anti-capitalist lock-down film festival 200814

 

Our inadvertent and very entertaining anti-capitalist lock-down film festival is in full swing.

 

After re-screening Scorsese’s blistering mile-a-minute “The Wolf of Wall Street”, we switched gears to Anna Sofia Hartman’s “Giraffe”, one of the most beautiful ruminative films I’ve seen. A young ethnologist is documenting life on an island about to be completely transformed by the creation of a tunnel to replace the ferry that’s served as the only available transport to mainland Finland. She observes the island’s inhabitants whose houses and farms are to be demolished, the itinerant construction workers, a ferry worker, and most notably a woman whose diary, scrapbook, and other belongings have been mysteriously left behind in her abandoned house.
On MUBI for only a few more days.

https://mubi.com/films/giraffe-2019

Kitty Green’s “The Assistant” is the first flick to tackle Harvey Weinstein’s abuses head-on, not by bombastic sexist fireworks (the ‘boss’ is never actually seen) but by simply going through the mundane day-in-the-life activities of his overworked assistant, played with quiet desperation by Julia Garner. She can't ignore what’s going on and even attempts to report the abuses at one point, but is brushed off by HR, only to be “comforted” with: “Relax, you’re not his type.” The bleakest utterance comes from another woman in the office who tells her not to worry about a casting couch episode currently taking place: “Don’t worry, she’ll get more out of it than he will.” (On Hulu.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9761kQCNWc

 

And we finally watched “The Young Karl Marx”. Raoul Peck deftly juggles narrative biography with message to emphasize how Marx grew to become a monolithic icon (and helped me overcome my hesitations about him due to his never having experienced television). His and Engels’ youthful exuberance, brilliance, determination, and compassion were more than matched by their spouses, portrayed here as women of great substance, not merely supportive plot devices. I’ll be onto Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” (which Elania has already seen) and ”Lumumba’ after getting so much out of this one. (On Prime and Kanopy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpJ4ZJqULsc