Comfort Film along with STRANGE DAYS with Harrison Sherrod

Presents

Marx Reloaded (2011)

a film by Jason Barker

Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today, over a decade later, the structural problems that led to the crisis are still in full effect, and another economic inflection point seems all but inevitable. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life? Borrowing tropes from the sci-fi classic, The Matrix, the film explores how Marx’s theories presage our current socioeconomic and political dysfunction, and lay the groundwork for speculative futurities that transcend late capitalism. Indeed, the idea of any future at all is a radical sci-fi concept; to quote Nina Power, why is it harder to imagine the end of capitalism than it is to imagine the end of the world? 200 years after his birth, it seems we must look to Marx and his lineage if there is to be any future at all. Today a new generation of philosophers, artists, and political activists are returning to Marx's ideas in order to try to make sense of the crisis, and to consider whether a world without or beyond capitalism is possible. Is the severity of the ongoing recession a sign that the capitalist system's days are numbered? Ironically, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, could it be that communism might provide the solution to the growing economic and environmental challenges facing the planet? Featuring interviews with Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Nina Power, Jacques Rancière, Peter Sloterdijk, Slavoj Zizek, and more. Which pill will you take?

Post-screening Q&A with ~STRANGE DAYS~ programmer Harrison Sherrod.

Programmed by Raul Benitez and Nando Espinosa.