Notes for a Film of "Capital"

Abstract

It's settled: we're going to film CAPITAL, on Marx's scenario-the only logical solution. N.B. Additions ... those are clips pasted to the wall of montage.1 October 13, 1927.. . To extend the line (and to explicate it, step by step) of dialectical development in my work. Let us recall: 1. STRIKE. The order-educational and methodological film on the methods and processes of class and of underground work. Whence-serial film structure and detachment from a specific place (in the project there's a whole series of escapes, prison life, rebellion, body-searches, etc.). 2. POTEMKIN. I'm emphasizing, just as the film's direction does, the dialectical result: a pathos of the ordinary and the psychologically concrete: tarpaulin: mourning-par excellence. "Suddenly". ..2 the abstract emotion of the lions:3 a [leap] from representation of ordinary life to abstract and generalized imagery. 3. OCTOBER Harnessed lions-speeches of Mensheviks, the bicycles, (N.B. the second derived from the car and motorcycle races that were cut into the mowing sequence of our GENERAL) led to a complete departure from the factual and anecdotal-the events of OCTOBER (in that section) are accepted, not as OCTOBER events, but as the conclusion of a series of theses; not the fact that the Mensheviks are 'singing' while the battle is in progress (a purely cinematic method of intercutting), but the historical nearsightedness of Menshevism. Not that a sailor finds himself in the bedroom of A[lexandra] F[yodorovna], but rather the "execution of the petite bourgeoisie and that which it represents," etc. Not an anecdote about the Wild Division, but "methodology, of propaganda." "In God's Name" becomes a treatise on deity. After the drama, poem, ballad in film, OCTOBER presents a new form of cinema: a collection of essays on a series of themes which constitute OCTOBER. Assuming that in any film work, certain salient phrases are given importance, the form of a discursive film provides, apart from its unique renewal of strategies, their rationalization which takes these strategies into account. Here's a point of contact already with completely new film perspectives and with the glimmers of possibilities to be realized in CAPITAL, a new work on a libretto by Karl Marx. A film treatise. Nov. 4, evening. In America even cemeteries are private. 100% Competition. Bribing of doctors, etc. The dying receive prospectuses: "Only with us will you find eternal peace in the shade of trees and the murmur of streams," etc.

Uncanny Indexes: Rotoshopped Interviews as Documentary

“…These moments have been variously theorized, but are generally acknowledged as arising from a dissonance between viewing expectations and viewing experience as well as between what we know and what we feel while watching animation. This was observed by Eisenstein (1988: 55), when he marvels about Disney animation:…”

Zoom In, Zoom Out, Refocus: is a Global Electronic Literature Possible?

“…"The content of CAPITAL (its aim) is now formulated: to teach the worker to think dialectically," Eisenstein writes enthusiastically in April of 1928. 47 In accordance with the principles of "Marxist dialectics" as canonized by the official Soviet philosophy, Eisenstein planned to present the viewer with the visual equivalents of thesis and anti-thesis so that the viewer can then proceed to arrive at synthesis, i.e. the correct conclusion, pre-programmed by Eisenstein.…”

The Aesthetics of Keyframe Animation: Labor, Early Development, and Peter Foldes

“…He was exhilarated to find in Mickey Mouse something that shared his childhood fascination with amebic plasticity. The plasticity of the tubular limbs was in fact rubber hose animation, which Eisenstein (1988: 21) embraced as ‘the seemingly groundless scattering of extremities in Disney’s drawings’. ‘Plasmaticness’, as Eisenstein coined the term, celebrated the liberating euphoria rooted in prehistorical animism or the potentiality for an infinite number of forms.…”

“…Interestingly, the digital rein of deformation was analogous to the decline of rubber hose animation due to the ascendancy of Disney animation. Such rubbery movement was actually what struck Eisenstein (1988) as ‘plasmatic’ and that movement was later refined and transformed into the emblematic ‘Squash and Stretch’ style seen in Disney character animation and later at Pixar. In a sense, the technology of keyframe animation may have been part of the teleology of labor rationalization, but it has come full circle to where the animation industry originally began with the invention of rubber hose animation.…”