Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike (2008)

Oksana Bulgakova, Dietmar Dath, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Durs Grünbein

In 1929, the legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein began blocking out plans to create a film adaptation of Das Kapital, Karl Marx's famous critical analysis of capitalism as a political and eco... read more nomic system. Eisenstein's plans never came to fruition, but nearly seven decades later German director Alexander Kluge read Eisenstein's extensive notes on the project and was inspired to try making his own screen version of Marx's treatise. Nachrichten aus der Ideologischen Antike: Marx -- Eisenstein - Das Kapital (aka News From Ideological Antiquity: Marx -- Einstein -- Das Kapital) is a documentary that examines Marx's book, its influence, its ideas and how one might go about expressing them in visual form. Featuring extensive interviews with a variety of writers, economists, political scientists, philosophers and artists, including Dietmar Dath, Durs Grunbein, Oskar Negt, Sophie Rois, Rainer Stollmann and Hans Mangus Enzensnerger, Kluge's film explores the process of filming an "unfilmable" work as it puts Marx's ideas under the microscope. Running over nine hours long, Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike -- Marx -- Eisenstein - Das Kapital received a rare theatrical screening at the 2010 Rotterdam International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi