Erase and Forget (dir. Andrea Luka Zimmerman) – UK Cinema Release

February 14, 2018
Erase and Forget, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 2017.

Erase and Forget, the new provocative documentary from filmmaker and cultural activist Andrea Zimmerman, is being released in cinemas by LUX from 2 March.

Having screened at BFI London Film Festival, the film explores ‘the deep bonds between Hollywood’s fictionalized conflicts and America’s hidden wars’ through a complex portrayal of controversial US soldier, whistle-blower and ex-presidential candidate Bo Gritz, taking us to a world before President Trump.

One of America’s highest decorated veterans, the ‘inspiration’ behind RAMBO, Colonel John ‘Hannibal’ Smith (THE A-TEAM) and Brando’s Colonel Kurtz (APOCALYPSE NOW), Gritz was at the heart of American military and foreign policy – both overt and covert – from the Bay of Pigs to Afghanistan, before turning whistle-blower and launching anti-government training programmes.

Today he lives in the Nevada desert where he once secretly trained Afghan Mujahedeen, is loved by his community, and still admired as a hero figure by white supremacists for his role in the Ruby Ridge siege in 1992. This event was a key turning point in the rise of the far right and militia anti-Government groups in the US.

Filmed over ten years, Zimmerman’s film is an artist’s perspective of an individual and a country in crisis. ERASE AND FORGET explores the implications on a personal and collective level of identities founded on a profound, even endemic violence. It examines the propagation of that violence through Hollywood and the mass media, the arms trade and ongoing governmental policy.

Deploying confessional and exploratory interviews, news and cultural footage, creative re-enactment and previously unseen archive material, the film proposes a multi-layered investigation of war as a social structure, a way of being for individuals and countries in what is becoming an era of ‘permanent conflict’.


Screening Information

Andrea Luka Zimmerman will be in discussion at the following screenings:

Sun 8 April, Arthouse Crouch End, London, 4pm
Tickets available here

Tue 17 April, Genesis Cinema, London, 6.45pm
with David Neiwart, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso)
Tickets available here

Fri 20 April, London Review of Books, 7pm
also with David Neiwart
Tickets available here

More to screenings to be announced soon.


Erase and Forget is based on PhD research by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, supported by The Arts And Humanities Research Council (UK). Additional support from The Wapping Project Commissions with funding from Women’s Playhouse Trust.

Development support from Film London’s FLAMIN’, Arts Council England, and New Danish Screen.

‘an eerie, quietly disturbing essay film that probes the erasures and edge spaces of the American Dream, the blurry line between fantasy and reality in modern-day US culture, and the sadness and disorientation lying behind the veneer of jingoistic, flag-waving certitude.’ – Sukhdev Sandhu, Sight & Sound

‘like a Lynchian nightmare of right-wing America.’ – Tim Coleman, Total Film

http://www.eraseandforget.com/
@eraseforget #donoteraseandforget
[email protected]

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