Films

The revolution introduced me to art, and art, in its own turn, brought me to the revolution.

Sergei Eisenstein

Wednesday, 14 February 2018 15:19

Marx at the Movies

Written by John Green

in Films

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx this year, John Green gives a brief outline of some of the influences of Marxist thought on moviemakers. What influence has Marx had on film and the cinema? A rather odd if not idiotic question the reader might think. After…

Eisenstein JeanLuc Godard Dogme

Sunday, 15 April 2018 12:53

Marx at the Movies

Written by John Green

in Films

Eisenstein JeanLuc Godard Dogme

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 06 February 2018 12:49

200 years young

in Films

Written by Scott McLemee

Scott McLemee reviews The Young Karl Marx, which, on the eve of 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, contains themes of economic crises and inequalities that remain relevant today. Released last year but receiving as yet very little English-language press coverage, Der Junge Karl Marx is a nuanced and surprisingly accurate…

Karl Marx Communist Manifesto Raoul Peck

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 17 April 2018 11:50

200 years young

in Films

Written by Scott McLemee

Karl Marx Communist Manifesto Raoul Peck

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 28 October 2017 16:39

The Death of Stalin

in Films

Written by Gerry Rowe

Gerry Rowe is disappointed by The Death of Stalin. In Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin’s ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’, the object of satire is a thoroughly British media company owned by equally feared and reviled tycoon Royston Merchant, never himself seen on screen. Who in their right, lefty mind wouldn’t…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Friday, 25 August 2017 07:37

Dunkirk: Keep Calm and Carry On?

in Films

Written by Daniel Clarkson Fisher

Daniel Clarkson Fisher reviews Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, and discusses the moral obligations of the artist, the WW2 combat genre, and the potential for a 'truly radical flowering' of progressive film culture. In keeping with his penchant for enormity, Christopher Nolan’s new film Dunkirk arrives at the intersection of two large…

Dunkirk Christopher Nolan Scorsese Tarantino John Ford

Monday, 14 August 2017 11:17

Dunkirk - a visceral account of the Allied retreat

Written by Michael Roberts

in Films

Michael Roberts reviews the recently released Dunkirk. Taught to children in schools up and down the country, the evacuation of Dunkirk is ingrained into the very culture of Great Britain. Images, paintings and newspaper clippings which tell the story of 400,000 British troops attempting to retreat from France with the…

Dunkirk World War II Christopher Nolan

Monday, 26 June 2017 19:49

'The most important of the arts': film after the Russian Revolution

Written by John Green

in Films

John Green outlines the role of film in the Bolshevik Revolution, and the profound and lasting influence of Russian revolutionary film-makers on cinema not only in the Soviet Union but across the world. According to the Bolshevik government’s first Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Lenin remarked that, ‘Film for us…

Russian Revolution Eisenstein Vertov

Thursday, 22 June 2017 19:50

Not the Feelies

Written by Jenny Farrell

in Films

Jenny Farrell explains how Leviathan reveals the nature of capitalism. The dystopias of the mid-20th century, Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), described with astonishing accuracy the world we live in today: thought police, news speak, genetic engineering, escapist drugs and a cinema that conditions people not to…

Leviathan capitalism Modern Russia

Saturday, 18 March 2017 15:37

Hypernormalisation

Written by Chris Jury

in Films

Chris Jury finds Adam Curtis's latest film to be memorable and compelling, but also irritatingly obscure. The term "hypernormalisation" is taken from Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, in which Yurchak argues that for many decades everyone had known the…

Hypernormalisation Adam Curtis fake news