Alexander Kluge
Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike:
Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital

Films from 'antiquity' and films of the 'modern era'
The new series kicked off with Alexander Kluge who is equally adept at winning prizes for his work as a writer as he is for his film and TV work. His Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike: Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital focuses on a lunatic plan envisaged by the great Russian director, Sergei Eisenstein, that of course never got off the ground. In 1927 he had the idea of filming Das Kapital in the vein of Karl Marx and intended to do it by adhering to the literary methods used by James Joyce in his book Ulysses. “A plan with the whack of a battleship”, as Kluge pertinently remarks in the accompanying booklet to the three DVDs. It is however also a plan that could only be “cinemafied” i.e. seized on by somebody like Alexander Kluge, whose films and TV work often seem to follow the same dramatic approach as Eisenstein had in mind for his Marx project, in the hope of revolutionizing the art of filmmaking. “The ‘film from antiquity’”, he commented in his notes, “created a plot out of several aspects. The ‘modern era film’ montages one aspect out of several plots”.

It offers so much to be discovered and so much you can have a good laugh at that you soon forget the time after the first few chapters. Every time you get to the end of each of the three DVDs, you are wholeheartedly surprised that it is yet again over.

From Geothe-Institut