Being written for presentation at ‘Marx at the Movies’, these notes address the topic from an angle which is rarely treated in film and video scholarship, that of the peculiar labour process and mode of production involved. Read more
Events since the near-death experience of finance capital in 2008 have succoured renewed attention not to Marxism as a political creed but to Marx as the urtext of the proper analysis of the capitalist system. On the one hand, old established Marxist scholars like Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton and David Harvey have all published new books, while on the other, numerous articles alluding to Marx’s relevance have appeared in both the capitalist press and independent weeklies, sometimes even on the radio (though never television). On the web, you can find a growing number of videos about capitalism, its discontents and dysfunctions, strongly informed by Marxist ideas, jostling for attention with an explosion of more anarchistic street level video activism. Read more
The riots which started in North London, and astonished everyone by spreading so quickly through the city and round the country, have produced massive cognitive dissonance throughout the media—mainstream and social—for which they provide a new and highly polysemic symbol for accumulating fears of social disintegration. The flood of photos and videos join a gallery of images of social breakdown from disparate causes, some natural, some social—from hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis to solitary deranged gunmen on the rampage—which have this in common, that they all suggest appalling consequences in store for a world spinning out of control—without the fantasised redemptive ending of the disaster movie. Read more
Banner Theatre’s 1 May Band perform a number from their new show, Cabaret Against the Cuts, on a visit to Chelmsford TUC.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20821923[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20236904[/vimeo]
At Saturday’s Progressive London conference, I caught up with comedian Josie Long and Mehdi Hasan, the NS’s political editor, and listened to Unite’s Len McKluskey and False Economy‘s Clifford Singer, plus ukuncutactivists take on Barclays Bank and South London celebrates a Carnival Against the Cuts.
Additional filming by Kaveh Abassian and Philippa Daniel. Philippa’s own video of the Carnival Against the Cuts is here.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20008781[/vimeo]
The repercussions of the cuts in Higher Education are being felt in Bristol, where lecturers at the University of the West of England (UWE) have been forced to take strike action over threats to staffing. Here I report on the strike and find out what students who supported it think about the situation.
For the last few weeks I’ve been out and about filming moments in the developing protest movement against the unconscionable coalition government and its programme of swingeing cuts in every department of social provision. The result has been a number of short videos posted here on Putney Debater. I’ve now been invited by the New Statesman to become its first video blogger, so from now on, that’s where my videos will be posted first (although I’ll continue to post written blogs here). Here’s the first one, which condenses the videos posted here previously with some additional material.
The idea I have is to build up a picture of the movement as it evolves, so I’m working on the basis that I’ll end up with a documentary record of three or four months of struggle. The method is simple: to return to Glauber Rocha’s formula for Cinema Novo in Brazil—to go and make films with a camera in the hand and an idea in the head. (Too simple for the section on methodology in a grant application, and there’s no time for that anyway, so I’m not making one.)
One of Nina Power’s photos from 9 December protests
The last few weeks have seen a new spate of agitational web videos, accompanying the amazing upturn of politicking in Britain in response to the brutal, ill-considered and philistine cuts proposed by the coalition government which took office last May. Read more