Viernes, 11 de julio de 2014

Marx Is Back, a miniseries now showing online.
An old specter is haunting the networks
Based on the Communist Manifesto, this fictional mini-series stars Carlos Weber, an actor who had already been played the part of the German philosopher when ‘Marx in Soho’ was staged. A number of activists also appear as extras.

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Javier Gabino, one of the producers, and Carlos Weber, who embodies Marx.

Ideas outlive men. Small surprise, then, that a fictional titled Marx is Back –about the Communist Manifesto and with Karl Marx as the main character– has just been released to be watched online, at www.contraimagen.org.ar. Now in its fourth chapter, the miniseries was produced by the Instituto del Pensamiento Socialista [Institute of Socialist Thought] and is directed by the Contraimagen group and the TVPTS (an online TV channel). Marx is Back takes place in today’s Argentina, where the workers of a printing house are facing suspensions and layoffs and some of them are organizing to fight back without any help from their union officials. At the same time, one of them –Martín, the leading man– starts to read the Communist Manifesto on a regular basis and ends up meeting the German thinker himself, not knowing if he’s dreaming or if it’s reality. All through its four episodes, Marx is Back addresses topics from the detailed study made by the author of Das Kapital: his revolutionary ideas regarding social classes, the crises, the state and, sure enough, communism. Cast as Marx is Carlos Weber, an actor who had already played the part of the white-bearded man in Howard Zinn’s Marx in Soho when it was staged under Manuel Callau’s direction. The rest of the cast is made of actors from the independent national scene and even a number of activists who perform as extras.

In late 2013, the Instituto del Pensamiento Socialista organized several courses on the Communist Manifesto which were given across the country in February/March of this year. A proposal was made then to Contraimagen/TVPTS group about an audiovisual presentation for the four-meeting-long course. “We moved away from straightaway pedagogy and didactics in favor of a work of fiction focused on four central themes of the Communist Manifesto, but the performances achieved made it possible for us to post it online as a miniseries”, Javier Gabino, one of the producers, explains. “Marx is Back has been so well-received that is has succeeded beyond all expectations, with daily visits by Internet users not only from Argentina but also from other Latin American countries like Peru, Mexico and Chile, and even from Europe through Spain. The online premiere was very interesting, for it proved that many people can access the platform. And there was something even ‘more interesting’: many people of all ages from working-class neighborhoods are watching it through their cell phones. They just changed it via WhatsApp, for instance, without our saying so”. Gabino adds that in the fifth episode –currently in production– we’ll see the meeting between Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky.

Weber, who embodies the German thinker, believes that while Marx is still Marx, both in the play and the miniseries, the latter’s approach is totally different and shows a different philosopher from Marx in Soho’s. “The one in the play is a suffering man afflicted by problems with his family and his efforts to survive in London as an exile while writing Das Kapital. Here we find a more relaxed Marx who works in the trenches and factories, preaching his theory but also practicing it. It’s a vital, present-day Marx,” Weber points out. He thinks the screenwriters might have thought: “Since Marx still lives on among us in our work, in our exploitation, in the contradictions facing the working class struggle, etc., he becomes tangible”. That’s why Weber’s character appears in factories and even drinking maté with the workers.

Weber acknowledges that it was hard to express very theoretical lines for a miniseries. “An actor’s work involves a chance to build dramatic, fictional situations from texts of all origins and characters. But since he’s been portrayed as very active and close to young people, Marx is shown here as a truly colloquial person while voicing full, complex passages from the Manifesto. However, we’re very happy because we succeeded,” he says enthusiastically. They also had to work on the audio-visual language to tailor it to that of the social networks. “Many of [Contraimagen’s] materials are full-length films,” he goes on, “so, for starters, we had to keep time in mind. Every episode is 13 minutes long because people are used to watching short things online. There was also the three-line crossing,” the director adds. “One, the workers’ line; two, Marx’s line, and three, a line closely related to Internet language, made from downloaded files, that is, bits of footage from YouTube, pictures, which is usually done but, when worked into fiction, gives a very dynamic editing. Not all has been said and done; there are quite obvious ellipses. But such is the language of the Internet,” he emphasizes.

‘A specter is haunting Europe’ is a phrase most people know. It would seem that the directors wanted to construct a sort of link between these words and Marx’s somewhat ghost-like figure in this story. Gabino holds that it was not intended for the mini-series as much as for the online ads, which read ‘A specter is haunting the networks’. “Rather than ghost-like, we tried to have a physical, everyday Marx bound to be crucial to anyone today. I think we managed to do so. The most interesting thing is that people believe that Weber is Marx, never mind that he really looks like him.”

Asked whether he thinks this miniseries is only for people of left-wing leanings, or aimed at making the Manifesto known to new audiences, Weber gave his personal view “The latter,” he says, and goes on to elaborate: “I believe the Communist Manifesto is a comprehensive text made for struggle, and since the struggle has never come to an end it reaches everyone, and people can appreciate that. Marx has been demonized, and so has his book, held to be impossible to read collectively. But it can definitely be read collectively”. Weber refers to the first episode of the miniseries. “In it, there’s a fragment of a Charles Chaplin film in which a child is reading the Manifesto and questioned by Chaplin’s character: ‘You’re reading the Manifesto, so you’re a bit of a communist.’ And the child replies: ‘Do you have to be a communist to read Marx?’ And that’s what we do with this mini-series. You don’t have to be a communist to get closer to the Manifesto, let alone appreciate a present-day Marx,” he concludes.