1968: 40 Years Later
A Film Series
Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973, 90 min. French with English subtitles) is a Situationist film by director René Viénet which uses an older martial arts film ("The Crush" from Doo Kwang Gee) for its visuals. This film was then dubbed over by the filmmakers in a detournement. The idea was to adapt a bourgeois film into a radical critique of cultural hegemony.
The Narrative is based upon a conflict between the proletarian and bureaucrats within state capitalism. The proletarians enlist their dialectics and radical subjectivity to fight their oppressors whilst the bureaucrats defend themselves using a combination of bribery and violence. The film also contains many references to revolutionaries who thought and fought for the realization of a post-capitalist world, including Marx, Bakunin, and Wilhelm Reich. Also Subplots dealing with issues of gender equality, alienation, trade unionism, May 1968, and the Situationist themselves are riddled throughout the film.
Tuesday, May 27th
8:00 PM
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