3pm sharp! * Free / donations * RSVP
“ZAD,” or “zone à defender,” has entered the European lexicon as a general term for militant direct collective action against large-scale development projects. First coming into prominence in the collective opposition airport construction in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France, (still the largest self-organized autonomous zone in Europe) the approach and tactic has spread widely. To be a “zadiste” is defined in the Le Petit Robert dictionary as “a militant occupying a ZAD to oppose a proposed development that would damage the environment.” In the North American context, we know relatively little about these concrete fights or the conceptual formation of this idea. Come hear from Alexis, an anarchist and organizer with the Punch Up Collective in Ottawa who has been spending time in these autonomous spaces and who will share an autonomously, collectively created film illuminating this tendency.
Residents of the Quartier Libre des Lentillières in Dijon, one of the most famous occupied zones in France, have produced an auto-fictional cinematic firework in a self-managed and collective manner, which makes the desire for radical-ecological change sensually comprehensible. It gives a magnificent insight into current radical French activist scenes around the strategy of the ZAD and can serve as a generous starting point for a trans-Atlantic discussion on how liberatory strategies of reclaiming territory can look and feel like in a world tainted by settler-colonialism, fascism and other toxic forms of exclusion.
The film An Island and One Night (“Une Ile et une nuit”) has screened widely in the European context, but is normally only shown when one of the collective members from the Lentillieres is with it; it does not circulate online, and there are currently only two people in North America, friends of the Lentillères, able to show it.
About the film: An Island and One Night (“Une Ile et une nuit”) is a fictional film made collectively over two years by the residents and users of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères, a self-organized area on the last remaining market garden land in the city of Dijon. These eight hectares have been occupied and recultivated since 2010, in resistance to a concrete “ecocity” project that still threatens them today. In the middle of the city, these fallow spaces and abandoned houses have been transformed into a self-managed, multi-purpose district, where collective housing, market gardening, self-construction, festive and cultural events, etc. intermingle. It’s a place of struggle and solidarity of all kinds, as well as a veritable reserve of biodiversity.
In this film, we use the prism of the imaginary to talk about reality, about what we live here, how we got here, what we’re looking for and what we’re fighting against every day. It’s a musical and danced fiction, without heroes or heroines, with houses that are boats (and vice versa), pirates of all kinds and as many different languages… In short, the Quartier Libre des Lentillères is a treasure island into the eye of cinema!
Self-produced, self-distributed and based on volunteer participation, this film shot on 16mm silver film was built up over the course of the area’s life, in correlation with it, to the rhythm of events and seasons. From writing to filming to editing, each stage of the process was collective and participatory, with everyone sharing their know-how. The film’s music is made up of original tracks composed during the making of the film, as well as pre-existing tracks from supportive bands who have played at the Quartier in the past. Beyond the pleasure of sharing this creation with a large and diverse audience, screenings are an opportunity to pass on experience of struggle, self-organization and the invention of forms of collective life geared towards a good life for all, and respectful of all living beings.
Around a campfire travelers, vagabonds and pirates tell their stories and share their dreams and adventures. From language to language and story to story they tell their tales of how they reached this imaginary island which could be a reality. The island comes under threat from the forces of development, capitalism, technology and gentrification. A film made organically, collectively and non hierarchically by the inhabitants and users of a community called Le Quartier Libre des Lentillères, located in Dijon, France, facing eviction and development as well struggling against all borders.
The Quartier Libre des Lentillères was born out of a demonstration in 2010, in Dijon, at the end of which a hundred people cleared and then cultivated quality land left abandoned and threatened by a real estate project. From there was born the Pot’Col’Le, an open and collective gardening dynamic based on the exchange of knowledge. The Jardin des Maraichères, managed on a self-employed basis, supplies weekly non-profit markets at free prices. At the crossroads of these two large plots, dozens of small allotment gardens are intermingled. In the midst of all these busy farms, a dynamic of building huts and maintaining places open to all for walks, for workshops for the exchange of diverse knowledge, concerts or atypical parties. From all this is born a colorful neighborhood, mixed collectives fed by several hundred people.
However, all these dynamics are threatened: the SPLAAD (Société Publique Locale d’Aménagement de l’Agglomération Dijonnaise) and the Grand Dijon want to destroy this creative boiling that produces a neighborhood as we want to live it, outside the established frameworks, to replace it with a real estate project of “eco-neighborhood”: the “ecocity of market gardeners”. The first phase of construction has begun on the industrial plot of land of the former slaughterhouses, but we intend to oppose the work of the second phase of construction which concerns the Quartier libre des Lentillères. We are more determined than ever to fight so that solidarity prevails over business. Join us!