WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO DO AS YOU’RE TOLD?

Industrial films are produced not for theatrical release or for the general public but for workers, managers, and industry professionals, meant to educate, promote, train, and model appropriate behavior under the industrial system: efficient vs. inefficient, productive vs. unproductive, healthy vs. unhealthy, order vs. disorder. Featuring two rare 16mm prints from the personal collection of artist and filmmaker Zoe Beloff—Stanley Milgram’s chronicle of his infamous psychological experiment Obedience (1962) and the US Navy’s training film Discipline: Reprimand (1943)—along with a brand-new 4K restoration of her film The Infernal Dream (2015), this program investigates our response to these orders. Do we obey— at what cost? Do we fail to function within the system— at what cost? Or are there other possibilities for resistance?

OBEDIENCE & DISCIPLINE: SOCIAL CONTROL & THE INDUSTRIAL FILM plays Friday March 21st, at 7pm, at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. The program of three films (70 minutes) will be followed by conversation with filmmaker/curator Zoe Beloff and curator Philomena Mattes.