The Canterbury Socialist Society is very excited to announce the schedule for our programme for the next four months (May through August), the “Winter of Discontent“. To celebrate reaching 100 members in the Federation of Socialist Societies we have organised a minimum of 16 free public events over the next four months. These include: public lectures and discussions,…
Doors will open at 6:00 pm, and we will begin the screening at 6:30 pm. One of our members will briefly introduce the film and the director, and then we will kick things off. Our film for the evening is the acclaimed Sorry to Bother You, directed by Boots Riley. You can find the trailer…
“I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.” – Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (1967) For our first…
After considerable interest from Society members who met up last week, we have decided to complete our winter film series, shortened though it was by covid-19 circumstances, as originally planned with a short notice screening of Ken Loach’s 1969 film Kes. Based on the novel Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines, Kes follows the…
Otesánek | Little Otik by Jan Švankmajer (2000) The Canterbury Socialist Society warmly invites any and all to the first in its four-part winter film series in which Sionainn Byrnes introduces the Czech film Otesánek by Jan Švankmajer. Based on the eponymous fairy tale by Karel Jaromír Erben, Otesánek depicts an infertile couple who, having…
A joint event with the Maritime Union of New Zealand, the Rail and Maritime Union of New Zealand, and the Canterbury Socialist Society to commemorate 70 years since one of New Zealand’s most bitter industrial disputes. Due to Covid Level-2 restrictions the event was not advertised entirely publicly and was primarily attended by members of…
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at…
“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on…
“It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search,…
“At the anniversary celebrations of the veterans of ’51, as I mingled with those mighty people, the years fell away and I was young and strong again. But, old as most of us were, we knew full well that if called upon again, we would fight again and there would never be a white flag.”…