Icarus Films has tabbed
May Day (May 1), appropriately enough, as the DVD release date for documentary
filmmaker Jason Barker’s Marx Reloaded, a retrospective look
at the 2008 financial meltdown from a Karl Marx perspective.
Timed for the bicentennial
celebration of 19th Century German philosopher Karl Marx’s birthday
(May 8), Marx Reloaded, makes the case that the 2008 financial crisis —
brought on by the collapse of the housing market — could have (would have) been
predicted by the writing of Marx. In
presenting his case, Barker (in interviews) hit upon the idea of using the Matrix
and the “red pill/blue pill” sequence as a metaphor to make the subject a
little less “dry.”
A number of academics are
interviewed in the documentary, including Oxford political philosopher John
Gray (author of “False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism”), author Michael
Hardt (author of “Empire” and “Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of
Empire), Nina Power (academic and author of “One-Dimensional Woman”) and philosopher
Slavoj Žižek.
There is also a clever
animated sequence featuring Marx in debate with Leon Trotsky, which plays off
of the Matrix conceit.
Icarus Films has included Marx
Reloaded Bob Godfrey’s 1979 animated short film titled Marx
for Beginners.
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