This week students at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland have been taking classes in The Cinema of Anti-capitalism with Marx Reloaded writer-director and co-producer Jason Barker. (Other seminars comprising the graduate programme this summer have been given by Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Avital Ronell, Jeffrey Eugenides, Giorgio Agamben, Elie During, Boris Groys, Graham Harman and Michael Schmidt).
Jason's seminars explored Marxist-materialist, metaphysical and post-metaphysical cinema theory and practice, and included film screenings and discussions of films by Cronenberg, Mulvey and Wollen, Gidal, Godard, Vertov, Sekula and Burch, Dojo Cinéma, among others (including a special screening of Marx Reloaded).
The seminars (12 in total) generated fascinating and stimulating discussions - thanks in large part to a superb and highly-motivated class of MA and PhD students - around questions and problems of pursuing a revolutionary cinema practice in a capitalist film industry. Today, in a world of 3D Hollywood triumphalism, is a "cinema of anti-capitalism" conceivable? What films might be described as "anti-capitalist"? Under what practical and institutional conditions can and should anti-capitalist films be made? How might a revolutionary cinema practice be conducted? According to what principles, ideologies, theories?
Jason's cinema courses are aimed at students, artists, teachers, theoreticians, film-makers, practitioners and other workers of all persuasions and professional backgrounds, and will continue to evolve at the European Graduate School (and elsewhere) over the coming years.
For more information about attending future courses and for PhD supervision enquiries email Prof. Dr. Jason Barker at: jason.barker@egs.edu
