The Cool Factor: Black Impermanence, Spectacle, and Artistic Evolution

  • April 17, 2026 1:01 am

from O.R.C.A.

Let’s celebrate Philly Jazz month by delving into jazz history and its impact on music beyond the genre. In this interactive lecture Black music historian Lex will guide us through exploring Jazz, the spectacular, and the diffusiveness of Black identity in North America.

Ultimately interrogating, how Blackness becomes codified as “cool,” and how spectacle shapes African American life. We will unpack how North American imperialism commodifies Black identity, ultimately transforming resistance into capital leveraged to accrue soft power, while disempowering those within the imperial core. Together we’ll examine the significance of Call and Response across Black art forms, how specific social conditions give rise to Black musicality with emphasis on Jazz, rap, and vogue.
This is an invitation to engage jazz not just as music, but as an ongoing, collective response to colonialism and white supremacy.

Techno Fascism Winter Thaw Series

  • April 13, 2026 1:59 am

from O.R.C.A.

Come melt away the end of winter at O.R.C.A. with some films that look at the technologies of domination. After each screening we’ll discuss how we can struggle against this oppressive reality.

4/16 7PM
Koyannisqatsi (1982, 86 min)
Beautifully shot and scored, this wordless documentary brings us on a emotional exploration of the machinery and relations that make progress and our modern lifeways possible. The title is a Hopi word that can be translated to “life out of balance.”

Fighting For Ourselves: Informal Organizing & The Insurrectionary Project

  • March 8, 2026 1:18 am

from O.R.C.A.

A screening of the audio and slides of a presentation about organization, informality, insurrection, and revolution that was given in the Pacific Northwest by the comrades at Fugitive Distro. We’ll watch the presentation and then discuss together.

Original presentation descriptions:

“A presentation and discussion on the question of organization – what is it, how have some anarchists chosen to approach it, and why. In a moment where everyone is talking about organization either in vague terms or asking others to join behind them as followers, we hope to offer tools from one of the many approaches for the struggle over our lives.”

“So often calls go out ‘just organize’ with little to no content that follows or with an expectation for individuals to simply pad the numbers of this or that Organization, not requiring us to take an active role in the struggle for our and each others freedom.

We wish to offer an introduction to some tools and a perspective that isn’t just a /how/ to organize, but also why and to what end.

We hope people will come to this not with the mindset that we are trying to convince you of a position, as if we simply want people to rally around our ideas, but to loot what’s useful and burn the rest.”

Techno Fascism Winter Thaw Series

  • March 6, 2026 1:17 am

from O.R.C.A.

Come melt away the end of winter at O.R.C.A. with some films that look at the technologies of domination. After each screening we’ll discuss how we can struggle against this oppressive reality.

3/12 7PM
A Selection of Short Films (~80 min)
A handful of shorter films about how technology is tied up with colonialism, policing, war, and surveillance as well as some of the fight back already taking place. A list of the shorts is at the bottom of this page.

3/19 7PM
Koyannisqatsi (1982, 86 min)
Beautifully shot and scored, this wordless documentary brings us on a emotional exploration of the machinery and relations that make progress and our modern lifeways possible. The title is a Hopi word that can be translated to “life out of balance.”

3/26 7PM
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (2011, 59 min)
(Part Two The Use And Abuse Of Vegetational Concepts)
Exploring the parallel rise of ecology and cybernetics this strange documentary calls into question how we apply mfilmechanical thinking to nature and people. If you’ve ever compared your brain to a computer this one is for you.

3/19 Short Films:
Tip 3 Organize Offline
How Israel Automated Occupation In Hebron
Berlin Camover
How ‘Smart Cities’ Make Us More Watched Than Ever Before
Russian Camover
How Palantir Is Transforming Modern Warfare
Montreal Camover
No Publicar
Embrace Robophobia
What is Direct Action?

Black Radical Lit Swap

  • February 21, 2026 1:31 am

from O.R.C.A.

Bring some Black Radical literature, take some Black Radical literature. Come through to O.R.C.A on Saturday Feb. 28th from 4 – 6 pm. for a literature swap. Stay and chat about what text you brought, took and/or are currently reading. Left over books will be donated to the O.R.C.A library. Please wear a mask + mask will be available

O.R.C.A. Two Year Anniversary

  • February 6, 2026 1:35 am

from O.R.C.A.

Can you believe it’s been two years? Come celebrate O.R.C.A. with us! We’ll be screening some short films, hanging out with the heat on, enjoying some music and snacks, and raising money for the space with a raffle with cute prizes! Can’t wait to see you all there!

We’re turning two, come celebrate!

  • January 27, 2026 1:31 am

from O.R.C.A.

It’ll be two years of O.R.C.A. this February! We’re hosting a celebration even with films, friends, snacks, and a raffle with fun prizes. It’s on February 13th from 6pm to 10 at the space! Event details are here. Come through and bring a friend 😀

1971 Screening

  • November 27, 2025 1:10 am

from O.R.C.A.

