27 February – 18:00-21:00 – BISR Guilt Screening – The Act of Killing

Venue: Birkbeck Cinema

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bisr-guilt-screening-tickets-14629638643

The Act of Killing (theatrical release)
Joshua Oppenheimer, Norway / Denmark / UK, 2012, 122 minutes
Presenter: Alan Norrie

Anwar Congo is a doting grandfather and an Indonesian national hero. In 1965, from being a small-time gangster, he became one of the leaders of the death squads. They killed more than half a million people in a supposedly anti-communist purge.

The massacres have received scant attention outside Indonesia. In Indonesia, the killers, so far from concealing their bloodshed, revel in it with impunity.

They are movie-fans.  For The Act of Killing they were persuaded to restage their murderous exploits on film in any way they chose. The upshot is an extraordinary fusion of fiction and reality. The Act of Killing captures the surreal strangeness of a new world that political violence carves.

For more information about the film, see http://theactofkilling.co.uk/

28 February – 09:30-18:00 – Sport, Sport, Sport:
A Screening Programme of Soviet Era
Cinema and Artist Moving Image

Venue: Birkbeck Cinema

Booking:

A day of screenings structured around three Soviet era films – alongside five artist moving image works – the ‘Sport, Sport, Sport’ programme examines the relationship between themes of sport in cinema and artist moving image, in tandem with the influence of this particular era on film-making and aesthetics in contemporary art. With the Soviet era films either rarely or never seen before in the UK, all early works in the careers of the filmmakers and subtitled especially for the screenings, the programme as a whole draws upon the long-running ties between sport, the moving body and early experiments in film. With an introduction from the curator Tiffany Boyle, and a presentation from the artist and writer Susan Pui San Lok.

Věra Chytilová ⁞ Isaak Fridberg ⁞ Elem Klimov ⁞ Phil Collins ⁞ Laura Horelli ⁞ Jo Longhurst  ⁞ Craig Mulholland ⁞ Salla Tykkä

21 February – 11:00-17:00 – NUS London Area Term 2 Council Meeting

Venue: Main Building, MAL B33

Booking: nuslondonarea@gmail.com

Delegates and student visitors from HE and FE colleges across London will be coming together for a council meeting to discuss the nature of NUS London. Motions designed to support and represent London’s 800,000 students (such as Free Education and Housing) will be voted on, and a new Acting Convenor until July 2015 will be elected alongside any vacant Executive positions.

For many years there has been a strong appetite for a pan-London student union that campaigns for London’s students’ rights and protects their interests. NUS London was created last year with this view in mind and has since been actively backed by London’s individual student unions including UCLU, London Met, Middlesex University, University of East London and University of the Arts. It is intended that by setting up one centralised student movement, all of London’s students will benefit from the power that comes with shared knowledge and resources, and that further losses (such as the selling of the ULU building last year) will be prevented.

This term Birkbeck’s delegates and student volunteers are hosting a council meeting that hopes to see delegates from all of London’s NUS HE and FE institutions working together to build NUS London from the ground up to become a voice that represents all its students. With a General Election on the horizon, London students are uniquely positioned to have our collected voices heard by politicians in the capital; this meeting will strive to see colleges agreeing on what our campaign priorities should be.

Council meeting agenda:

1. Panel discussion on the key issues for students.
2. Caucuses:
   Women students
   Black students
   Disabled students
   LGBT students
   Further Education students
3. Motions Debate.
4. Election hustings for Acting Convenor and Executive vacancies.
5. New Acting Convenor’s speech.

All Birkbeck students (as well as students of other London colleges and universities) can attend as non-voting visitors who will be welcome to take part in the whole meeting (including a free lunch) other than voting. Birkbeck students can also contact any one of their NUS London Delegates for more information or to discuss any of the topics that will be addressed:

• Hana Faber – hfaber01@mail.bbk.ac.uk
• David Kirkman – dave.kirkman1@gmail.com
• Jerry Richardson – j.dawn_richardson@hotmail.com
• John Lindner – j.lindner@bbk.ac.uk
• Amaan Ali – Amaan.ali@hotmail.co.uk
• Richard Brinck-Johnsen – rbrinc01@mail.bbk.ac.uk
• Alex Owolade – alexowolade@gmail.com
• Angela Bennett – angela.bennett@bbk.ac.uk

This event is an excellent opportunity for students to see how council meetings are run, voice their opinions and get involved with building NUS London into a union that London’s students can rely on and be proud of!

To book your FREE place, receive copies of motions, or for any general enquiries, please contact:  nuslondonarea@gmail.com

21 February – 11:00-16:00 – Mobile and Mobilising Memories: the Centenary and its Effects on First World War Memory in Europe

Venue: Room 243, Senate House

Booking: Free entry; first come, first seated

The First World War centenary catalyses intense commemorative activities across Europe and highlights the fact that the war is remembered very differently across the countries along the war’s fronts. But rather than consolidating ‘memory corridors’ along the Western or Eastern fronts, this conference investigates the dynamics between emerging and established memories by looking at countries with underdeveloped and/or marginalised memories, for example Croatia, Bosnia, Ukraine, the Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and Ireland, and ask how they relate – if at all – to more established narratives which are also reworked in the context of the centenary commemorations. Inevitably, the current accelerated memory practices lead to the establishment of new memories in places where First World War memory has been vague or marginal.

Recent research on transcultural memory has highlighted the mobile nature of memories and emphasized their potential to transform, ‘travel’ (Astrid Erll) and migrate between individuals, groups and nations (Alison Landsberg), between media (Andrew Hoskins) and memory discourses (Michael Rothberg). In establishing an emotionally invested relationship to the past, memories have the potential to mobilise both individuals and collectives for specific causes. Rather than simply describing these processes as political indoctrination, instrumentalization or propaganda, we want to look at the fantasmatic transformative power of memory in the interplay between top-down and bottom-up initiatives and move beyond the often metaphorically used concept of ‘political memory’.

Programme:

11:00   Panel 1
Ismar Dedović and Tea Sindbæk (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): ‘New First World War narratives in Croatia and Bosnia – eruptions of memory in a memorial shatter zone?’

Eleonora Narvselius (University of Lund, Sweden): ‘National, international and transnational aspects of remembrance of the “great forgotten war” in Western Ukraine’

12.30 – 1.30  Lunch

1.30- 3.00 Panel 2
Martin Kaprans (University of Tartu, Estonia): ‘First Word War Commemoration in Estonia and Latvia’

Emilie Pine (University College Dublin, Ireland): ‘Ireland and the First World War’

No registration – just turn up. For more information please contact the organiser:Silke Arnold-de Simine

21-22 February – 09:00-18:00 – Enterprise Academy

Venue: Malet Street, Room 414

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/enterprise-academy-tickets-15270778309

This two day programme aims to give participants a flavour of both the holistic and day to day elements of creating a start-up enterprise.  Covering creativity, finance, marketing, risk identification and management, networking and business planning the course will cover key skills relevant for enterprise start up and development and employability.  You need to commit to attending both days of the programme in order to benefit fully (09:00-18:00 both days).

By the end of the weekend, you should be able to:

• Identify your own skills in the context of both enterprise and employability environments
• Understand what skills, knowledge and abilities are needed for starting and running your own enterprise
• Understand what you want to get from self-employment
• Understand the risks involved in self-employment

You’ll receive direct training in:

• Creativity
• Self-awareness
• Building networks
• Marketing
• Business Planning

This programme is open to students from across Birkbeck and you will be put in teams to work with throughout the weekend.  This will help build peer support but more importantly should make for an engaging, inspiring and entertaining weekend!

Teams will then be encouraged to take part in Birkbeck’s Enterprise Challenge, details of which will be provided at the Academy.

10 February – 18:30-20:00 – Danny Dorling – The Housing Disaster

Venue: Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Sq

Booking: via britishpoliticscentre@bbk.ac.uk

Event description

In the last twelve months the crisis in housing in the UK turned into a disaster. Housing prices in London and the South East continued to rise at very high rates along with rents which reached maxima never before recorded. In contrast, many people’s ability to pay was reduced both as median incomes fell and as other costs of living such as fuel and food rose. Evictions and potential evictions became headline news with young children from families likely to be put of out their homes being shown on the evening news. In more economically depressed parts of the country the quality of much private sector housing deteriorated to new lows while MPs talked out bills designed to improve the rights of tenants and the Chancellor of the Exchequer did all he could to encourage prices to rise further and faster through to May 2015, reducing the stamp duty bill by £800 million in December 2014 and removing all tax restrictions on wealthy pensioners buying property (to let) with their annuities before or by April 2015. And, all the time, the existing housing stock was being used less an less efficiently with more flats and rooms in houses than ever before being left empty.

Danny Dorling is a professor of human geography at Oxford University. He is the author of a number of books including All That Is Solid, and, most recently Inequality and the 1%