A group of Philly anti-war activists turned burglars broke into an FBI office and made off with documents. They exposed the bureau’s notorious COINTELPRO and never got caught!
1971 follows up with them decades later and goes into how they planned the action and how their break-in changed the way we understand surveillance today.
Witness what is possible when a dedicated group of people decide to take on the feds, against a backdrop of Philly’s radical and progressive movements and cultures during the 60s and 70s.
(80 mins)

It’s Revolution Or Death Screening And Discussion

  • November 3, 2025 1:40 am

from O.R.C.A.

A screening in its entirety of a 3 part series imagined and narrated by anarchist Author Peter Gelderloos (How Nonviolence Protects the State, The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below) and brought to life by anarchist video media collective subMedia.

Part 1 of It’s Revolution or Death explores the lies that corporate green energy companies are feeding us and speculates on just how bad things will get if we continue on the current course.

Part 2 examines movements around the world by interviewing participants resisting giant ecologically destructive projects in Wet’suwet’en Territory in so-called Canada, The ZAD in Notre-Dame-de-Londres in France*, and farmland in the north of territories controlled by the state of Brazil that have been reoccupied by the Landless Worker’s movement and turned into massive organic farming projects providing both food and housing.

Part 3 brings it all home by bringing 3 simple suggestions to newer anarchists or just anarchists who don’t already live near one of these big ecological movements. Urgent Suggestion : A complete and Total Rejection of All the Institutions Responsible for This Disaster. Urgent Suggestion : Pick a Project of Transformative Survival and Urgent Suggestion : Connect your project to a revolutionary web of solidarity.

This series was designed to be screened in communities and start or continue the difficult conversations we’ll all have to have about making our communities more resilient in the face of worsening climate catastrophe. Run time is about 80 min.

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

  • October 14, 2025 1:43 am

from O.R.C.A.

A film screening, presentation and discussion about Chris Marker’s film The Sixth Side of the Pentagon.

Chris Marker’s film The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (25 min) documents a massive anti-war demonstration in October 1967. During the demonstration, anarchists fought the military and briefly broke into the pentagon. The presentation will explain how anarchists prepared and planned together for this action.

L.A. Reportback: Resistance to I.C.E.

  • September 14, 2025 1:53 am

from O.R.C.A.

Tuesday, September 16th

6pm

O.R.C.A.

Join comrades coming from Los Angeles for a report back and Q&A discussion about ICE resistance, from rapid response networks to tactical observations. A photo of an ICE vehicle with masked people swarming around it. Text reads: "ICE Resistance in LA: A Reportback. 9/16 6pm@ ORCA

 

Hackitat: 9 Layers of Political Hacking Screening

  • September 11, 2025 1:54 am

from O.R.C.A.

Friday, September 12th
7pm
ORCA
Hackitat: 9 Layers of Political Hacking (2020)
Directed by Alex Veitch
Description:

“This documentary takes a look at hacking in the place where technology and activists meet. Where the need to circumvent state surveillance and surveillance capitalism is grave. Where people see an unfair system in society and find a way to hack it. This is the true hacker habitat.

In direct opposition to banks, corporations and entrepreneurs who appropriated the words ‘hack/hackathon’, the film aims to fill these expressions with the subversive and anarchist tradition they originally contained. Delivered in chapter form, this film shows hacker projects and system hacking from Japan, Cuba, occupied Western Sahara, Belgium and Sweden. These chapters are intertwined with thought provoking interviews where hackers talk about the ethics behind what they do. Furthermore, the film mirrors these ideas in a discussion with the political theorist Emma Goldman’s writings. Filmed under the 2010s it provides an unique insight into a global political hacker movement.”

The film is in multiple languages with English subtitles.

Resource Extraction In The Navajo Nation & How It Fuels The US War Machine

  • August 13, 2025 1:57 am

from O.R.C.A.

 

During open hours August 20th, we will screen the 1985 documentary “Broken Rainbow.” This movie explains some of the historical context that allows coal and uranium mining on native land in the southwest.

We will also be discussion updates on the new uranium boom as the Trump administration and big tech, pucsh to develop domestic sources of uranium for energy and “defense.”

Black August film screening: Eyes Of The Rainbow

  • August 6, 2025 1:40 am

from O.R.C.A.

For Black August we’re screening Eyes of the Rainbow and giving out copies of the new edition of Freeing Assata during open hours. O.R.C.A. is open from 5pm to 9:30pm for open hours and we’ll start the film at 7:15pm.

Eyes of the Rainbow is a documentary that features an interview with Black revolutionary Assata Shakur in Cuba following her escape from prison. Assata discusses her experiences as a prisoner, her life in Cuba, and being part of the African diaspora.

Freeing Assata is a zine that tells the story of Assata Shakur’s liberation from prison by members of the Black Liberation Army. A new second edition includes a second account and is available online as a PDF here.

Date: 2025/08/13 17:00 – 21:30

We Are Not Afraid Of Ruins

  • August 5, 2025 1:41 am

from O.R.C.A.

We Are Not Afraid of Ruins is a film by Greek filmmaker Yannis Youlountas recently translated into English that follows the squatters’ movement from 2019-2024 in the anarchist stronghold of Exarcheia in Athens as they support refugees, resist incursions by organized fascists and the state, and try to live their day to day lives in free from domination and exploitation.

Run time ~90 minutes, in Greek with English subtitles.